He nodded. “Where are the bleeding ties?”
Smiling, she withdrew her hand from his, her fingers working at fastenings which had been invisible to him moments before, so carefully had they been hidden in the construction of her gown. She plucked the hooks from their moorings to reveal the tapes within. These too, she untied with hasty, efficient motions, before pulling the gown over her head and draping it across the nearby chair where it rested with his abandoned garments.
As much as he wanted to remove the garments from her himself, he could admit there was something deliciously wicked about watching her strip, knowing it was for him. Knowing that soon, he would have her as he longed, naked and beneath him. The anticipation was damned heady.
“Why do you not make yourself comfortable on the bed?” she suggested.
He was experiencing a strange combination of sensations—lust, exhaustion, pain—and settling himself as she had proposed seemed sound advice. So he did, taking care to prop himself just so on the mattress to keep his stitches from pulling too tightly. The less distraction he had from her glorious show, the better.
Her petticoats came next, followed by her stays, until she stood before him in nothing more than the transparent linen of a chemise. The dark-pink dusk of her nipples beckoned. Her fingers caught in the fine, white fabric, lingering there instead of removing the final barrier.
“Your wound, Hart.” Her gaze slid from his, dropping to the ugly gash and Wolf’s even uglier attempts at embroidery.
“What of it?”
Her eyes went back to his, troubled, her full, sweet lips compressed with worry. “I do not want to hurt you.”
He suppressed a groan. “You won’t hurt me, sweetheart.”
She worried her lip. “Are you certain?”
He wanted those teeth on his lips. Biting into his shoulder as he slid inside her. His cock rose in prominent relief against his belly, and he did nothing to hide it. Instead, he stroked himself from root to tip. Her gaze dipped to watch, and the sheer act of her eyes on him as he stroked himself made him harder still.
“Love, I could be dead right now, and I would still try to bed you. Nothing is going to stop me, and most definitely not a little flesh wound,” he reassured her.
Still, she hesitated. “You are sure?”
Christ, she was trying to kill him. That was the only thing he was sure of.
“Take off your chemise,” he commanded gruffly, the only response he was capable of giving.
Because floating hell, if she did not take that blasted bit of linen off her glorious body and join him on the bed in the next breath, he was going to take her in his arms and haul her there. The suspense was more than he could bear. He had to stop stroking himself, lest he spend in his hand like a green virgin.
She did as he asked, pulling the final barrier over her head in a whisper of sound. He swallowed against a rising tide of pure, raw, ravaging need as he drank in the sight of her. Soft skin glowing in the light of the brace of candles, her breasts full and high and round. The nipples he already knew to be so deliciously sensitive were pebbled and hard, awaiting his mouth. Then there were the decadent curves of her waist, the flare of her hips. And the paradise at the apex of her thighs.
His mouth watered, the remembrance of her honeyed taste enough to make his heart pump hard against his ribs. He reached for her instinctively, needing to run his hands along the perfection of her softly yielding body. Needing to absorb her heat and her smoothness.
But the swift movement was a mistake, for it gave his stitches an angry tug. The sharp burst of pain in his side stole his breath for a different reason, making him go still, a reminder that his wound was not as painless or unimportant an impediment as he had claimed since bathing had agitated it. He did his best to tamp down his reaction, not wanting Lady Emma to see and change her mind. Because if she changed her mind on him now, he would go mad with wanting her.
She hovered near the bed. “Your wound is paining you.”
She was so good, so caring. He was a monster for taking what he wanted from her. He knew it, and he was going to do so anyway. Lady Emma Morgan was going to be his at last, if only for tonight.
“Come to me, Emma,” he said, as much plea as command.
She moved slowly, joining him on the bed in a graceful, sinuous slide, beside him but not yet touching him. He had never bedded a woman when he had a wound in his side before, it was true. But he was going to do everything in his power to make it happen. He would simply have to alter the normal course of things.
He took her hand, though in truth he wanted to pull her into his lap and ravish her mouth with kisses. But this would have to be done properly. He brought her hand to his lips instead, turning it upside down in the process before pressing his mouth to her palm. The heat of her seared him, her swift inhalation pleasing.
“I do not wish to hurt you,” she murmured.
“You can’t.” That was a lie, but one that didn’t matter. If she believed he was in pain, she would not tup him.
And if she did not tup him, he would die.
That was another certainty ringing clear and true in his gin-and-lust-addled mind.
“But Hart, you—”