She faced forward, opened the door to her room, towed him through, and paused. She waited only until, his gaze locked on her, he reached behind him and pushed the door closed before flinging herself at him, into his arms.
He caught her, and as she’d hoped, he stepped back to catch his balance, and his shoulders hit the panel. Immediately, she pressed her body to his, reached up and, with both hands, framed his face, then smiling entirely unrestrainedly, in a sultry tone, purred, “Now, my lord, let me show you just how much I gloried in the music.”
She set her lips to his, noting that his lips were, initially, as curved as hers had been, but as she pressed a flagrantly enticing kiss upon him, his lips firmed as—as always happened—her desire ignited his. She felt the flame take hold in the irrefutable change in his body and the corresponding reaction of hers.
In open challenge, she parted her lips in blatant invitation, an invitation he seized. He took over the kiss, and his tongue surged into her mouth—licking, stroking—and claimed.
Pleasure leapt, spiked, then swelled between them, a heady, intoxicating, familiar brew. Desire, passion, and unshielded need were always there, essential elements of their intercourse—potent, ravenous, and compelling.
With their mouths fused, they lavished and ravished in an escalating dance of give and take; in her head, she could almost hear the welling beat of their shared dance, could almost sense the swirling, evocative strains as the moment fully ensnared them both.
She didn’t know how he’d managed to secure the box, and she didn’t truly care. At that moment, all she cared about was making clear to him the depth of her appreciation for the wonders of the evening thus far.
By creating wonders of a different kind.
As a reward, as encouragement.
She’d done this before—taken the initiative in an encounter—for much the same reason. And as before, he not only allowed it, but with his hands on her body, with his lips on hers, actively encouraged her to do her worst.
Or her best, as the case might be.
Through the scorching, drugging kiss, she made her intentions clear, then doing her level best to ignore the flaring sensations his hard, possessive hands, roving her curves, sent surging through her, drew her hands from his face and turned her attention to unbuttoning his evening coat.
That accomplished, she deftly undid the large buttons of his waistcoat, then fell on his knotted silk cravat.
By the time the silk hung free, he’d managed to wrest control of the kiss from her and, with knowing hands, set fires burning beneath her skin, and the entrancing, uplifting melody playing in her head threatened to sweep her away.
But she wasn’t willing to let the reins go; pressing and stroking her silk-clad curves against the muscled planes of his body, she snared his attention, momentarily captured it, while as rapidly as she could, she slipped free the buttons on the placket of his shirt.
She tugged the hem of the shirt from his waistband, found and undid the last button, then in triumph, drew back from the fiery kiss, grasped the gaping sides of the shirt, and wrenched them wide.
Her gaze fell on his magnificent chest, and her breathing suspended, then she forced in a breath, raised her gaze to his, sent her tongue skating over her lips, and placed both hands, palms flat, on his heated skin.
It was his turn to stop breathing—just for an instant—then his eyes flared dark, and he reached for her as she swept her hands wide and ducked her head and pressed her lips to the center of his chest.
His arms still closed about her, but gently—as if he wanted to seize but didn’t want to distract her. As she continued, with touch and the trail of her lips and subtle licks and flicks of her tongue, to pay homage to what was, in truth, a most devotion-worthy expanse, he stilled, then gradually leaned against the door, tipped his head back, and—when she suckled one flat nipple—clenched his jaw in a vain attempt to stifle a groan.
She took the sound as encouragement and increased the intensity—the intimacy—of her sensual ministrations.
She’d always known that beneath his fashionable and quietly elegant clothes, he was the Adonis of most women’s dreams. The truth had rung clearly in the effortless yet harnessed strength he commanded, in the ineffable grace with which he moved.
In all she’d uncovered and explored on their wedding night.
Finally, she raised her head, stretched up against him, and when he tipped his head down to look at her, pressed her lips to his again, while with her hands, she wrestled coat, waistcoat, and cravat from him. Successively letting each piece drop to the floor, she pushed the shirt off his shoulders; while continuing to fully participate in the kiss, he reached around her to free his hands from the shirt’s cuffs, then allowed her to strip the garment away.
Blindly, she flung it aside, reached for the waistband of his trousers, and flicked the buttons undone.
After five years, she was achingly familiar with every contour of his body, but there was one appendage that continued to fascinate; she reached within his loosened trousers, slid her fingers through the slit in his underdrawers, and the hot, rigid rod all but leapt to her hand.
She closed her fingers lovingly, and he drew back from the kiss on a muted groan. She heard a softthunkas the back of his head met the door, and she would have smiled, but her attention had fallen to the thick, corded, velvet-soft member in her hand. Enthralled as ever by his reactions, she stroked, then ran her thumb over the flaring bulbous head, encased in what was, quite definitely, the softest skin she’d ever felt, even softer and finer than a baby’s.
Her hand was too small to fully encircle him, but she knew how to employ her nails to best effect. When he groaned again, she decided not to linger overlong, or she might push him into prematurely taking charge.
She suspected that, like most gentlemen of his kind, he assumed that, when comparing notes with other married ladies, she shied from sharing the details of what transpired in their marriage bed. While such discussions might be limited to a small and trusted circle, like most of the assumptions men made about their wives, that one, too, was untrue; she’d learned quite a lot—sought and received clarification and ideas—from her female cousins and her male cousins’ wives.
Of course, when she’d experimented and, afterward, Devlin had asked where she’d learned of the variation, she’d told him she’d come across it in some book.
What she had in mind for her performance tonight was an act she’d employed several times before, always with excellent results. She’d experimented and learned and was entirely confident in her ability to pleasure him to the very edge of surrender—which was as far as he ever allowed her to push him, but she was perfectly happy with that outcome, and the resulting engagement was inevitably stunningly satisfying for them both.
