“My lady.” He whispered, the words both prayer and promise.
“Open for me.” The command stole her breath, and she hesitated, not knowing if she could. It was one thing to bare herself to him in the dark waters of his transcendent swimming pool, but another thing entirely to do it here, in broad daylight.
It had never been like this. The only time she had ever come close to this experience had been a decade earlier, with a man who had lied to her. Ruined her. Left her.
There had been nothing about those fleeting, life-altering moments in the hayloft at Leighton Manor that had come close to this moment with this man.
Nothing about that time that even approximated this. This was freedom—the last breath of her life before she committed to a new world as aristocratic wife, committed to nothing but her daughter’s legacy.
And so why not enjoy it?
Why not welcome the moment and drink from its cup?
Lifted her chin, pressed her shoulders back, bold as brass. “Make me.”
Something wicked flared in his beautiful brown eyes. “You think I cannot?”
“I think you wish me to do your work for you.” She willed him forward. Willed him to touch her.
Instead, he took a step back and sat in a leather chair that stood by the desk, leaning back, deceptively relaxed. Nervousness flared deep in her, but she resisted it.
His gaze raked over her as he stretched out in the chair, his booted feet mere inches from her bare ones. “Open for me,” he repeated.
She gave him a small smile. “It shan’t be so easy.”
He raised a brow. “No. It shan’t.” He lingered on her breasts, and her skin heated at the regard as he moved his gaze down, toward the place she wanted him quite desperately. He watched her until she thought she might die from his attention. Just when she was about to give in to him, he said, “You are going to open for me, and when you do, you will regret not doing so when I asked.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that a threat?”
His lips curved in a slow, near-mercenary smile. “Not in the slightest.” He lifted one hand and set it to his jaw, assessing her with a long, leisurely look, his index finger stroking over his lower lip in a gesture a lesser woman might deem pensive.
Georgiana was not a lesser woman. The movement of that finger was not pensive. It was predatory.
And every inch it moved on his lips seemed to light a fire in her.
“You will regret it, though,” he went on, “as every moment you are not open to me is a moment I do not touch you. A moment you do not feel my hands, and my mouth, and my tongue.”
The words sent a shock through her as she imagined all those things, a repeat of the night in his swimming pool. The glorious feel of him against her.
“A moment I do not stroke . . . or kiss . . . or lick.”
She exhaled at the final word, at the way it seemed to deliver on its meaning, leaving a trail of fire straight through her to the place he asked for . . . to the place she wanted him.
He understood. “You enjoy it when I lick you, don’t you, my lady?”
Good God. She was not a prude; she’d spent the last six years surrounded by gamers and prostitutes. She ran London’s finest gaming hell, for heaven’s sake. But all that seemed entirely ordinary and acceptable compared to this man, who had turned into sin incarnate the moment they’d touched.
It was broad daylight, and he spoke of licking as though it were the weather.
“Georgiana,” he prompted, her name a slow promise. “Do you enjoy it?”
That finger on his lips was driving her mad. She pressed her thighs together, reminding herself of their game. “I seem to recall it being quite pleasant.”
Something flared in his eyes. Humor. Understanding of the part she played. “Only pleasant?”
She smiled, small and soft. “As I remember.”
“We have differing memories, then,” he said, “As I remember your hands in my hair, your cries in the darkness, your legs wrapped around me like sin.” His gaze fell to the apex of her thighs. “I remember the flood of you when you came, the way you arched toward the sky, everything forgotten except pleasure. Wrought by me. By my tongue in all the places you ached.”
She forgot the game, her muscles going weak as he spoke.
“I remember the taste of you, sweet and sex . . . and the feel of you, like decadent silk, soft and wet . . . and mine.”
That word again. His.
He was seducing her with nothing but words, promising her everything she’d ever wanted if only she gave in—if only she opened to him. She took a deep breath and matched him once more. “You speak of before,” she said, unable to keep the breathlessness from her words. “But what good is that to me now? Here?”
His brows rose in surprise before he leaned forward, his words part danger and part play.
And all desire.