Oh shite, he thought.Oh hell.
She seemed at once to understand what he was about. She tipped her head to the side with a gasp, making room for him to press his cheek against her skin. Her hair fell down around him, shielding his face.
And then she lifted one leg and hooked it around his waist, and he went ever so slightly mad.
Oh God, he thought. AndLydia. Lydia.
She was a step above him, but he was still taller, and her skirts fell back as she tightened her leg around him. He untangled his fingers from her hair and caught her leg beneath her knee. It was not layers of skirts and petticoats he felt there, but the thin silk of her stockings, and beneath that the warmth of her flesh.
Oh Jesus, she was soft and warm everywhere. His handslipped down the outside of her thigh, hitching her higher and tighter against him.
He felt the vibration of the sound she made as he did so, a breath that was not quite a moan. He could feel her breasts rising and falling unsteadily, and oh God, he wanted more. More of her. He wanted to slide his hand farther up that soft, lush thigh until he reached the bow of her garter and then past it. He wanted skin.
But ah yes, he already had skin—right here, where his mouth was pressed against her neck. His lips parted, and he tasted her, her sweet skin, her racing pulse. He dipped down, a little farther—her collarbone, God,yes, a perfect ridge for his teeth and tongue.
She gasped a little and tilted her head and then—ah, then she pushed her hips up into him. Like she wanted. Like she needed him too. He tightened his grip on her thigh and pressed her harder into the wall, and she whimpered and tangled one hand in his hair. God, it felt good—she felt so good, the almost-ache where she pulled his hair, the almost-surrender of her beneath him, her leg drawing him tighter, crushing his body to hers. He dragged his hand from her waist up—to her rib cage, to the side of her full breast, cursing the fabric between them. He wanted nothing between them, nothing but her breasts’ heavy weight in his palms and his body rocking into—
“Aye, mate, wait till you have her in your room!”
Arthur froze.
It was the laughing, raucous voice that they’d heard from the bottom of the stairs.
It was the reason he had begun this charade in the first place, the reason Lydia stood beneath him, her leg wrapped around his body.
He was not trying to shag her on a staircase, for God’s sake! He was trying tohide.
He kept his face pressed against Lydia’s décolletage, his hand still clutching her thigh, and tried to control his breathing.
“Oh,” Lydia said, and Christ, her voice was breathless. She laughed a little, that soft surprised laugh that he loved. “Newlyweds. Our”—Arthur’s fingers tightened on her in surprise, pulling their bodies together, and she gave a little gasp—“our honeymoon.”
Well, hell, it was as good of an excuse as any for why he’d been a hair’s breadth from public copulation.
“The room’s too damned far, my love,” he rasped. He did not have to feign the desperate, lust-drunk sound of his voice, by God.
The unseen voice laughed again. “And the servants’ stairs are awfully busy for your lady wife, but I’ll not opine further. A happy marriage to you, indeed!”
The man’s voice had faded as he spoke, the last words called down to them from above.
Arthur stood stock-still, his mouth an inch from the top of Lydia’s breasts.
“Ah,” she whispered finally. “He’s—ah, he’s gone.”
“Aye,” Arthur said. Her hair was around his face, strands of it tickling his mouth—God, he loved it all, her hair, her sweet-warm scent, her soft curves and softer skin—
“You can let me go.”
“Aye.” He exerted his will. He made himself lift his head and loose his fingers from her thigh. Slowly, slowly she uncurled her leg from around his waist and dropped it to the ground.
He looked down at her. Her eyes were brilliant in the dimly lit stairwell, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted. She looked—she looked—
Oh God, she looked like temptation. She looked the way he had not let himself imagine she would look: soft and roused andhungry. The way he had wanted her, every night and every morning, from the moment he’d first held her in his arms.
“We should go,” she whispered.
Christ, she was right. He could not stand there in the stairwell, staring down at her and wondering if she felt anything like what he felt right now. Wondering if he’d imagined the gasp and whimper she’d made when his mouth had found her skin.
He wanted to ask. He wanted to know if she’d been pretending or if she’d been as lost and frantic as he.
