Chapter 16 #3
The frank words shocked and titillated her at the same time, sending wild and indecent images surging through her memory. Her skin heated under his knowing look, and she had to glance away before he could see the effect of his words on her.
“But I didn’t open your eyes completely,” he went on.
“That’s the only reason you refused my proposal of marriage.
I wonder what your answer would have been if I’d taken you to bed instead.
” Approaching her, he lifted his hand to cup her burning cheek.
His thumb dipped down to stroke her throat, then outline her chin before caressing her bottom lip silkily. “Shall we find out?”
Why couldn’t she say “no”? Why did the word stick in her throat, damn him? “I don’t think ... that’s wise.” But she said it on a breathy little gasp, and her head reeled from the intimacy of his fingers against her face, not to mention the jumble of images his words had provoked.
He caught her around the waist, bringing her back into his embrace. “Yes, but since when did you ever do what was wise, querida?”
He had a point. Then he was kissing her again, and she was lost. Her reason shut down, along with her will and her common sense. All of them fell subject to the beating of her heart and the sheer wanton desires trampling through her unruly body.
It didn’t matter what her mind screamed at her—that he’d primed her for this since that night at the Worthings, that it was a mistake, that she’d regret it later.
Right now she didn’t regret it. She couldn’t.
And she couldn’t even hate him for using her weakness—her secret and shameful urges—against her.
She opened her mouth to his bold tongue as eagerly as the wanton she evidently was.
His hands unfastened the buttons at the back of her gown with amazing deftness, and all she could do was twine her arms about his neck.
She matched his every wicked impulse with one of her own, abandoning herself to his greater experience in a fever of need.
And when his hand slid inside her gown to stroke her thinly clad back, a luxurious sigh escaped her lips.
“I like to touch you,” he whispered as he dropped his hand lower inside her gown to squeeze her bottom. “And you like having me touch you, don’t you?”
She buried her flaming face in his shoulder, unable to admit aloud the painful truth—that she craved his hands, that she wanted them all over her body. Good Lord, how shameless of her! A sensible, respectable woman would evict him this minute!
Obviously, she was neither. But how could she resist the glittering temptation he presented?
It was like having her sultan step out of her dreams and into her bedchamber.
He transformed the dreary room with its simple oak furnishings and ragged curtains into a magical oasis where any sensual act was acceptable, even expected.
Dark eyes blazing with promises, he stepped back and tore impatiently at the buttons of his shirt. She waited with in-drawn breath to see what lay beneath the civilized veneer.
She shivered at the sight. Skin the color of coffee with milk, skin that attested to his mixed heritage, his wild Spanish blood.
A patch of rich, springy hair arrowed downward—as black as that on his head, but curly where the other was straight.
As he opened the shirt, her gaze followed the trail down to where the hair thinned into a line, then disappeared beneath his waistband.
“Do you like what you see?” he asked, the sound deep and rumbling.
A mortified gasp escaped her lips as she jerked her gaze back to his finely molded chest. Had she no decency? She’d been staring at him down there and wondering ...
His knowing smile only made it worse. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a man undress before.” He stripped off his linen shirt and dropped it.
She shook her head. Although she’d seen men naked to the waist—the pugilists at Bartholomew Fair always went shirtless—she’d never seen one so close, not even Papa.
And what she saw made her throat go dry.
Ian wasn’t as brawny as those pugilists, but then she’d always found their bulging muscles repulsive.
His muscles were whipcord lean, but sharply defined.
There was no mistaking the power in them that had allowed him to carry William up three flights of stairs without a murmur.
“Here.” Catching her hand, he pressed it against his chest. “Why don’t you do more than look?” The stark need in his face called to her. “Touch me, Felicity, the way I touched you that night. I’ve dreamed of having your hands on me.”
She needed no further invitation to mold her fingers over his muscles, feeling the steel under the hair-rough skin as he tensed at her touch.
She wanted to feel it all—the wide expanse of his chest, the ridges of his ribs, the taut sinews at his waist. And touching him provoked the shameful stirrings she’d felt before ...
in her breasts, in her loins. A familiar wetness formed between her thighs, certain evidence of her loose character.
She squeezed her legs shut, but that didn’t assuage the ache between them.
As if he sensed her agitation, he began using his hands on her as well, though not where she wanted them. He threaded his fingers through her loosely pinned hair, shaking it free of its pins, then smoothing it out over her shoulders. Next, he stripped her down to her chemise and drawers.
He ran his hot, eager gaze over her body. “I’m glad you’re not wearing one of those abominable corsets,” he growled as his hands swept lightly over her ribs. “When we’re married, you must wear nothing but your chemise when we’re alone.”
The outrageous thought excited her, then alarmed her, for it was too much like the painting of her sultan and his scantily clad paramours. “We shan’t marry,” she said stubbornly. “I won’t let you add me to your harem.”
“Harem?” He chuckled. “I have no harem, querida. You’ll be my wife, my only wife. You might as well get used to the idea.”
She yanked her hands from his chest, but he caught one and pressed it to the center seam of his pantaloon-trousers. “Here,” he rasped. “Touch me here.”
Something hard moved beneath her fingers, and she gasped, struggling to pull her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her. “You have only to walk past me,” he said tightly, “to make me feel this. I’ve never wanted any woman as much as I want you. Never.”
“Not even—” She started to say “Cynthia Lennard,” then caught herself, loath to mention her in such an intimate moment. “Not even Miss Greenaway?” she finished lamely, though she now doubted the woman was his mistress.
“Definitely not.” A warning flickered in his eyes as he bent his head toward her. “Don’t talk about that bloody woman anymore. I never give her a moment’s thought. But you? You I’ve thought of constantly since the day we met.”
He took her mouth with an almost angry need this time, his tongue stabbing deeply, his lips bruising hers.
The bulge in his trousers thickened, and he ground it against her fingers as if to scratch an itch.
When his hand left hers to roam her breast, she kept her hand on him, and even found herself willingly squeezing the hot hard length, reveling in the way it pulsed beneath her touch.
Tearing his lips from hers, he muttered, “My God, you’re torturing me.” He brushed her hand aside, then hauled her up in his arms and stalked to the bed with her. When he set her down on the edge, she scrambled to her knees, suddenly all too aware of where he’d placed her and why.
But before she could scoot away, he caught a fistful of her chemise to halt her. With a rakish smile, he dragged the flimsy muslin up her legs to bare her thighs. “Oh, no, querida. It’s my turn to torture you.”
Alarm coursed through her, provoked mostly by his foreign endearment, for it reminded her that beneath the manners and dress of an English lord lay a half-Spanish and even half-civilized spy, with secrets so deep even the keenest gossips couldn’t root them out.
And this was the man she wanted to bed her! Had she lost her wits?
Then he slipped his hand inside the slit in her drawers to cover the dark triangle between her legs, and she froze. Half-civilized? No, he was completely uncivilized!
“Ian, you shouldn’t ...” she whispered as she clutched at his wrist in a futile attempt to prevent him.
“Let me touch you the way you touched me.” Black eyes glittering, he cradled the secret place in the juncture of her thighs, then began fondling it, rotating his palm in slow, tempting ways she’d never dared to touch herself.
Excitement and shame burned up through her body together, and she closed her eyes, wishing she could hide from him. Any minute, he’d feel the embarrassing dampness between her legs and despise her for it.
“My God, you’re so warm and wet, so ready for me,” he said roughly, but without a hint of disdain.
Ready for him? What could he mean? Then he slid his finger inside the passage made slick from that indecent wetness, and she knew.
Her eyes flew open. “Wh-what are you ...” She trailed off as another of his fingers joined the first, driving in and out of her in heated strokes that made her squirm. “Oh, Ian ... heavens ... Ian ...”
The candles hadn’t yet been lit, and he’d made no effort to remedy that situation. Only the fickle fire lit his features, which shone triumphant and mysterious. The firelight lent an unearthly quality to what he did with his fingers ...
His wicked fingers ... tempting and plucking at her, coaxing her to sway forward on knees gone weak.
He caught her with his other arm, his breathing as ragged now as her own. “Felicity, you do know ... how a man makes love to a woman, don’t you?”
“Like ... like this,” she whispered.
“Not quite like this.”
Taking her hand, he flattened it against the bulge in his tight trousers, which seemed larger than before. “This is what I want to put inside you, the way my fingers are inside you now.”