Calder Promise (Calder Saga 8)

“That will be my pleasure,” she informed him as her fingers found the top button of his shirt.

“Indeed it will.”

“Have you always been so confident of your prowess in bed?” she teased while her fingers continued to undo more buttons.

“I have never heard a single complaint.” He carried her through the sitting room into the suite’s sumptuous bedroom.

“Ah, but men never do—not if a woman is smart. The male ego tends to be much too fragile.”

Control: he could sense her subtle attempt to exert it again. “And I have never met a woman willing to concede that she might be a disappointment in the bedroom.”

He stopped near the bed. A single lamp burned on the bedside table, throwing a pool of light over the downturned bedcovers. He let her feet sink to the floor while keeping an arm around her. The blanket fell away, only a corner of it caught by his encircling arm.

“That’s hitting a bit below the belt, isn’t it?” she challenged lightly while her hands glided down the opened front of his shirt, halting when they reached the waistband of his slacks.

“But that’s often what happens when Mars and Venus collide.”

“But what a magnificent collision it can be,” she murmured, her dark eyes shining with promise.

“Indeed,” Sebastian agreed and stayed her attempt to unfasten his trousers, catching hold of her hands and pulling them away despite the hot and hungry part of him that was eager for her to continue. “But you are rushing things.” He set her away from him and made a quick, appreciative skim of her uptilted breasts, slender waist and curved hips. “We men tend to be dreadful creatures of habit.” He steered her toward the bed, maintaining discreet pressure until the back of her knees made contact with the mattress. Then he gave her a little push that forced her to sit down. All the while she watched with intense curiosity and interest. “Each of us has our own particular routine when it comes to disrobing. Some prefer to start at the bottom and remove their shoes first. Others begin with the tie.”

“You have a head start there.” She reclined onto the bed with languorous ease, bending one leg over the other to show him the full rounded curve of her cheek bottom.

“And I have been remiss in not thanking you for that before now.” Which was the truth. There was hardly a part of him that didn’t feel thick and rigidly swollen. Sebastian doubted that in his present condition his fingers could have managed the intricacies of unknotting a tie or unbuttoning his shirt. Clamping down on a very primitive urge to rip off his clothes and join her on that bed, he pulled the tie from around his neck, striving for a leisurely air that he was far from feeling. “Myself, I do a combination of top and bottom.” He draped the tie across the overstuffed armrest of a nearby chair and shrugged out of his suit jacket. “After the tie, comes the jacket.” After making a show of precisely folding it, he laid it on the chair. “Then the shirt.” He pulled the tails loose from his pants and proceeded to remove it as well, conscious all the while of her avid gaze.

Again, he was anything but casual about the way he arranged it on the chair. At that point he paused and faced her once more. Her eyes made a greedy, almost tactile inspection of the muscled width of his chest and shoulders, taking special note of the curly mat of auburn chest hair.

“This is where I reverse the procedure and begin from the bottom.” He sat down on the edge of the cushioned seat, careful not to muss the clothes already there, and began removing his shoes. After he had arranged them neatly side by side next to the chair, he peeled off his socks, shook them out, and laid them precisely one on top of the other.

“First the top, then the bottom. The middle must be next,” she declared, her dark eyes agleam with anticipation.

“An astute deduction.” He smiled lazily as he stood up, unzipped his trousers, and stepped out of them. Wearing only his briefs, he folded the dress pants together, leg crease against leg crease, draped them over their suit jacket, and gripped the elastic waist of his lone remaining garment. “Last, but far from least, I remove my briefs.” As he stripped them off, he turned his back to the bed and fixed them on the chair with the rest of the clothes.

“Thus the deed is done,” he announced, squaring around to face her once more, quick to notice the way her gaze instantly zeroed in on his erection.

After a moment’s pause, she lifted her glance to his face. “Are you quite sure you’re British and not Greek?”

“Quite sure.” He arched an eyebrow in silent question.

“You look like Adonis.” Her voice, lik

e the smoldering heat of her gaze, had the breathiness of arousal.

“That’s a relief.” A smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “For a moment I thought you were going to compare me with Michelangelo’s young David, able to show off only big hands.”

Her head fell back against the pillow as she broke into laughter. Sebastian took advantage of her distraction to climb into bed with her, stretching out on the inside, keeping her in the lamp’s pooling light. Quick to recover, she rolled toward him and arched her body closer, her hands reaching to spread her fingers over his chest and the mat of hair on his chest.

“I understand,” he began in a voice husky with suppressed desire, “that lovemaking techniques may vary from man to man as well. Some”—with his fingertips, he brushed wayward strands of hair off her cheek—“start at the top.”

Featherlight in his pressure, he nuzzled the corner of her eye and the prominent ridge of her cheekbone, followed the curve of her cheek to the corner of her lips, and rubbed his mouth over them, exploring their shape and softness. When he felt her straining toward him, inviting his full possession, he took a couple of tasting kisses, lipping their moist softness, then backtracked along the sculpted line of her jaw to her ear.

He took his time tracing the outline of its delicate shell with his tongue, nibbling at her lobe and nuzzling the sensitive hollow behind it. An involuntary quiver traveled through her when he located her particular erotic spot. He went back to ignite it again and again, taking satisfaction in the faint, animal sounds of pleasure and need that came from her throat.

All the while her hands moved over his back and shoulders, her fingers flexing and curling, while his own made long, slow strokes down her spine and up the side of her waist, allowing his thumb to only occasionally brush the outer curve of her breast. Yet, ever so gradually, he worked his way down, abandoning the erotic spot by her ear and transferring his attention to the arcing curve of her throat and the hollow at its base.

When his hand at last cupped the underside of her breast, her body arched in anticipation. Its firm roundness was nearly his undoing. Even as his thumb circled its peak, feeling it grow hard under his stimulation, he struggled to keep control. Drawn by its irresistible lure, his mouth began a slow foray to it. Upon arrival, his tongue encircled her button-hard nipple, and she breathed in sharply in reaction.

She dug her fingers into his hair, applying downward pressure. His mouth opened on her breast, drawing its nipple inside. Conscious as he was of her every response, he knew the exact moment when her inner thighs tightened and her hips writhed slightly in an attempt to ease the building pressure. Heat flamed through him. He knew he could easily take her over the brink right now. But it was too soon.