are. Julia closed her eyes and turned her head away from him as she prayed she hadn’t said the words out loud. “I’m tired. Please.”
Chance reached out to lightly touch the side of her throat. “There’s still those buttons to contend with,” he said quietly.
“I can manage them, thank you.” She didn’t look at him but kept her head turned, refusing to believe that she wanted him to keep touching her, even as his fingers drifted to her cheek and then lightly to her chin.
“Look at me, Julia,” he said, the slight pressure of his fingers beneath her chin. “Look at me. What do you see in my eyes?”
“I…I don’t know,” she said, her own eyes searching his face, drinking in the beauty of him, the restrained but probably never to be conquered strength of him. “I think you frighten me.”
“Oh, no, not that,” Chance said, dipping his head to nuzzle at the silky skin below her ear. She tasted as good as he remembered. He whispered into her ear, “Don’t be frightened.”
Julia took an involuntary breath as tiny shivers of awareness spread like silken cobwebs, tracing over her shoulders, down her arms. She could feel her nipples pressing against her undershift.
He slid his arms around her, pulling her closer, and she wondered if he’d felt as alone as she had and if he, too, felt less alone now.
She was weakening. Chance knew it. Knew it and cursed himself. Cursed Ainsley and Jacko and Courtland. All of them.
Then he cursed himself again, because he wasn’t here with this woman on orders from anyone. He was here because here was where he wanted to be. Holding her. Tasting her. Introducing her to what it felt like to be a man and a woman together.
“Never be frightened of me,” he said as he raised his head slightly, then brought his mouth down on hers. Slanted his lips against hers until she opened to him, then plunged inside.
Her arms came up of their own volition, it seemed, for Julia was now holding him, clinging to him, the small fires he had lit this morning now bursting into flame with a vengeance.
She didn’t know what she felt or even why she felt it. But she wanted to learn, to feel more, because she was sure there would be more. “Please,” she murmured against his mouth, then gasped as she felt his hand cup her breast.
Holding the kiss, with his right hand Chance released the row of buttons that ended just below her waist, then pushed the material from her shoulders, along with the straps of her simple cotton shift.
Julia felt the night air on her bare skin, cool and surprising, before Chance covered her breasts with his hands, lightly rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her.
She should stop him. This was madness. She didn’t even know this man. She’d never known a man, not in her nearly one and twenty years, had resigned herself to spinsterhood. Which is no excuse.
“Go away,” she breathed without realizing she’d spoken aloud as Chance kissed her cheek, her chin, began nibbling maddeningly at the tingling skin of her throat.
His hands stilled on her breasts. He would never force a woman. He’d seen enough to have given him a horror of that sort of display of physical dominance. “You want me to leave?” he asked, then gave in to the desire to lick at her magnificently straight collarbone with the tip of his tongue.
Julia tipped back her head, breathing hard as she looked up at the dark ceiling, mentally waving goodbye to her common sense and a lifetime spent believing she had a clear understanding of right and wrong. “No,” she then said honestly. “I…I was talking to my conscience.”
“God, you’re a fascinating woman, Julia Carruthers,” Chance told her, then scooped her up, carried her over to the bed, gently laid her against the cool, fragrant sheets.
He joined her on the bed, taking up where he’d left off, kissing her mouth, touching her breasts.
She knew she was naked to the waist, exposed to his eyes, but she didn’t care. Still, what was fine for the goose…
He was dressed casually again, just evening shoes, hose and skintight fawn breeches, not even the vest of this morning covering his snow-white, generously sleeved shirt with the collar opened, exposing a small part of his tanned chest and a few golden curls. She ached to touch him.
Julia tugged at the buttons, amazed to find herself feeling frantic now, as if his touch on her breast was somehow urging her on to her own explorations. If only she could remember how to open a button….
“This is much better done without clothes, sweetings,” Chance told her, covering her hand with his own. When she didn’t disagree, he pushed away from her and stripped off his shirt and the gad around his neck before blowing out the bedside candle. He hardly needed protection from Julia. Only then did he rid himself of the remainder of his clothes.
She was an eager virgin, yes, but that didn’t mean the sight of a naked male body could be counted on to increase that eagerness. He joined her on the bed once more, his hand going to her waist even as he leaned over her, kissed her again.
And again. And again, trying so hard to remember that it was him seducing her, as she not only allowed his kiss but set her own tongue to dueling with his…all the while he deftly relieved her of her clothes before covering them both to the waist with the soft bedsheet.
He held her close as he lightly stroked her bare back, reveling in the way that back curved, the enticing indentation that marked her spine. And she did the same.
He had lightly nipped at the lobe of her ear. Now she did the same to him. The eager student, learning, practicing what she’d learned.
Chance felt sure he was about to go out of his mind…even as he reveled in the role of teacher.
He taught her that her body was a garden of delights for both of them.
He suckled at her breasts, his blood singing when she began to moan, pull his head closer, hold him very still as he laved her nipple with the roughness of his tongue, held her breath as if to move either of them would utterly destroy her.
Julia felt herself floating on a cloud of sensations she hadn’t even dreamed possible. His hands on her. His mouth. On her.
She could stay like this forever or so she thought until Chance began moving his hand lower. To her waist. To trace delicate circles on her belly. To move lower still, to slip between her thighs and touch her so very intimately, even as she clenched her teeth, suddenly aware that what she’d been feeling had been only a prelude to the aching wonder she felt now.
The anticipation of something wild, something wonderful. A willing step off that cloud and into the unknown.
Julia could feel his hard body against hers, his manhood that she could only imagine sunk deep inside her…and for the first time she felt fear.
“It’s all right, Julia,” Chance breathed against her ear as he felt her body tense. “This is the way it’s supposed to be. This is why we were made the way we were made.”
And all the time he was touching her. Stroking her. Learning her. And when she relaxed her thighs, when she sighed, he felt a surge of power run through him that he had to shut down immediately
