“Or at all. You said ‘That’s not why we’re here.’”
His hands, warm and solid, landed on her shoulders. “We’re not there at the moment, are we?”
She shook her head.
One of his hands slid up her neck and cupped the back of her head, the other skated down her arm to grasp her waist and pull her against him. Her bare arms went around his torso, his hot flesh making her own skin heat with desire and anticipation. Everything inside her seemed to shake and tremble and at the same time she strained toward him, needing him more than air itself.
He tilted her head back and lowered his mouth to hers slowly. Lorrie closed her eyes and clenched at his strong back, attempting to hold on before the world fell away. But there was no preparing for his kiss. The moment his lips grazed hers, she saw fireworks brighter than any she’d ever viewed at Vauxhall. There was nothing tentative about his kiss, nothing soft or sweet. He took her mouth, claiming it with an intensity that left her breathless and wanting more. His lips slanted over hers, again and again, until she could only cling to him. But there was no safety in his body. She loved the feel of his skin under hers, the way his muscles corded and bunched, the way his hot, hard flesh seemed to heat even more as she explored it.
His hand moved from her waist to her rump, cupping it and drawing her forward so she was pressed even more tightly against him. And she could feel the hard length of him where their bodies met.
He had not said he loved her, but if he did not at least want her, he would not have had this reaction. And she wondered what would happen if she met his fire with her own. It was a question she had turned about in her mind countless times for the last year or so. She’d ached for the touch of a man and then shoved the need down because women were not supposed to have such feelings and such needs, especially not unmarried virgins.
When she’d kissed Francis or the small handful of other men who had stolen moments with her, she had always felt as though she must hold herself back. She sensed there was more, and yet she could not ask for it, could not even be certain what it was. With Ewan she felt the more. She did not have to ask or content herself with chaste embraces. There was nothing at all sweet or fumbling about the way he held her or kissed her. And she kissed him back with all the passion she had always been afraid to unleash. And the more she gave in to the desire raging within her, the more she wanted.
Her hands slid down his back to pass over his taut buttocks. The growl in his throat let her know he liked her boldness, liked her touch. When his lips moved to her jaw and the sensitive skin just below, she slid her hands around and up his chest. His skin was firm, the muscles beneath honed from hard use. How different his body was from hers. She was curves and softness, while he had not an inch of extra flesh anywhere.
One hand meandered down his chest to pass over his navel and then to pause at the waistband of his trousers. The most deliciously wicked idea occurred to her, and before she could think better of it, she brought her hand down to cup his hard rod through the wool of his clothing.
He groaned.
The low sound in the back of his throat did strange things to her body. The heat she’d felt in her cheeks and under her fingers now traveled lower to settle in her belly. She was conscious of a deep throbbing and pressed her legs together in an effort to constrain it, but that only made it worse.
Her hand slid up and down the hot length of him before he finally grasped her wrist and stopped her.
“You don’t like it?” she asked.
“I do. But you make me forget that I must behave.”
Lorrie looked into his eyes, which were a shade darker than the summer sky she was used to. “Oh, don’t behave. I am so weary of always behaving.”
“Good.”
Lorrie did not know what he meant by that comment, and she didn’t suppose he would elaborate, especially not when his mouth claimed hers again. When she would have touched his chest again, he slid her hands up around his neck and lifted her. A moment later, he deposited her on the bed.
Lorrie stared up at him, reminded of the time he had come in her room and she had ended up in this very same position. Now the Viking was bent over her again, and the look in his eye was far more dangerous. He would not leave her untouched this time, and she did not want him to. She wanted him to kiss her and touch her and show her exactly how badly he could behave. She would think about the consequences later, and there might well be consequences. But she wasn’t afraid of them. Her quest for passion had led her to attempt to elope with Francis and to sneak into a gambling hell in St. James’s Street. She couldn’t turn back now.
His mouth took hers again, but this time he only stoked the need in her with his lips and his tongue before trailing kisses down her neck and parting the V of the fichu she had tucked at the last minute into the bodice of her modest day dress. He pulled the light fichu away, and then his lips were on bare flesh. The tips of her breasts hardened and pushed against the thin chemise she wore under her corset. Her breasts ached, and she wanted to arch to encourage him to touch her there.
But he seemed to have his own ideas, for his lips grazed the edge of the muslin bodice and traced it from one swell of her breast to the other. Lorrie’s hands fisted in his short hair. How she wished she wore an evening dress, then it would be nothing for him to push the material down and bare her to his hands and lips.
His hands moved up from her waist, and he molded her with them, making her draw in a sharp breath and the prickle of sensation. And then before she could tear at the material separating them in frustration, he put his hands back on her waist and flipped her over. It happened so quickly, Lorrie hardly knew what had happened. One moment she was staring up at him and the next her cheek was pressed against the coverlet of his bed. The bed smelled like him, like evergreen and spruce and the indefinable scent she would always associate only with him. One of his hands cupped the back of her neck and then she felt the tug of the strings holding the dress closed.
She was both exhilarated and terrified that he loosened her bodice, untying strings and unfastening hooks and eyes. When he rolled her back over again, he had no trouble lowering the material, and then it was a simple matter to loosen the tie of her stays and push the material of stays and chemise out of the way.
No one, save Nell, had ever seen Lorrie in such a state, and she had the urge to cover herself, but it lasted only an instant. One look at his face showed he clearly liked what he saw. His eyes were half-lidded and his hands touched her with a gentle reverence.