But he, too, refused to cede.
He tugged; she tugged. Several seconds of crazed tussling ensued, driven not so much by stubbornness as by a wish to see who would give in first—
They broke from the kiss, gasping, half laughing.
Distracted by the laughter—bubbling up through her, gleaming in his eyes—she unintentionally eased her grip.
In two swift moves, he pushed her hands and dragged the sleeves of her gown down, trapping her arms at her sides, the bodice now at her waist, leaving her breasts screened only by the translucent silk of her very fine chemise.
She hauled in a breath intending to narrow her eyes at him, but then she saw his eyes—saw the flare of hunger as his gaze fastened on her breasts. Her breath hitched; her mouth turned dry, but her tongue managed the complaint, “Not fair.”
His gaze lifted, slowly, to hers. “Fair?”
His hands had closed above her elbows, preventing her from sliding her arms free. She wriggled against his hold, uncaring that the movement shifted the screening silk over her breasts—over her suddenly painfully tight nipples. “Yes—fair. Turn and turn about. Now my gown is half off”—she gestured with her chin—“you have to take off your waistcoat.”
Ryder stared, but, really, he should have expected it. “Just who do you think is in charge here? No, wait—let me phrase that more pertinently. Which of us has the experience to take the lead in this?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You. But that doesn’t mean—”
He picked her up, tossed her on her back on the bed, and followed her down, pinning her beneath him.
Far from being shocked into stillness, let alone quiescence, she wriggled and shifted beneath him—effectively, if momentarily, distracting him—and succeeded in freeing her arms from her sleeves.
Her hands rose, reaching for his waistcoat.
With a growl, he caught them, one in each of his, and pressed them back to the coverlet on either side of her head. Anchored them there.
The move pressed their bodies even more firmly together.
He met her exasperated gaze with more than a degree of exasperation of his own. “Stop rushing.”
She searched his face. “Why?”
A good question, and he knew there was an answer, just not one he was up to explaining at that juncture. Not when his mind, the better part of his awareness, and every last one of his slavering senses had locked—intently—on her. On her lithe body trapped beneath his, on the utterly absorbing sight of her breasts, full and taut, rising and falling so enticingly beneath the nearly sheer screen of her chemise.
He didn’t realize his gaze had fallen and fastened on those alluring mounds, on the tightly furled nipples all but begging to be tasted, until, using his hold on her hands as leverage, she arched, then even more provocatively twisted and writhed beneath him.
“Stop thinking—just . . . teach me. Now.”
The demand she infused into the last word had him instinctively lowering his head . . . he jerked to a halt. No. Slow. It had to be slow.
Raising his eyes to hers, he saw she’d realized that she’d almost succeeded. Letting go of her hands, he abruptly pushed up, off—her and the bed.
“No!” She reached for him. “Come back.”
He gave her her own medicine and narrowed his eyes at her. “Will you behave and follow my directions?”
That earned him a narrow-eyed bright blue glare.
When she continued to consider him, mulishness and mayhem in her expression, he unequivocally stated, “My way.”
He couldn’t get his tongue to add the words “or else”—such a huge lie. Regardless of what route they took, there was no chance on earth that she would leave this room a virgin, but he wasn’t about to call attention to that fact and give her even more ammunition in this already fraught battle of wills.
She gave vent to a sound of frustration and slumped back on the bed. “Oh, very well. Your way, then.”
A second later, she shifted her head and looked at him. “So.” She arched her brows. “What’s next?”
“Next,” he said, giving her the incentive of shrugging off the waistcoat she’d been so intent on ridding him of, “you can answer me this: Why now? Tonight.”