tell me this nonsense about having no prospects. You could have all the prospects in the world, if you wished them. And something tells me you will wish them. Someday. In your heart, you must want to have a family. Children to love, to make feel at home. That talent shouldn’t go unused.” He touched her cheek. “Don’t foreclose the possibility. You deserve good things. Promises. Tenderness. Love. Everything you’ve ever dreamed.”
“Lately, all my dreams are of you.” She kissed her way down his neck, nuzzling against his skin.
Desire and conscience warred within him, and there was no doubt which side was losing the battle. He slid his hand around her rib cage, feeling for the closures of her frock. “There could be consequences,” he murmured against her ear. “I’d be a blackguard to ignore that.”
“I’m fully aware of the risks to my reputation. As well as the risks to my body and my heart.”
Good God, her heart?
Her heart.
“I want you, Gabriel.”
Such a simple phrase, and yet it summed up the yearning of a lifetime. All these years of anger and striving, and he’d longed for nothing more than this: to be wanted.
Desire kindled in his chest with a ferocity that stunned him. Scared him.
As he wrestled to conquer it, he caught a flicker of doubt in her eyes. It was the final blow. Honor waved a white flag of surrender. He would never let her feel a moment’s doubt. Not if he could help it.
“That is, of course …” She bit her lip. “If you want me.”
Penny waited in quiet agony for his response.
“If I want you,” he echoed. “If.”
“It’s your choice as much as it is mine. If you need time to consider, I—”
“If I need time to consider?”
In the flash of a moment, he had her on her back. Penny lay beneath him, breathless.
His dark eyes held hers. “The only thing I’m considering is precisely how to remove the word ‘if’ from your vocabulary.”
“Oh.”
“First, I’m going to strip you naked. I’m going to stroke every part of you with my hands. Then I’m going to paint your body with my tongue. By the time I’m done with you, you will never—ever—ask if I want you again.”
“Very well. If you insist.”
He growled through a begrudging smile. “You little minx.”
He kissed her more deeply than he ever had before, sucking her tongue and gently biting each of her lips in turn. His raw desire made it clear that in all their previous interactions, he’d been holding back. Now she would experience the full, primal force of his passion.
She couldn’t wait.
He rolled her onto her side and started on the buttons of her frock. Her impatience was extreme. She couldn’t remember exactly how many buttons there were, but judging by how long this was taking, she guessed the number to be seventy-eight, at minimum. His fingers plucked at the laces of her stays, pulling them through the grommets one by one until the corset fell away from her body.
“For heaven’s sake. Hurry.”
He took pity on her, grasping her chemise and splitting it down the middle. She saw his own shirt land in a heap at her side.
He rolled her over again and helped her work the stifling black shroud down her torso and over her hips, wadding it up and tossing it aside.
She lay naked to his view, save for her stockings.
Her black silk stockings.
He stared at them. “My God. Where did you …”
“Emma dyed them for the occasion. It wouldn’t do to be a black cat with white stockings, would it?” She reached to untie her garter.
“Don’t you dare.” He ran his eyes over her body. “I have never seen anything so enticing in my life.”
He ran his hand up her calf, over her knee, and up the sensitive slope of her thigh, until he cupped her mound in his palm. She gasped at the shock of pleasure. His fingers caressed her gently, stroking up and down the seam of her sex, teasing her with light passes until she was breathless.
She reached between their bodies, feeling for his trousers buttons and tugging at them with eager, inexpert fingers. At last, his placket fell open, and his erection sprang into her hand. Hot, hard, and heavy. She explored him the same way he touched her—skating her fingertips up and down his length, marveling at the silky softness of his skin and tracing the intriguing, yet entirely unfamiliar contours.
“Let me see you,” she whispered.
He rose up on his knees, and his male organ jutted toward her.
The dark hair on his chest arrowed straight toward it, like a signpost indicating a point of natural interest: this way to the manhood.
As if it could be missed.
Rude, large, framed by dark hair, and impressively male. No surprises, really. It simply looked like a part of him. An intimidatingly large part of him, considering what was about to occur and where she hoped he would put it. But it wasn’t foreign or frightening. As was the case with all the other parts of his body, she found it bold, strong, unabashed in its nature, and arousing in the extreme. One more facet of a man she was coming to know and hold dear.
Perhaps even coming to love.
She curled her hand around his shaft, stroking up and down his length—the way she’d seen him do in the inn. He winced, but in what seemed to be a good way. He permitted her only a few easy strokes before pulling her hand away.
“Any more of that, and this will be over before it’s even begun.”
“We can’t have that.”
He shucked his trousers, tossed them aside, and returned to her, covering her nakedness with his body and settling his hips between her thighs. She arched against him, silently pleading. Once again, he made her wait.
He kissed her neck, suckled her breasts.
He reached between her thighs. “Let me kiss you here.”
“Why?”
“Mainly because I suspect you’ll enjoy it, and I want to give you pleasure. If you climax now, the pain will be less later. But also because I truly, deeply, very very much want to taste you.”
She smiled. “Then by all means.”
He
