“I plan to, as soon as I get you in my bedchamber.” He walked blindly toward the door connected to his private rooms. “It’s next to this one. Once I have you there,” he said against her ear, while he turned the doorknob and strode in, “I plan to take every inch of clothes off your delectable body and have my way with you.”
He put her down in the middle of the room and stepped back to admire her.
“Here we are, Luz Alana.” He sounded winded. He felt like he was floating.
“Here we are,” she repeated, now a little shyer than she’d been in the other room, but she didn’t look away. Once this woman decided she’d do something, she faced it head-on.
“I want this,” she said simply but very firmly. She started unbuttoning the rest of her chemise, but he shook his head and moved toward her.
“I’ll undress you.”
Luz felt like she was in a dream. A fevered, hot, dizzying dream. She knew this was not smart. That it was likely a huge mistake to do this now, but she was crawling out of her skin with need. The way he touched her. He made her feel sated and ravenous all at once.
She wanted more of him, always. Constantly more. Maybe if they did this, if she had him, she’d feel more under control.
Evan made quick work of her clothes with the practiced expertise of a man who’d disrobed his fair share of women. He was quiet as he unbuttoned first her skirts, then smoothly pulled back her bodice. He kissed the back of her neck as he reached around and undid the last hooks of her corset. Luz couldn’t hold in the sigh of relief that escaped her when she was finally free from the blasted thing.
“Better?” he asked so quietly she almost missed the question. It was hard to focus with his hands on her like that.
“I hate those things.”
He shook his head, causing his beard to graze her cheek. It was a toe-curling, electric sensation with her skin oversensitized like this. She shivered at the thought of that scruff on her belly, between her thighs.
“Poor darlings,” he crooned as he palmed her breasts and kneaded them gently. “I’ll have to tend to them later.” Every word out of the man’s mouth seemed to be directly connected to whatever it was that held one’s joints together.
He walked around her until he was facing her, impossibly large. It was a massive room, with high ceilings and furniture scaled to accommodate a man of Evan’s size, but he still seemed to occupy the entire space. He was fully dressed still, slightly disheveled, but composed as he gracefully went down to his knees in front of her. Luz could not say that she’d ever given much thought to the circumstances of her first time with a man.
As a girl, she’d dreamed of having a soul mate who loved her like her parents did each other. But then her mother had died and she’d witnessed the desolate, unending despair of her father’s grief, and that illusion had lost a little bit of its luster. Then she’d lost him too, and the dreams she’d had for herself had been set aside. Only her responsibilities and her obligations propelled her forward.
Clarita’s future, Caña Brava, the cordials, Scotland—all of it was hers, yes, but also her family’s. Even this marriage was for them. The arrangement that would permit her to fulfill the dream that her mother and grandfather had started. But this man on his knees for her. His clever hands, his hot, hungry mouth giving her pleasure she scarcely knew was possible... This was just hers.
“Put your hands on my shoulders, m’eudail,” he asked as he unlaced her kid boots.
“Step out.” She did so, smiling at how thick his brogue was now, making theoutsound likeoot. Once the shoes and stockings were off, he gripped her ankles and ran his palms up her calves, behind her knees, until he reached the flask she always had fastened to her thigh and grinned up at her.
“No pistol but rum, then?” he asked, eyes bright.
“I fully anticipated you would drive me to drink, Evan,” she griped, and he barked out a delighted laugh as he tossed the flask on the bed.
“Luz Alana.” Every time he said her name like that, as if it was an undeniable truth, something fizzed under her skin. He sat back on his heels for a moment, just looking, the humor from a second ago replaced by something she could only call predatory heat.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he said as he pressed his nose to the undergarment covering her mound of curls. “May I?”
She could only nod. With excruciating gentleness he slid the linen garment down and off and pushed her chemise up to her waist. His face was a study in concentration as he took her in. He licked his lips like a boy in front of a table laden with his favorite sweets.
“Take this off, sweetheart,” he said, letting go of the linen bunched around her waist. She pulled the last of her clothes over her head without any inhibition now. Desperate to know what it was that she and Evan would do in this room. She had heard about the mechanics of the act from Aurora, had already felt so many pleasurable things at his hands, but her blood rose to a boil for what was coming.
Evan ran his thumb over the seam where her folds met, and without hesitation licked in. His tongue parted her, and the shock of that wet, heated, velvet touch on her most intimate place made her cry out.
“Mm,” he moaned as he lapped at her, using his thumbs to hold her open. “Sweet as honey. Put your leg over my shoulder, love,” he murmured against her skin before swiping along the center of her. With a firm grip he guided her until she was half straddling his face. “That’s it.” A rumbling noise escaped him. “Sometime very soon, I’d like to spend a day just doing this.” With his thumb he lifted the hood that concealed her clitoris, then swirled his tongue on that vulnerable skin, then sucked.
“There she is,” he cooed as if he’d found a perfect pearl in an oyster. He swiped the flat of his tongue on it, and her vision blurred, her legs felt unsteady as he ate at her. There was no other word for the way he suckled and licked. Nosing her mound of curls like he wanted to inhale her. He would pull back, as if to assess any place he’d missed. Spreading her for his view, and then he’d go back in for more. Evan gorged himself on Luz until she was keening, rocking into that secret, dark caress, mindless as she chased the climax he was expertly bringing her to.
“I’m—” She gasped as a wave of blinding pleasure crashed into her. Her mind emptied of everything that wasn’t that hot mouth and those clever hands on her making her shatter. A weak whisper escaped her when she was too sensitive, and Evan pulled off slowly. He didn’t stop touching her. He traced open-mouthed kisses to her skin that felt like flames licking at her belly, her navel, her breasts, until his mouth was on hers again. She could taste herself on him, and she was lost, lost to this moment.
“Can I have you?” he asked, already moving them to the bed.
She almost made a joke about needing to be returned to her shelf when he was done, then thought better of it. She’d be forced to deal with reality eventually; no need to bring it into the bed with them.
