“I didn’t do it on purpose.” His arms went around her. “I just . . . I just needed to keep you up here.” He walked her backward until her knees met the edge of her bed, and they both tumbled onto the mattress. “In this bed.”
He stroked her hair, fanning it out over the pillows, and framed her face in his hands. “But I couldn’t discern what it was you needed to feel safe. I tried everything. Finally, tonight, you gave me the answer. Light. So now you have as many candles as you please. But now it’s gone all wrong. Because you’re here in this bed. But I’m here, too. And God help me, Izzy.” His brow pressed to hers, and his weight settled over her, crushing and warm. “I don’t know how to leave.”
“I know how.” She pushed on his shoulders. “I will make you.”
He tensed. “You will?”
“I will. We can’t do this. Every time we get close, something awful occurs. The weasel bites you, a rock falls on your head, we get trapped with a dead man in a darkened hole. If we do this . . . ? God knows what could happen. The whole turret might collapse.”
He nodded slowly, as if giving it careful thought. “Izzy?”
“Yes?”
“Let it happen.” His lips lowered to hers. “I don’t damn well care.”
Let it happen, Ransom thought, pushing her back against the bed. Let God and the devil do their worst.
The castle could crumble to the ground. The world could end. The entirety of the Moranglian Army could show up wearing jingling bells. All that mattered was this. Her, and him, and the light of two dozen candles. The both of them, tangled in this bed.
No darkness. No loneliness. No fear.
And he wanted to be sure she would have no regrets.
“Izzy, I want you. I feel the need to say it. Not to be crude or shocking, but just in case there’s any ambiguity in this situation: Me, atop you, in your bed. You must know I want to . . .”
His mind skipped over all the possible words. Bed you, tup you, fuck you, tumble you, make you my mistress . . .
“I want to make love to you, Izzy. Very, very, very badly.”
Ransom had never used those words before. She couldn’t know that, but he did.
“I . . .” Her fingers went to his hair. “I want you, too. So much.”
Her shyly voiced admission redoubled his heart rate.
It was after midnight, and he was tired. Normally, his vision would be shot at this hour. But with all these candles, and the extreme nature of their evening, he had enough sight remaining to him that he could make out the dark aura of her hair against the white linen. And most lovely of all, her wide, red smile.
“You’re so beautiful.”
He turned her onto her side and began tugging at the buttons down the back of her frock. She’d changed out of the soiled, torn red silk and into one of her everyday frocks. Even though the buttons were larger and the fabric easier to manage, his fingers didn’t work too cleverly. It took him ages just to undo the first three or four buttons.
“Undressing you was easier when you were unconscious,” he said.
She laughed. “It was probably easier when you weren’t drunk.”
Right. He supposed he could have blamed his trembling on the whisky. But in reality, Ransom knew better.
He was dashed nervous. Because this would be his first time in a long time, and it would be her first time ever.
And because this was Izzy, and he wanted it to be good.
With a curse, he gave up on buttons for the moment.
“Izzy.” He cupped and kneaded her breasts through the linen of her frock. “I can’t be patient. Not right now. Let me pleasure you.”
He found the slit in her drawers and widened it with a swift, decisive rip of fabric. He pulled her to the edge of the mattress and knelt on the floor at her feet. Then he pushed her skirts and petticoat up, bunching them around her waist, and hooked an arm beneath one of her legs, spreading her wide.
There. Now he could touch all of her. Taste all of her.
“Ransom?” She struggled to sit up. “What are you do—?”
He laid his tongue to her core.
“Oh.” She flopped back against the bed. “Oh.”
God, she was sweet. Sweet and pink and musky and Izzy.