Releasing the taut mounds, he set his fingers to the buttons of her bodice. Set his lips cruising the long line of her throat, set his teeth to score lightly along the same path.
While he laid her breasts bare.
Opened her bodice, pressed the halves wide, loosened her chemise and lowered it. Exposing the flushed ivory skin to the cool night air.
Smiling at the sight, at her nipples ruched tight, he raised his hands and once again closed them on her, this time skin-to-skin.
When she shuddered, dropping her hands to his thighs clutched, he lowered his head and murmured in her ear, “You’re going to stand there and let me love you—let me do whatever I wish to you. Let me have my way with you.”
Rubbish, Letitia’s rational self scoffed.
Why not? her curiosity prompted.
With the steady beat of passion thrumming in her veins, with the fog of desire clouding her brain, she could find no good answer to the question.
Could summon no resistance when he took her silence as agreement, and eased her gown and chemise down, stopped to unlace her petticoats, then pushed gown, petticoats, and chemise over her hips so they fell with a soft swoosh to the floor.
His hands returned to her skin, but his touch was different, lighter, frankly assessing, exploratory. As if he’d never seen her naked, as if she were a prize, a present he’d unwrapped for the first time.
She dragged in a breath past the constriction in her chest, conscious of her breasts rising, her midriff tightening, aware that he saw and watched. Naked but, once again, for her black lace garters and fine black silk stockings, she could all but feel the silvery touch of the moonlight as it bathed her long limbs, caressed the curves and valleys of her body, and illuminated a self she’d all but forgotten existed.
He moved behind her, a large, dark, powerful figure still fully clothed. She felt the cloth of his coat brush the long planes of her back. His hands caught hers, fingers briefly tangling with hers, then he glided his palms slowly up her arms, closed them for an instant over her shoulders, then slowly slid them, palms to her skin, down.
Over her breasts, hot and aching for more than a simple caress, over her midriff, tight with desire, over her waist and her taut belly, over the curve of her hips and down, around; gripping her bottom, he kneaded.
As he bent his head and set his lips over the pulse point at the base of her throat.
She gasped at the heat of that simple contact. Shivered and closed her eyes—only to have her other senses sharpen. To have her skin grow even more sensitive to his touch.
From behind, one trouser-clad knee pressed between hers, forcing her thighs apart. She sucked in a breath as, releasing her bottom, his hands cruised her hips. One splayed across her stomach and held her captive, pressed her back so she was straddling that hard thigh, the cloth of his trousers abrading the delicate skin of her thighs’ inner faces—an unsubtle reminder that he was fully clothed while she was all but naked, impressing a sense of vulnerability heavily on her senses.
His other hand drifted down over her thighs; his fingers briefly flirted with the tiny ribbons securing her garters, then left them for the bare skin above. With cool deliberation, with his fingertips he traced up the inner face of her thigh. Higher, higher…then he reached across and traced up the other side.
As if assessing the fineness of her skin, as if fascinated by it.
She tensed, and waited, breathing all but suspended….
Eventually, with a languid authority that in itself was arousing, he let his fingers rise to the next point on his trail of conquest, lightly stroking, then playing with the crinkly dark hair shielding her mons.
He was patently in no hurry; her whole body was taut—she was ready to scream—before he consented to part her curls and reach farther.
To trace, stroke, and caress the already swollen flesh, to slide his fingers through the slickness his earlier caresses had drawn forth.
He chuckled at how wet she was, a dark rumble of male appreciation deep in his chest.
Her hands rose, locked about his hand where it splayed over her belly. He continued to play, as if learning her anew. She was quivering when, after an excruciatingly slow exploration of her tender flesh, he finally pressed one long finger into her sheath.
One slow, smooth, complete penetration.
The sensation brought her onto her toes.
Head back against his shoulder, eyes tightly closed, she gasped.
He held her there, naked before him, her silk stockings sliding against his trousers, her bottom held against his thighs, his erection a heavy rod against her lower back—and made her writhe.
Although her eyes were closed, her mind still saw—saw herself in his arms, held trapped against him, her flushed skin pearlescent in the steady moonlight, her hair tumbling from its pins, long tresses curling over her shoulders as she—her body—responded, helplessly surrendered to the simple blatant act of possession expertly executed.
She no longer had the will to resist. She was captured, not by him but by her fascination with this different side of him, this other lover who was him, yet not the him she’d once known.