Yet he felt tenderness in the way her fingers touched his skin, the warmth of her hand, even the vulnerable light in her eyes.
“Make love to me, Ashcroft.” He watched her swallow, the movement of her slender throat ineffably affecting. “I…I want you.”
When he placed a kiss on her damp curls, the musky female scent drove him mad with desire. “I want you too.”
She must have read his surrender because the nervousness leached from her expression, and her luscious mouth crooked in a faint smile. “Then for heaven’s sake, Ashcroft, take me.”
Diana watched Ashcroft’s striking features change, harden as he rose over her. The angular jaw under her hand became a
damantine.
Relief flooded her that he wasn’t going to put his mouth between her legs. She remembered her astonishment when she’d seen that particular act depicted in Burnley’s books. It seemed disgusting, animal, something no civilized man would do to a woman. Something no civilized woman would want a man to do.
Even as she told herself nothing would make her submit to a man kissing her sex, wanton curiosity jabbed her. Ashcroft hadn’t been repulsed by his suggestion. He’d seemed excited and eager. And disappointed when she refused.
Her fingers drifted across his face in an almost absent exploration, feeling the faint roughness of stubble. She came to rest on his mouth, and his lips parted as his breath caught. There was a strange, poignant intimacy in feeling the warm air brush her fingers. His lips were firm, satiny, sleek with her kisses. She brushed her fingers side to side, tracing the defined line of his upper lip with its sharp dip in the center, the cushiony fullness of his lower lip.
“You’re a strange libertine.”
“You know many libertines, madam?”
His lips moved beneath her fingers. The sensation spiraled heat through her. “Perhaps one or two.”
“Hardly enough to reach a conclusion.”
“Ouch!”
She didn’t believe it. He’d bitten her. A sharp nip on her finger. Glaring at him, she snatched her hand away.
He laughed and slid up her body in a smooth movement that was a caress in itself. Very deliberately he rubbed his chest against her breasts, and she smothered a moan at the friction of crisp hair on her nipples.
“I’ll bite you again before I’m done.” His voice was rich with humor, the sound as dark and beautiful as a low note on a cello.
He settled between her thighs, so close to where she wanted him. She frowned in puzzlement. “You’re still wearing trousers.”
“They’re part of my strategy to drive you wild with passion without losing control myself.”
“I’m wild with passion,” she said dryly, although it was true. If he didn’t take her soon, she’d leap on him like a bacchante at an orgy. She’d surrendered any pretense to caution long ago. “If that’s their only purpose, you can safely remove them.”
He arched an eyebrow with his characteristic wry amusement. “Safely? What a flat description.”
“Do I insult your masculine pride?”
With luxurious thoroughness, he rubbed himself between her legs. She shuddered with reaction. “I’m still very proud indeed.”
“Easy to boast. I’d like to see for sure,” she said unsteadily. Odd how bantering with Ashcroft built arousal inch by inch until it threatened to immolate her.
“I live to serve,” the man who would prove her ruin said, and placed a quick, hard kiss on her lips. She stretched to continue the contact, but he rolled away. In a surge of movement, he stood.
Diana lay where he’d left her and watched as with a couple of adept movements, he shucked his shoes and trousers. She couldn’t look away if the house were on fire. Every drop of moisture in her mouth evaporated, and demand throbbed between her thighs. Her heart danced a crazy tarantella.
Behind him, late-afternoon sun flooded through the sash windows. The light illuminated a man more like Apollo than a mortal. Her avid gaze swept down to where his rod thrust forward. A preternatural shiver ripped through her, and she edged up against the pillows.
He was huge. Large and thick beyond anything she’d imagined. No wonder she’d felt split in two when he took her. Without volition, her hands closed in the sheets as if they ached to explore that hard masculine flesh. William had been a boy, full of youth’s promise. Ashcroft was unquestionably a mature man.
She forced words past a throat tight with nerves and excitement. “Come to me.”
Chapter Nine