Yet another spur he did not need.
She’d issued an open invitation, hadn’t specified. He wondered if she could even conceive of the primitive urge riding him, evoked by her game.
He wanted to take her from behind, to position her on her knees before him, her skirts flipped up over her shoulders, a surrended captive, to drive into her and feel her open for him, yield to him.
His.
He licked his lips. Easing his hands from her hips, he reached up and around, and set his fingers to the buttons closing her gown.
Held her gaze as he undid them.
Told himself he’d have her as he wished—one day.
But not yet. Later, if he played tonight’s hand wisely, kept his head through the following days—even weeks—then one day he’d be able to let fall the reins and show her precisely what she was to him.
Precisely how she made him feel.
Shifting within her as little as possible, he drew her gown off, over her head. She helped, lifting her arms, wriggling free of the folds, aiding him in removing her chemise as well.
Leaving her naked but for her stockings.
He rolled her beneath him.
Nearly lost his mind when she pressed his shoulder back. “Wait.”
His control shivered, fractured, started to fall away . . .
She shifted beneath him. He sucked in a breath, opened his lips to tell her he couldn’t wait—
Instead, blinked, watched, amazed as, lifting one of her long legs high, she rolled her stocking down—or rather up and off. She caught his gaze as she flung it away. “I like to feel my skin against yours.”
He wasn’t about to argue; he allowed her to shift enough to perform the same feat with her other leg, noting with increasing fascination the ease with which she accomplished the deed.
New vistas blossomed in his mind.
But then she flung the second stocking away, twined both arms about his neck and drew his head down.
“There. Now you may—”
He stopped her words with a searing kiss.
Took her breath from her, ravaged her mouth, and sent her senses spinning—faster, harder, faster yet—until she arched beneath him, inchoately pleading . . . until he anchored her hips and drove into her.
Again, and again, and again.
He felt the reins slide and couldn’t grab them back, could only surrender to the storm. To the blinding urgency that drove his body to plunder hers.
Far from complaining, she arched beneath him, fingernails raking his back. Flagrantly demanding, commanding, wanting . . . as desperate as he in needing more.
He wedged her thighs wider; she went one step further, lifting her long legs, wrapping them about his hips, opening herself to him, giving him all he wished.
Heart pounding, he took, took her, gave himself.
Head back, braced above her, he let go, closed his eyes—and let the swirling power have him. Infuse him, drive him.
Felt it close in, sweep him up.
Shatter him.