Blinking, she asked with utter bewilderment, “Why?”
He bit back a tender laugh. Only Mariah would ask that question.
A grin he wasn’t able to quash tugged at his lips. “I shouldn’t. You’re the last woman in the world I should find alluring. Stubborn and challenging, far too intelligent for her own good, a woman who doesn’t know her place—”
“Thank you,” she drawled dryly with a peeved sniff.
“Yet I find myself drawn to you precisely because you’re that challenging and intelligent woman who doesn’t know her place.” His gaze dropped to her luscious mouth. “And I know you want me as much as I want you.”
Her lips parted delicately at his audacity, and she stared at him, for once speechless.
“I’m a rakehell, remember? I know women, and I know you most of all.” Sweet Lucifer, she was breathtaking as she stared up at him, stunned into flustered silence. Never…never had he seen a more beautiful woman. “I’ve held you in my arms and felt the way you’ve craved my kiss. I’ve felt your pulse race beneath my lips when I kissed your throat and the panting of your breath when you pressed against me. And when I dared to touch you in the garden, I felt how much you wanted me. That’s why I’m here, Mariah.” His gaze swept over her, greedily drinking in the enticing sight of her. She trembled beneath his boldness, and his gut burned at the desire he saw in her. “To finish what we started.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. They held each other’s gaze across the dimly lit room, and the silence around them was interrupted only by the pounding rush of blood through his ears. Outside, the snow continued to fall and blanket the city, further muting the noise of the night and cocooning them together in the soft shadows cast by the stove’s coals.
As he stared at her, his thoughts roiled in a mess of doubts and uncertainties. The affections he held for her went beyond the merely physical—they had become a longing to be with her in every way. He wanted Mariah in his arms, wanted to erase the confusion inside him with her kisses and soft touches. He wanted to take solace in wrapping her body around his and melding together, losing himself in her kindness and comfort.
He prayed to God that she wanted the same.
“Yes,” she whispered, the single word of permission tearing through him with the force of a lightning bolt.
He reached for the door and flipped the lock.
*
Mariah caught her breath as Robert stalked across the office toward her.
She scrambled to her feet. The tension between them was so strong that she found it impossible to sit still, and nervous excitement swept through her, making her tremble. But she didn’t back away, not when he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. Not when his mouth descended upon hers in a kiss filled with such tenderness and heated promise that she whimpered beneath the intensity of it.
“If you don’t want this, say so now, Mariah.” He cupped her face against his palm. As his lips nibbled at her ear, his thumb traced over her bottom lip, already hot and moist from his mouth on hers. Each word flamed a primal longing inside her. “Stop me before I lose control completely over you.”
“I won’t stop you,” she breathed, her voice too full of desire and anticipation to speak any louder. “I want tonight…with you.”
He scooped her into his arms and carried her up the stairs to a small room at the top of the building, where a simple, narrow bed waited.
With a thin mattress over an old rope-strung frame and scratchy wool blankets, the bed was used on those nights when her father or Mr. Ledford worked too late into the evening to travel home. But as Robert lowered her onto the bed and followed down over her, kissing her hungrily as she ran her trembling fingers anxiously through the soft hair at his nape, Mariah couldn’t imagine a more special place.
“You’re shivering,” he murmured against her lips as he stroked his hand down her side.
“I’m cold,” she dissembled, unwilling to admit how nervous she was. He was a Carlisle, after all. He’d been with more women than she wanted to acknowledge, and if the kisses and touches he’d given her before were any indication, the man was an expert when it came to intimacy. While she— Good Lord, how much she shook!
“You won’t be cold for long,” he teased with an impish grin.
Blushing, she slapped his shoulder. “Robert!”
When he laughed and nuzzled her neck, the teasing was infectious, and she giggled softly. The nervousness eased away until there was only happiness and certainty inside her that this night was good and right, with this man.
He kissed her again, this time flicking his tongue across her lips entreatingly until she parted them with a sigh. His tongue thrust inside in a possessive rhythm that sent her heart racing and her breath panting, and she forgot about the cold and the darkness, knowing only the heat and solidity of his body next to hers.
But even that wasn’t enough. She wanted the warmth of his bare skin against hers and longed for more of the aching heat he flamed inside her. She wanted the barrier of her gown and his finery gone from between them, along with all their competition and fighting, until it was only the two of them…man and woman, bared to each other.
She slid off the bed and moved away just far enough to kick off her slippers, then reached behind her back for the tiny buttons—
“Oh no, you don’t.” He caught her from behind and slipped his arms around her waist. “I get the pleasure of undressing you tonight.”
As his rakish words curled through her, anticipation fluttered low in her belly, and she ordered breathlessly, “Then undress me.” She thrilled at the control she possessed over him. “And take your pleasure.”
He growled in a mix of affection and devilish appreciation, “Minx.”
She laughed, delighted at the reckless excitement that pulsed through her. But when he unfastened the first button and placed a hot kiss between her bared shoulder blades, the laughter choked in her throat. Then it turned into a deep sigh when he kissed lower down her spine with each inch of flesh he revealed.
Her bodice fell loose around her shoulders, and he pushed the dress down to puddle on the floor around her feet. She shivered as he knelt behind her and placed a kiss against the small of her back, just below the end of her short stays. She closed her eyes. His mouth on her body…simply heavenly!
His hands slipped beneath her shift to caress her legs—
She jumped with a gasp. “Robert!”
He took her hips in his hands to calm her as he explained in a raspy voice, “Stockings.”
That single word was enough to understand why he’d been sliding his hands up her legs, but it didn’t ease the nervous fluttering in her belly. “Of course,” she whispered breathlessly, not wanting him to think her a complete goose when it came to men.
“I’ll leave them on, if you prefer.” He placed a tender kiss against the base of her spine, and it twined its way up her back, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “After all, what matters isn’t the stockings but the woman inside them.”
Her eyes stung at the soft compliment, and she whispered, “Then take them off…if you’d like.”
“I’d like it a great deal,” he murmured, and his hands once more slid beneath her shift and up her legs.
With a small tug of his fingers, the garter holding the stocking in place slipped free. He traced his fingertips over the lace edge encircling her thigh, then slowly rolled the silk material down her calves, over her feet, and off. One leg, then the other, just as torturously seductive…