He bent his head over her hand again and kissed her knuckles and her fingertips. He turned her hand over and kissed the palm of her hand and her wrist. He took her other hand and did the same. This time, when he kissed the palm of her hand, she moved it to curl her knuckles under his chin. She lifted his chin and looked at him but all she saw was affection . . . and wicked promise, yes.
He smiled and took her hand away and kissed her chin, her cheek, and the top of her cheekbone. Then his mouth covered hers and the light caress went deep in an instant. It was gentle and it wasn’t. It was like the summer storm they’d shared, but this time it didn’t feel so much like a war. This time, it was a claiming of each other and a joining of two wild spirits.
She hadn’t realized how wild hers was until she ran away with him, and she’d felt herself come alive without realizing what the feeling was. She hadn’t realized how hemmed-in and pent-up she’d been until he told her she was a bad girl.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d stifled herself, though now she saw so clearly why. She couldn’t behave as her nature inclined her to do. Young ladies couldn’t misbehave as young gentlemen did. Young ladies couldn’t sow their wild oats. If they did, they’d be ruined, and bring shame on their families. Young ladies had to follow the rules.
With him, those rules no longer applied.
Free, finally, she came alive now, drinking in his kiss like a healing potion. Her body warmed, and the warmth entered and soothed her heart, too. Her too-busy mind quieted and softened.
It was like drinking too much brandy, but better, so much better.
Still kissing her, he lifted her up from the chair and carried her out of the dressing room and into the bedroom to the side of the bed, where he set her on her feet.
“I want to see you,” he said. “All of you. And worship you with my body, as I promised to do in church.”
“I want to see you, too,” she said. “Whenever you appeared at an event, I watched you. It was easy to do without attracting notice, because everybody watched the three of you, to see what outrage you’d commit next.” The words spilled out of her, indiscreet, but they needed to be let out. “The whole time, though, I was watching you—the way you moved, the way you danced. I wanted to be the dashing lady you danced with. I didn’t even realize I was watching in that way or thinking those things or why. Or, if I did know, I refused to admit it to myself.”
“I watched you, too,” he said. “And I thought it was a bloody shame you were respectable.”
“But I’m not,” she said.
“I know that now,” he said. “It only took—what was it—six, seven years since you made your debut? How thick can a fellow be?”
“Fortunately, I still have some good years left,” she said.
“True.” He slid his fingers through her hair, so gently that she trembled.
He kissed her forehead and the tip of her nose. He unhooked her spectacles and set them on the bedside table.
“I won’t be able to see you properly,” she said.
“I’ll stay close,” he said.
Her robe de chambre had no buttons or hooks. A tasseled cord at the waist was all that closed it. He untied the cord and the robe fell open. Underneath she wore a white, embroidered muslin nightdress. He brought his hands to her face and caressed her cheeks and her neck. He slid his hands to her shoulders. He bent and kissed her neck, her shoulders, and the hollow of her throat. Her skin vibrated with pleasure but she ached, too, with the sweetness of it, of being touched by him, kissed by him.
He untied the ribbon at the neckline and slipped the nightdress down past her shoulders. She was acutely aware of the night air on her skin.
He slid his fingers down from her neck to her breasts, pushing the neckline lower as he went, until her breasts were fully exposed to him. But she was a bad girl, and didn’t feel shy or modest at all. Besides, he’d seen her already, in the fishing house. She wanted him to look at her the way he’d done then, as though she were the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
His face changed and she saw the look she remembered. She caught a glimpse of something else as well, something unexpected. Pain?
But he bent his head, then his mouth was on her, his lips trailing over her breast, the lightest of caresses. Light as it was, she felt it deep within her, tugging at her heart and lower down, yes, and now she recognized the feeling, the wanting.
She wanted him, and she understood she’d waited years for him, without hope because she hadn’t dared to understand herself. She’d made herself what she ought to be, and it was like a dress that didn’t fit. No wonder her tiresome cousin mocked her.
Then he took the bud of her breast into his mouth and suckled and she forgot the past, her cousin, relatives, everything. She grasped his arms and held on, letting the sensations wash over her and through her, and she felt drunk, so beautifully drunk.
She’d learned to believe that no man would want her, truly want her, as she was.
He wanted her.
He teased and suckled the other breast, and worked his way down, drawing her nightdress down as he went and teasing her skin with his mouth and his too-adept hands. He licked her navel, making swirls with his tongue, and she let out a wild little cry.
He went lower still, and the nightdress slid down over her hips to the rug.
Then he put his mouth there, between her legs, and her body tightened. Spasms went through her, of heat and delight and a growing need.
“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, Ripley.”
He didn’t stop, and the feelings built to an intensity all but unbearable. She dragged her hands through his hair and her body pulsed and pulsed, out of her control, until a fierce sensation racked her, and she let go of him, and slumped.
He grasped her waist and lifted her up and onto the bed.
While she caught her breath and tried to find her mind, he threw off his dressing gown.
Then she was short of breath again. For a moment she simply lay there, gazing at him while her heart thumped and her breath came in gulps.
Then she slid up onto the pillows and drank in her fill. He was her husband. She could look. And the front view was as beautiful as the back view had been, that day he’d stood naked in the basin.
She hadn’t seen much of him in the fishing house. They’d kept most of their clothes on. Now . . .
His skin was bronze in the candlelight and perhaps from the sun of Italy, where he’d been so recently. The light glinting over the fine dusting of hair seemed to feather it with gold. Powerful shoulders and muscled arms and chest and belly—he was as beautiful and hard and solid as a Greek or Roman statue. With a difference. She’d seen classical statues, not all with fig leaves. She’d seen pictures in books. He was . . .
“Good heavens,” she said in a stricken voice she barely recognized as hers.
He looked down to where his manly organ swelled . . . rather dauntingly.
“This is what happens,” he said, “when a man is mad for his wife. But don’t worry. Hardly ever fatal, as I might have mentioned some days ago.”
She laughed. “Oh, Ripley, you say the most romantic things.”
“Wish I could,” he said. “In my case, best to let actions speak louder.”
He climbed onto the bed and knelt over her.