Even if this truly was the last time they could be together thus, she wanted to know what it felt like to be loved by him completely.
“Ah, God, you tempt me, woman.”
“Take me,” she said. “I am yours.”
“Mine.” His voice was low and deep, an answering spark lighting in his hazel eyes as he said the word.
“Yours.”
If only for tonight.
Hands once more firmly on her waist, he guided her bottom to the edge of the bed, then urged her to sit. As he sank to his knees before her, his hands went beneath the hem of her shift, gliding up her calves. Fire followed in his wake, past her knees, where he lingered for a moment, before moving to her garters. These he untied and removed with unhurried motions before rolling down her stockings and removing them.
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, thinking how astounding it was to be here with him, so free. He was bare-chested as she had only seen him once before, and on that occasion, she had been too tangled up in knots over having poured too much of the laudanum in his brandy and fretting over what would happen when he woke in the morning. She took a moment to admire him, all muscle and sinew, the light dusting of golden hair on his chest, the broadness of his shoulders, the protrusion of his clavicle.
“Damnation, lovely, even your bleeding dew beaters are perfection.”
“Dew beaters?” She watched in rapt fascination as he laid her stockings and garters on a neat pile before returning his attention to her limbs.
“Your feet,” he explained. From beneath lowered lashes, he glanced up at her, flashing the devil’s own grin. And his dimples! Lord in heaven, those dimples had appeared once more. “Yours are as beautiful as the rest of you. I should’ve known.”
She felt strangely shy beneath his avid regard. Persephone had never taken particular note of her feet before. “You need not seduce me with flowery compliments now. I know I am not a beauty.”
“Ah, but there you are wrong, sweeting.” He caught her right foot in both his hands, gently kneading and massaging her sole. “There are few things lower than a liar, and I ain’t one of those. If Rafe Sutton calls you beautiful, you’re beautiful.”
Few things lower than a liar…
She did not want to hear those words. Nor did she wish to think about the lies she had been telling. She had deceived everyone she knew for the last seven years. Strangely, her duplicities had never bothered her before in the way they did now. Lying had been a necessity. It still was. However, for the first time, she truly cared about the family with which she had been placed.
Especially this man.
I love him.
Astonishing thought, creeping into her mind. She’d had it before, but it was as if this moment, this connection with him, granted credence to the emotion in a new way. Rendering it permanent. Real. Undeniable.
She wanted to throw herself at him, kiss him everywhere, show him with her actions how she felt within. And yet, all the rules her joyless governesses had foisted upon her kept her from doing so.
“I am not beautiful, though I thank you for saying so,” she said at last, tamping down the ferocious rush of feelings, so new, so queer, so necessary, rising up like the burst of a tiny seedling shooting through the soil in spring.
“You are.” He brought her foot to his mouth, bestowing a kiss upon her instep.
“My hair is a dreadful shade of orange,” she argued breathlessly as his lips found a sensitive patch of skin on her ankle she had never previously known existed.
Cousin Bartholomew had commented upon the unfortunate coloration
, as he had called it, which she had received from her mother, whom she had never met. A true Calcot would never be so distressingly bold, he had commented once. Perhaps your mother made a cuckold of your father. I suppose we shall never know for certain.
Ruthlessly, she tamped down all thoughts of him. Banished his words. In a perfect world, there would be no Cousin Bartholomew, no impediments, no worries or fears or lies. But the world was far from perfect, as was she.
“Your hair is the color of the sunset at its most glorious,” Rafe told her solemnly.
He kissed a trail over her shin bone.
She shivered, but not from cold. “I have spots on my nose.”
“Copper flecks that mesmerize me.” He kissed her inner knees, first one, and then the other.
Oh, his words. They sank directly into her heart, weighing it down like stones.