He brushed her cheek. She shifted her gaze to his face. The corner of his mouth tipped slightly, and she blushed as she realized that he had noticed her preoccupation with him.
"We are different, but you have nothing to fear."
She expelled the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Yes." Very different. Thinking of their previous encounter, she said, "This difference intrigues me."
His expression blossomed into a full-blown smile. "It intrigues me as well."
The smile faded from his face, and his eyes took on an intensity that sent her pulse jumping. He stepped forward and slowly, oh so slowly, removed the pins from her hair. She felt the weight of it as the heavy mass fell around her shoulders and settled against her back.
He touched it, his expression reverent. "Your hair is so beautiful. I have dreamed of seeing you with it hanging loose about your tempting, naked body."
Her breath hitched in her throat. "You dreamed about me?"
"A great deal."
"Oh." Fascinating. "What else have you dreamed?"
He smiled. "I'll show you."
She shivered, but not from cold. She wanted him to show her. She also wanted to touch him. She extended her hand and trailed her fingers down his chest.
He caught her hand.
"I want you. I need to touch you."
"Not yet." He pulled her toward him until their bodies were pressed together.
She slid her hands around to caress the muscled planes of his back. The feel of his naked skin, warm under her touch, sent a tremor through her.
He leaned down and nuzzled her neck through her hair. "You smell so good, Thea. It's as if you carry your island fragrance with you." She felt his hands at work on the tapes of her gown. They came loose and his fingers slipped inside to caress her through the soft material of her shift. "You are my very own tropical temptation."
She laughed at the notion that a twenty-three-year-old spinster could be something so exotic to a man like Pierson Drake.
He pulled back slightly to meet her gaze. "It's true. You've mesmerized me with your mystery since the moment we met."
"I am quite ordinary." Unlike him. "There is nothing mysterious about me."
He shook his head and his smile beguiled her. "On the contrary. Nothing about you is ordinary. You dress like a proper English lady, but leave off your stockings and corsets."
"It's too hot in the islands to wear stockings, and corsets are bad for a woman's respiration."
He stepped back and pulled her gown down by the sleeves until she stood in her shift before him. His already lambent gaze turned hot as the steam escaping through the fissures of a volcano.
"You speak with the diction and vocabulary of a lady, yet the things that come out of your mouth are far from the typical drivel that passes for a lady's conversation."
"I merely say what is in my mind."
"Precisely." His approval warmed her to her toes. "Since you have not yet been to England, you cannot know how different you are from the typical lady of the ton."
All the while they spoke, his hot gaze devoured her and she began to shake in reaction. His hand gently cupped her breast, and she felt as if an effervescent spring had come to life in her most feminine place. Her thighs pressed together of their own volition, and her nipples stung as they hardened against the thin fabric of her shift.
He tugged it down, and she felt her skin heating all over where his gaze touched it. She should have been embarrassed to have him see her like this, but she wasn't. The soft lawn fell in a pool at her feet and she could not move.
His gaze pinned her in place. "You are glorious."
She wanted to tell him that she found his taut hardness very appealing as well, but could not make the words come out as once again her throat refused to work. Everywhere his eyes touched, she felt as if his fingers followed, and yet he had moved to stand a little distance away from her.
"You are all that I could wish for, Thea."