Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)

But she made him forget. She made him forget himself completely. And the longer he stood there—massaging her sumptuous flesh with his palm, rolling her nipple under his thumb, listening to her breathy sighs—the harder it became to remember. If there was one single reason why he shouldn’t haul her to the bed that instant, Jeremy couldn’t recall it.

Then suddenly she stepped away. Just in time. He regained a tenuous hold on the remnants of his willpower. He felt the urge to reach out and pull her back, but he checked it. Barely.

She was staring up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. Her lips were swollen and dusky red. She rotated her neck in sensuous motion, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. Her hands went to the belt of her dressing gown. She loosened the knot.

Oh, God. He knew all too well what was under that robe. That high-necked virginal nightgown with its dozens of buttons. He’d wanted to rip that shift off her even that night. He’d dreamt of doing so more than once.

He ought to object. Words stuck in his throat. He stared, mesmerized, as she untied her belt. Then crimson velvet rained down like hellfire, and Jeremy knew he was damned, damned, damned. No high-necked virginal nightgown. No nightgown at all.

Just Lucy.

Every part of him longed to go to her, but his feet were bolted to the floor. His jaw worked, but he couldn’t speak. If there was any sound in the room besides the wild pounding of his pulse, he couldn’t hear it. She had him utterly bewitched. She’d rendered him immobile, deaf, and dumb.

But he was mercifully not struck blind.

He’d devoted an inordinate amount of time in the past two days to picturing Lucy naked. He had amassed a fair amount of evidence to inform this mental image. He knew how she felt pressed up against him. He’d touched almost every part of her, albeit in the dark. But nothing had prepared him for the glorious sight ofall of her.

Her body was like no other woman’s he’d seen. And he’d seen his share of unclothed women. But be they ladies or courtesans or women of the stage, compared to Lucy, they all shared an almost indolent softness. A fragility that somehow rang false. Lucy was rounded in places and sleek in others. Firelight delineated the sculpted tone of her shoulders and arms. Her br**sts were round and firm; her belly tight and flat. Supple, sweetly curving hips flared into firm, muscular thighs. She was softness and strength. Power and mercy.

A goddess.

And then she held out her arms and called to him. And he heard her. Even through the thick haze of desire, he heard her—because she spoke straight to his heart. His feet were in motion before he’d drawn breath. In a moment, he had her swept up in his arms. A second after that, they were tumbling onto the bed. And as he lowered her onto the soft nest of pillows, she whispered it again. The word he’d been longing to hear from her lips for so long it felt like forever. The one simple call he was powerless to deny.

“Jeremy.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lucy fell backward onto the bed, the heavy weight of a man on her chest and a ponderous burden thrown off her shoulders.

Thank God that had worked, she thought. There were no cards left in her hand afterthat . Was there some way to feel more naked than naked? If so, she had felt it. For a long, terrible moment, she’d begun to doubt he’d respond at all.

But respond he finally did, and in quite thrilling fashion. Now his lips and his tongue were responding all over her. And something hot and hard was making demands of its own against her thigh.

He was everywhere at once. One hand kneading her breast, the other cupping her bottom; his mouth doing indescribable things to the soft hollow beneath her ear. He wedged his thigh between her legs, and she gasped at the sensation of smooth buckskin and hard muscle pressed against her delicate flesh. He ground against her. Sweet, aching pleasure spread up through her belly and down to her curling toes.

“Jeremy.” His name fell from her lips again and again as he rained hot kisses over her neck. It was important for her to say it aloud, for the same reason she’d come to his room, placed his hand on her breast, brazenly dropped her robe. So he would know—soshe would know—that she wasn’t a passive player in this turn of events. No one could force her to slip a thimble on her finger, much less a betrothal ring. Lucy may not have had a proposal, but she did have a choice.

And she chosehim .

“Oh, Jeremy,” she sighed against his ear. He was rolling her nipple under his thumb and dragging his teeth over her earlobe, and her whole body began to hum with wanting.

She ran her hands down his back, savoring the feel of solid muscle beneath soft linen. Then she fisted her hands in the fabric and tugged it up, wild to get closer to him. Desperate to feel the smooth heat of his skin against hers. She had worked his shirt almost up to his shoulders when he suddenly pulled away. He sat back on his heels, straddling her leg.