The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

When he made no move toward her, Honor stubbornly lifted her chin. With one hand, she pulled a pin from her hair, and half of it tumbled down her back. “Do you know how to lace a corset?” she asked as she pulled another pin from her hair. And another.

George didn’t speak—he couldn’t speak. Her dark hair spilled all around her shoulders now, and she very deliberately began to unlace her corset, pulling the strings free, loosening them, until she could shimmy out of it. She let that drop, too. Now all that stood between her and George’s raging, frantic desire was a chemise so thin that he could see her body through it. His eyes greedily devoured every curve, every swell, his chest rising with tortured breath and falling with the strength it took to keep from reaching for her.

Honor slipped one finger under the strap of her chemise.

Immobilized by his outrageous desire, George helplessly watched her.

She pushed it down her arm. Then the other, and slowly, almost as if in a dream, the thin cotton chemise floated to the floor. Honor stepped out of it and stood before him with her arms wrapped about her belly, the rest of her completely bare. Her perfect breasts, floating above her arms, the thatch of curls at the apex of her legs.

Such a bold girl. Unapologetic. Brave. A woman who sought her pleasure as she sought her place in the world. She was a high-stepping horse, just like him, who looked neither right nor left, who did not care what society thought of her. It was almost as if the heavens had molded her just for him.

She was quivering, he noticed, and moved her arms up, intending to cover her breasts.

That was the moment George fell from his precarious perch. “No,” he muttered. He slowly pulled one arm from her body, then the other. “Let me look at you.” He gazed down at her body, then moved around her, viewing her back, her heart-shaped hips. He curled his fingers in the heavy tresses of her hair, wrapping one thick strand like a rope around his wrist. “What are you doing to me?” he asked helplessly.

She turned her head slightly to glance at him over her shoulder. “I don’t want to leave with all this want in me,” she said, her hands sliding across her abdomen. “I want, George, things I never knew to want. And I don’t want my heart to turn to dust.”

He didn’t know precisely how her heart would turn to dust, but it didn’t matter; the dam of emotions that George had held at bay for years broke in him. The flood was so powerful that he felt a little light-headed. At her back, he slid his arm around her belly and drew her into his body, then closed his eyes as he pressed his lips against her hair. “You don’t want to throw your virtue away,” he whispered hoarsely, even as his body begged him to be silent.

“Throw it away? But I’m giving it to you, George. After that, I don’t care what will happen.”

His blood was already rushing. He drew a steadying breath and kissed her neck. “Be certain of it,” he said. “Be quite certain of it, and God in heaven, tell me you are certain of it now, before it is too late for us both.”

She twisted in his arms. “I’m certain,” she said, and kissed him.

The thousand cautions in George’s chest were instantly slain. He flamed where she touched him, burned with the warm, fragrant scent of her skin. He slid his hand up her rib cage to her breast, filling his palm with the weight of it, rolling the hardened point between his fingers. He nibbled her earlobe, pressed his mouth against her temple as her hands fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, then pressing her mouth to his throat, sending a painful shiver through him.

George swept Honor up in his arms and whirled around to the bed, knocking over a small table in the process. She made a sound of alarm, but he silenced it with his mouth and his tongue. With his free hand, he clawed at his shirt until his upper body was bared.

Honor gasped with surprise or alarm. He didn’t know, didn’t care—his body was aching for her as he stared down at her, expecting her to ask him to stop. But Honor’s gaze slowly moved over his chest, her fingers following the path of her eyes, tracing rivers of unbearable sensation across his skin, to the top of his trousers. She looked up as she unbuttoned them.

He caught her hand, pressed it against his wildly beating heart. He wanted her to feel the emotions churning the blood in his veins. This moment felt entirely different to him than any other moment of his life. This was not an afternoon romp that he would remember with hazy fondness in the evening. This had him at sixes and sevens, his heart racing like a filly.

She looked at her hand on his chest, then lifted herself up to him, kissed him tenderly, her fingers fluttering through his hair.