Especially as she wished him to win.
She clutched the ropes, her mooring in his tempest. “You make me feel . . .” She paused, and his lips found hers in the hesitation, his kiss more gentle than ever before, tongue stroking with delicate, devastating force.
He pulled away before she could have her fill. “Go on,” he whispered, not touching her and somehow destroying her. Holding her over a wide abyss, with only the ropes of his ring to keep her sane.
“You make me hot and somehow cold.”
He rewarded the words with a long, lovely, worshipping kiss at the base of her neck. “What do you feel now?”
“Hot,” she answered, even as a shiver threaded through her. “Cold. I don’t know.”
He smiled against her skin, and she adored his lips curving against her. “What else?”
“When you look at me, you make me feel like I am the only woman in the world.”
His gaze was on the edge of her borrowed dress, where the bodice seemed brutally tight. He slid a finger along the simple line of fabric, barely touching her skin, making her wish the whole thing was gone. And then he tugged on the little white ribbon that fastened at the front, slowly tugging at the crisscrossing tie down her bodice until he gave her what she wished, the fabric coming loose. Instinctively, she released the ropes, moved to catch it. To hold it to her.
But he was there, guiding one arm from the woolen dress, then the other.
And she let him. When he was finished, he said only, “Take the ropes.”
She turned herself over to him, grasping the ropes once more.
The dress was caught on her breasts, threatening to fall. He watched the way it held there, tenuous, and she wondered if he might be able to remove it with her gaze.
He ran a finger beneath the wool, gently, perfectly, and it pooled at her feet. She gasped.
“Cold?” he asked.
“No.” Hot as the sun.
He bent his head, taking the tip of one breast in his mouth, chemise and all, worrying it through the fabric, leaving it wet and aching for more. For him. He lifted his head, meeting her gaze.
“What else, Mara?” he asked. “What else do I make you feel?”
“You make me wish it was all different,” she said.
He rewarded the confession by sending her chemise to the floor, leaving her in nothing but her woolen stockings and those silly silken slippers that had matched the gown she’d worn the night she’d arrived, but had no place here. Now. He watched her for a long moment, drinking her in, keeping her warm, even as he blew a stream of cool air across the tip of her breast.
She sighed her pleasure, and he lifted his head, finding her. Seeing her. Just as she saw him. The way he desired her. The way he craved her. And when he ran the back of his hand across his lips like a starving man, she went weak-kneed, grateful for the strength of the ropes behind her.
“You make me wish I were different,” she confessed. You make me wish I were more.
He shook his head. “It’s strange; I don’t wish that at all.”
The words brought a cacophony of thought, too tangled for understanding. All she wanted was to say the right thing—the thing that would bring him closer to her. That would give her what she wanted. What she ached for.
The thing that would make him hers.
“Everything,” she whispered, finally. “You make me feel everything.”
And there, in the ring that was his castle and kingdom, he sank to his knees before her, wrapped one strong arm about her waist, and pressed his lips to the soft swell of her stomach before responding, “Not everything. Not yet.”
He trailed kisses from her navel to the core of her, to the wicked edge of the soft curls there, and he stilled. Lingered. “But I will,” he promised her, his tongue sliding along the soft, unbearably sensitive skin there.
She sighed, one hand moving to his head, sliding into his curls.
He froze, snapped to attention at the touch, turning instantly to capture the flesh at the base of her thumb in his teeth. Nipping gently. “The ropes.”
She stilled. “Why?”
He met her gaze, and she saw the wicked promise there. “The ropes,” he repeated.
She did as she was told, grasping the rough cords behind her, and he rewarded her, his hand stroking from her ankle up the long line of her leg, around the curve of her knee, up the soft, untouched skin of her inner thigh, above her stocking. He lifted the leg from the pool of her skirts with one hand, hooking her knee over his good shoulder, as though it weighed nothing at all.
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as the rest of her burned with desire. She was horrified and desperate all at once. A contradiction, as ever it was with him.
“Watch.”
As if she could do anything else. All she could do was watch him.
Watch him see her.