Nell did not look impressed by the idea of a wager. Lifting a brow, she said, “Sure and we could bet on it. But I’d feel bad taking advantage of a duffer like you.”
Simon laughed. “Darling, you may take advantage of me whenever you like.”
Her lashes lowered, concealing her thoughts. “You remember you said that, St. Maur.”
“Simon,” he murmured. “If you mean to be bold, you might as well go the distance.”
“Simon,” she said. “You’re the striker.” Her head tipped toward the table.
“Growing impatient, are you? Or perhaps nervous,” he teased. “Very well. We agreed to play to a hundred strokes. Let’s add twenty to it. What are the terms?”
She set her cue to the ground with a thump, leaning into it as she looked him up and down. A smile began to play at the corners of her mouth. “What a world of possibilities,” she said. “All right: I’ll play for … the right to send one of my dresses to a friend.”
Her proposal served a neat blow to his growing intentions. He’d had in mind a wager far less noble. “Agreed,” he said. “But do add something to sweeten the deal.”
“That’s pretty sweet in itself,” she muttered. “But if you insist on being a victim—I’ll take a trip to a bookshop and the chance to spend twenty pounds from your pocket.”
Good God. “What a depressingly virtuous standard you set.”
Her smile sharpened into a taunt. “Oh, don’t mind me, Simon. Set any terms you like. You’re not going to win, so it makes no difference, you see.”
“Excellent,” he said briskly. “Then I’ll demand five minutes of your virtue.”
Her eyes narrowed. She pressed her cheek to her upright cue and scowled at him. “What does that mean?”
“Since I’m apparently bound to lose, it doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll decide what I mean during those five minutes.”
“Those five minutes you won’t have,” she retorted.
“That’s right.” With a grin, he turned his back on her, bracing his cue on the bridge of his hand to test his aim on the white-spot ball.
No challenge came in reply. It seemed she meant to accept the bargain. After a brief moment of amazement, he felt, all at once, very determined to win. He bent lower to the table. If he could hole the red by striking his ball off the white-spot—
“Sad to watch you,” came Nell’s idle voice from behind him. “I hope you won’t weep when you lose. This dress hasn’t the pockets for hankies.”
He didn’t look up. “My, such confidence. Didn’t Mrs. Hemple teach you of modesty? A very ladylike quality.” Perhaps the canon was overreaching. A losing hazard, to the middle pocket—
“I never was very good at modesty.”
His hand seized on the cue. She’d purred the words directly into his ear. He could feel the heat of her breath on his nape. It lifted the small hairs there.
Slowly he turned his head. She didn’t retreat an inch. A sly half smile curled her mouth. It shot through him like an electric current, arrowing straight to his groin.
“Am I distracting you?” she asked.
“Not in the least,” he said, but the huskiness in his voice betrayed him. She laughed and glanced toward his cue.
“You’re about to commit a foul,” she said.
With a silent oath, he withdrew his cue, which had wandered dangerously close to her ball. “And how, pray tell, how did you grow so skilled? I didn’t imagine Bethnal Green would be home to many tables.”
“Not like this one,” she said promptly. “This here is a fine setup, indeed. Slate and India rubber, aye? But we’ve got tables thereabouts, if none so flash.”
“And you were able to play at them?” He could not imagine women were welcomed into billiard clubs, even in the East End.
She mistook his meaning. “It ain’t all work in the Green. My friends and I, we always knew how to spend a half day properly. Down at O’Malley’s pub, there’s a table and some card games, too. Poker was always my favorite. You going to shoot anytime soon, or do you give up?”
He laughed and bent back over the table, sighting quickly.
She leaned near again. “That’s a Long Jenny you’re thinking to try. Don’t know as I’d advise that to a man with a weakness for the screw.”
He gave her a sharp look. The brightness of her smile announced that she was well aware of the double meaning. She all but danced backward, laughter glinting in her eyes. “The screw,” she said. “You know, that spin you put on the ball when you strike it below the center.”
“I do have a particular talent for the screw,” he agreed. “I’d be glad to demonstrate it. Now, or shall we wait for my five minutes?”
“Ha!” Her laughter sounded giddy.
He shook his head at her, then took his shot, sending his ball rebounding off hers and into the top pocket. “Three to me,” he said, turning so rapidly that she had no time to dance away again; suddenly they were standing chest to breast, and the sudden dilation of her pupils suggested she was no more immune to this current between them than he.
He reached out and brushed his knuckle along her satiny cheek. A pulse beat at the base of her throat. He moved his thumb to it, pressing lightly. “I am looking forward to those five minutes,” he said quietly.
Her throat moved beneath his thumb as she swallowed. Her dark blue eyes were fathoms deep, brilliant in the light shed by the electrolier overhead. She did not look so much like Kitty after all. She looked nothing at all like Kitty.
“You’re cocky as a rooster,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ll have to tell me if my confidence is justified.”
“Seems unwise to count on victory when you haven’t seen anything from me yet.”
She started to step away and he closed his hand on her upright cue, effectively trapping her. “I cannot tell you how eager I am to remedy that.” He ran his palm down the stick, pausing a bare inch from her hand, brushing her knuckles with the tip of his littlest finger. “Indeed, I can think of no one I’d rather play games with.”
A visible shudder moved through her. “You play games with a lot of people?”
“Not lately,” he said quietly.
Her chest rose on a long breath. “Oh. Why is that?”
“I seem to have lost interest in them.”
A flush stained her face. The smile she gave him trembled a little before disappearing. “You’re good company,” she said. Then she shook her head and laughed. “When you’re not going on about the weather.”
He let go of her cue and stepped back, strangely exhilarated. “Thank you,” he said. “Then you’ll be glad to know that I also play poker, now and then. I confess you’re the first lady I know to do so. How did you learn?”
As she looked away toward the table, the brightness faded from her face. “Oh, Michael has a knack for it. My stepbrother,” she added with a shrug.
Now she appeared as stiff as she had in the dining room. “You’ve never mentioned a stepbrother before,” he said.
She remained silent for a passing moment. “Well. Hannah, the girls from the factory … Some people are worth missing. Some aren’t.”
“You lived with him, though?”
The look she flashed him seemed resentful. “Where else was I to live?”
The odd reply triggered an intuition. “He was the one who hit you.”
Her face became impassive as she turned to take up the chalk. “Aye, well. They say you can’t choose your family.”
He watched her closely as she scrubbed the chalk across the tip of her cue. “But now you know that he isn’t your family. Although I suppose he was chosen, by your supposed mum.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked over her shoulder at him. She was still quite tetchy on the subject of Jane Whitby. But after a moment’s study of his face—she was deciding, he gathered, whether or not he’d meant the remark as a jibe—she decided to relax. Turning to lean against the table, she said conversationally, “She’d no idea what she was bargaining for with that marriage.”
This remarkable moment—this decision to trust him, even if only in a matter so small that she probably had not consciously debated it—gave Simon a thrill of satisfaction. He found himself smiling, and realized how thoroughly inappropriate it was only when she frowned at him. Forcing his expression to straighten, he said, “Tell me. What bargain did she end up with?”
She shrugged as she set aside the chalk. “Jack Whitby was a good man. But he died within a year of the match. All we got for it was his wretched, no-good son. And a flat,” she added thoughtfully. “That is—” She rotated the cue in her hands. “We got the right to rent his flat after he passed. Mum might have had a hard time finding one for us, otherwise.” She pulled a face. “Nobody likes to rent to a woman. Can’t depend on her for the money, they say.”
“Because women are paid less,” he ventured.
Her look suggested he’d said something very obvious. She reached for his glass, not asking before she took a long drink. “They’re always the first to be sacked if times are hard. Or if they fall pregnant. And they’re worth less on the lines than a man, anyway. People think they’re not dependable tenants.”
He accepted the correction with equanimity. To her, these things were obvious. To him, the rules of poverty—and of honest moneymaking, for that matter—seemed fairly obscure. “And when did he take up hitting you, then?”
For a long moment it seemed she wouldn’t answer. Then she sighed and finished the last of his drink. “Well, he always had a bad temper. But”—her glance was sharp, daring him to object—”my mum stood in the way, more often than not. And when he was younger, he obeyed her. Scared of her, no doubt.” A breath of a laugh slipped from her. “Mum could be properly fierce.”
He made some noise of agreement, although his thoughts were blacker. Indeed, a woman capable of snatching a six-year-old in the night might be willing to do any number of things to put fear into someone. “What changed, then?”
“He got put in jail.” She pushed off the table and surveyed the spread on the baize. Then she leaned over and took the shot in one smooth move, knocking out a canon that potted the red ball and netted her five strokes.
Simon felt a flicker of dismay. A lucky shot, no doubt.
She did not remark on the victory as she turned back to him. “That riot last year in Hyde Park—Michael got taken up by the bobbies. Wasn’t the same afterward.”
The hint of sympathy in her voice shocked him. She could feel for a man who had blackened her eye—more than once, Simon suspected. “I would hope that you don’t feel sisterly toward him.”
“No,” she said after a moment. “But he’s a pitiful creature, you’ll agree.”
Pitiful creature. As Simon lined up his shot, the description put him in mind of a fatally lamed horse. He knew how to deal with those. It required a bullet.
He knocked out a winning hazard, then turned to catch her attention. “You needn’t worry about him now,” he said. “He’ll never come near you again.”
Hearing Simon talk of Michael made her feel queasy. God forbid they ever met. Michael would loathe everything about this man: his handsome clothing, his untroubled laughter, even the hew of his broad shoulders and the easy, muscled grace of his well-tended body. He had arrogance bred into him, and Michael had been nursed on rage. If ever they met, somebody’s blood would spill.
A shiver broke over her and left behind an ache that felt like foreboding. She shoved the thought away as she leaned over the table. It didn’t take but a moment to spot her target. She made another canon and pocketed her ball, causing the lord of the manor to groan.
Good Lord, maybe he really imagined he’d win. The thought made her grin. He couldn’t complain later that she hadn’t warned him.
As she straightened, all this talk of family stirred a thought that had been preying on her for days now. “I want to meet my sister.”
“Ah.” A brief silence. Simon glanced toward the tip of his cue, where his thumb was testing the grain of the leather. “I called on her this afternoon, but she wasn’t at home. I left a note.”
“She knows I’m here, now.”
“So I assume.”
She took a quick breath against the sinking feeling in her stomach. “You think she doesn’t want to see me?”
His light eyes met hers squarely. “She hasn’t seen you, yet. Once she does, her opinion of my tidings will change.”
“Or maybe she didn’t get your letter.” She couldn’t believe that Katherine wouldn’t even be curious. “Who’d you leave it with? Could somebody have taken it? To protect her, you know. If her guardian thought me a fraud—”
His long mouth twisted in a grimace that said it was possible. “If he did intercept your letter, I suspect it wouldn’t be the first time he’d done so. You did try to write to your father, didn’t you?”
Nell’s cue slipped from her grasp, the butt thumping hard against the floor before she caught it up again. “He was the one who got old Rushden’s letters? The guardian—Grimston, aye?”
He gave a single nod.
“Well.” She wet her lips. “Grimston.” The name felt unhealthy on her tongue, slippery and sour, like the skin on spoiling milk. “Now I know who I should have saved my bullets for. He’s a bad ‘un, is he?”
“He likes money,” he said. “Your sister has it. I believe he has designs to wed her—preferably as the sole heiress, you understand. Whether or not she knows his intentions, I can’t say.”
“Maybe somebody should tell her.”
“Kitty has never been known to take advice.”
“I could tell her.”
He slanted her a cynical smile. “By all means. But do keep in mind that family is … often not as one would hope. And you were raised very differently, of course. Katherine Aubyn is very much her father’s daughter.”
A nervous flutter stirred in her stomach. “Was old Rushden so bad, then?”
“To her?” He shrugged. “I suppose she wouldn’t think so.”
“But to you, he was.”
“Ah. Old business, long finished. Too tedious for a night such as this.”
“It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it,” Nell said. “But I admit I’m curious.” She cleared her throat, feeling a touch awkward. Reaching out to run her finger along the edge of the baize, she added, “I grew up thinking my father a farmer from Leicestershire, you see. But I supposed you aren’t the best man to ask about the late earl.”
Simon laid down his cue across the corner of the table. “It is a bit of a tall order, to ask me to speak of him in any measured way.” He turned away to the liquor cabinet, glass clinking as he refilled his whisky and poured another for her. She accepted it with a murmur of thanks.
They leaned against the table and drank, their eyes on the fire burning low in the hearth. Woodsmoke and the scent of oiled leather blended with the rich fumes of the drink in her hand; the silence felt companionable. She’d almost forgotten her curiosity when Simon finally continued.
“I will say this: he was learned. He liked the trappings that came with his station. Ritual, tradition, meant a great deal to him. Manliness,” he said after a brief pause. “Honor, courage. He would have flourished as a soldier—a general, mind you, someone who gave orders rather than took them. But he would have put himself at the front lines, no doubt, and cursed any bullets that dared to strike him.” He hesitated. “I suppose you have that quality from him: very little cows you.”
The compliment startled her, since it was delivered at some price to him: it had required him, in a backhanded sort of way, to compliment her father as well. “Thanks,” she mumbled—fighting a losing battle with a foolish smile, which she directed first toward the malachite mantel, then to the tall brass dogs that guarded the fire screen.
“Your courage is not exactly like his, of course.” Simon spoke in a slow, low voice. “His was—inflexible, you see.” She stole a quick glance at him and saw that he wore a slight frown, a look of concentration. “He had no patience for any way but his own.”
She gathered that he was feeling his way out of the previous moment—trying to retreat from any appearance of kindness toward old Rushden. But he was proceeding carefully in the attempt, lest he wound her by accident in the process.
He was kinder, she saw suddenly, than she’d ever imagined a man like him could be.
She put the glass to her lips but didn’t drink.
She liked this man.
The idea required a long, bracing swallow. Like wasn’t a feeling most people held in high value, but when paired with all else Simon St. Maur kindled in her—attraction, interest, admiration, gratitude—kindness tipped the balance of feeling into something hotter. It kindled a greedy longing that flamed through her body and left her unable to remove her attention from his sharp-boned profile.
All she said was: “Go on.”
Simon nodded absently, his eyes on the glass in his hand. “Cowardice rather fixated him. He was terrified, I think, of being seen as … weak? I’ve no idea why, but, yes, that was his devil. And so he saw weakness everywhere, in the most peculiar places.” He gave her a brief look of significance. “In harmless inclinations. An eye for beauty. An interest in art, in music.”
She nodded to show she understood. “I hear you playing the piano sometimes.” Next to the ballroom was a small room filled with a variety of instruments, one of them a glossy black piano. During her lessons with Palmier, she sometimes heard him playing, a low, melodic counterpoint to Mrs. Hemple’s choppy tunes.
“Yes,” he said. “Your mother, in fact, was my first teacher. She was very talented.”
“Was she?” She gave him a chance to speak, then added tentatively, “You play really nicely.”
He smiled slightly. “Thank you.”
He deserved better. “You play … beautifully.”
His smile turned into a grin as he turned toward her. “Do go on.”
She laughed. “But I mean it,” she said, then hesitated. She didn’t want him to think she’d been spying on him. “A few nights ago, just after I’d had my dinner tray, I heard you. You were playing a piece so sad, it nearly made me weep.” She’d been thinking of Mum, and the music had seemed to reach in her soul and squeeze every part of her that hurt. “It went from very high to very low, all at once—like a heart sinking, breaking.”
As soon as the words were out her mouth, she regretted them, her face turning hot. What claptrap. A heart breaking.
But all he said was: “Ah.” And then he held quiet so long that she thought he’d say no more on it. Their eyes locked; inexplicably, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his.
“You describe it well,” he said. “I was heartbroken when I wrote it.”
The admission—so unforeseen, so bloody honest—pierced her like a hook. She stared at him.
He’d written that?
An instant later, she realized what it meant. “That woman you said you loved?”
“Yes.” His smile made her decide never to trust his expressions again; this one looked easy and charming, mismatched entirely to what he said next: “She was the daughter of a composer I studied with in Italy. Rushden had cut me off when I went abroad, and I’d assumed him to have washed his hands of me. I learned differently after we became engaged to marry. He—or rather, Grimston, as his henchman—approached the lady with an offer, a tidy sum for ending our connection. Which she accepted.” He shrugged. “I was very young—twenty-one, the age for melodrama. The etude is not particularly good, you understand, but it’s certainly flamboyant. I was thinking of letting …” He gave her a quick smile, and she had the impression that he’d just decided against saying something. “I’m sorry if it made you cry.”
She shook her head. Not important, apology unnecessary. “That’s awful. No wonder you hated the man.”
“Indeed. Although I suppose he thought he was only doing right by the title.”
It seemed out of character for him to make allowances like that. Because she feared it was for her sake, she said, “A title is just a name. Worth nothing against a person’s love.”
He lifted a brow. “Are you an idealist, then?”
What a question for him to ask—and of her, of all people. They were two people thinking to marry on the cold hopes of a fortune. She might have laughed at him if he weren’t regarding her so soberly: as though he was waiting for an answer that would mean something important.
It made her search herself for the truth. “I suppose it depends on what you mean by the word,” she said slowly. “I’ve always been a hand at wanting the impossible.” Windows in the factory workroom. Respect from the labor-mistress and lads on the street. A home of her own, a bit of security. Someplace to be safe. Somebody to love.
Somebody to love her.
“What’s impossible?” he countered. “If we succeed, Nell, what will be impossible for you?”
Gripped by revelation, she stared at him. In one moment, with one small question, he inadvertently had laid it bare: so little of what she wanted could be bought, no matter the size of the fortune coming to her.
A shadow passed over his face. “What?” he asked. “What did I say?”
She shook her head and looked away from his concern. When he laid a gentle hand on her arm, she closed her eyes, torn by twin impulses: to knock his hand away, or to clutch it in her own.
She’d thought it safe to keep company with him as long as they stayed out of a bedroom, but this friendly companionship was just as dangerous—more so, even. He thought he was offering her everything she needed, while in his kind words, his conversation, his laughter, he tempted her with everything she wanted—none of which he’d offered to give. Why would he? No matter where she’d been born, life had led her far from the places where a man like this looked for love.
God above. How stupid, how unforgivably idiotic, to be suddenly and burningly jealous of a woman whose name she didn’t even know.
She opened her eyes. “Do you think—”
Do you think you could ever love a girl like me?
Only a fool asked such a question when she knew she wouldn’t like the answer.
On a deep breath, she called up a smile. “I could beat you blindfolded,” she said as she put aside her glass. “You should have asked for a handicap.”
And then, retrieving her cue and bending over the table, she knocked off a shot: striking the red ball into his, she sent them both into the top left pocket, while her own went careening into the right. The ten strokes she netted for it gave her the victory.
When she faced him, his amazed expression held none of the disappointment it ought to show. Slowly he set down his glass. “Well done,” he said, and then, shaking his head, he began to laugh. “My God! Nell, I’ve never seen anything to match that!”
She broke into a grin. “Aye, well,” she said, scuffing her foot against the carpet, making a mocking little show of false modesty for him, but only because she knew he’d see through it. “I’ve never been carried out on shoulders, but I’ve been bought a few rounds, let’s just say.”
“I’ll wager you have! Or, no.” He pulled a face, mocking himself, now. “No more wagers with you.”
“Aye, right you are. You’re lucky I only asked for the dress and twenty pounds. With your nonsense about terms, I might have asked for anything. This house, say!”
His smile faded, but his regard did not waver. “Ask for it,” he said. “It’s yours.”
A queer excitement rippled through her stomach. The way he was looking at her …
She cleared her throat. “Enough wagering for the night. I beat you soundly. I reckon you’ve learned your lesson.”
“And yet, as you once observed, I’m a bit of a cheater.” He took up her cue, which she’d laid between them, and put it behind him, the movement precise and deliberate. “You see, I’m going to insist on my five minutes anyway.”
Her body understood before her mind did. It pulsed from head to toe. Yes, she thought, and stepped toward him; and then: No, no, no, and stepped back again. After the mad thoughts she’d just been entertaining, it would be the height of recklessness to put her body to his. If a woman could win love with her body, the world would have no bastards.
But oh, he was so beautiful. As he took the step that closed the distance between them, his slow smile might have lured the angels from heaven, flocking noisily, arms outstretched, happy to burn for him.
“We had an agreement.” She didn’t sound convincing even to herself. “You said you wouldn’t do—”
He laid his fingers over her lips. As easy as that, everything in her—breath, heart, brain—froze. The next second, her senses awoke again, telescoping on that single delicious inch where his skin touched hers. She stood immobile, the table at her back, small shocks radiating from the pit of her stomach.
He leaned forward to press his cheek against her own. In her ear, he whispered, “What mustn’t I do?”
Her mouth went dry. She had no honest answer to give. Do anything, she thought.
With one finger still laid across her lips, he used his other hand to delicately cup the back of her neck. She sucked in a breath as his lips, soft and hot, pressed against the tender skin beneath her ear. “Is this what I shouldn’t do?” he breathed.
The gentle press of his fingertips at her nape, her lips, burned like brands. It wasn’t fear that made her shudder. Everywhere she felt the heat of him, and he was melting her, like flame to pliant wax. “No,” she managed. Do this all you like.
His finger slipped from her mouth. He pulled back to look into her face, his own so close that she could see the shadow cast by his lashes along his cheeks. With a curious, one-sided smile, he returned his finger to her lips, and then, steadily, his eyes daring her to protest, he pushed one finger against the seam, breaching her mouth.
His finger slid in to touch her tongue.
Shock scattered her thoughts. The taste of him sent a pang through her, close to hunger but more frantic, more needy. In all her life, she had never been so hungry for food. Caught in the spell of his eyes, she held very still. Slowly he pushed the finger in to the middle knuckle; as he withdrew, her teeth scraped over his skin. He did it again, invading her with steady, gentle pressure; retreating with grave-eyed concentration. And all she could do was lean against the table—stunned, thrumming with tension. Men did such things? He did such things.
She felt his breath on her cheek, and then, with the tip of his finger still in her mouth, he placed his lips against her chin, sliding them up to nip at her lower lip, and then up yet again, so his tongue licked gently at her upper lip. He traced the underside, played delicately at the corner of her mouth. She inhaled, an involuntarily moan, and he withdrew his finger. The rasp of his breathing filled her ears; and then he cupped her cheek firmly and laid his mouth over her own, angling her head back so his tongue fully penetrated her mouth.
Something snapped in her. Clean and simple. This was simple. Want, and the solution for it: him. She grabbed at his shirtsleeves, then the backs of his arms, desperate to pull him against her. He stepped between her legs, and dimly she felt the cool air as he gathered her skirts up, higher and higher yet. His thigh parted her legs and he moved into the space between them, unyielding in his advance. His hands hooked under her thighs to lift her to the tabletop. With his mouth on hers, she closed her thighs around his narrow hips, so the solid, hardening length of him nudged up against the spot where she was softest.
His kiss offered no mercy. She didn’t want it. She arched upward to the force of his kiss, craving more of the pressure, the grind and thrust as he rolled his hips against her. His hand slipped down to her breast; his thumb drew a light circle around her nipple, once, twice, and her hands, somehow now on his back, dug in to demand more. His fingers firmed, pulling, tugging, rubbing her nipple as his arm slipped up her back, making a long, steady brace for her spine as he lowered her backward, slowly, laying her almost tenderly against the baize tabletop.
A soft click sounded: in the periphery of her vision, she saw a cue fall against the table, then slide slowly out of sight to thump onto the carpet.
Irrelevant, unimportant. Her hands scratched across his nape into his hair, her fingers twining through the thick, soft strands. A low noise came from him. He moved against her sinuously, his hips arching and pressing, making her gasp as their lips met again. She could no longer govern herself; she twisted up against him without conscious intention, shuddering as his hand found her ankle, slid open-palmed up her calf, over her knee, his hot skin burning through the thin layer of silk until it found the gap between garter and combination and closed in a firm grip on her thigh.
Harder, she thought. Being gripped, being held, being directed—he nudged her thigh, opened her wider to him—felt good, right, in a way that she had never imagined. She made a noise of protest when his body withdrew from hers, but then his hand came between them, down low, brushing against her. A grunt burst from her. Her body wasn’t hers; it bucked up against the heel of his palm to show its approval.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hot, rough. His mouth moved down her neck, her chest, and his hands seemed to be everywhere, sliding and molding and shaping and stroking, now her tits, and now, sliding along the baize beneath her, to cup her arse, to squeeze and lift. Then he took hold of her neckline, pulling it down; she heard fabric rip, felt his clever fingers freeing her breast of the corset. His head slipped down farther yet, the hot, hot wetness of his mouth closing over her nipple. His teeth, God above, he was like a devil above her, a dark-haired demon who knew exactly where to touch, how to suck and lick her; there was no part of her not throbbing for him.
His hand delved below again, probing, testing; a high sound broke from her throat as he found the spot where her pleasure concentrated. As he stroked, hidden parts of her opened and clutched for hope of him, for hope of that long, hard erection she’d felt against her before. It wasn’t enough, or it was too much, this torment he worked with his hand. She twisted and his mouth returned to hers, his hand hooking in her hair, tightening to the edge of pain. His kiss grew ferocious, his hand between her legs moving insistently, issuing a demand that grew harder and faster, drawing her out, tighter, higher, to the edge of—
The sensation burst over her, rippled and purled through her, pleasure so intense that she cried out. With the flat of his palm he cupped her until she eased, and then his kiss grew gentler, and his mouth broke from hers to wander her face, to trace the line of her jaw, until she put her arms around him tightly, and he turned his face into her hair, his ragged breath loud in her ear.
Her hand traced the long line of his back, skated the curve of his spine, reached the hard muscle of his buttocks, which tightened beneath her fingers. The feel of him stirred her anew.
This wasn’t like hunger at all, not if it could be roused again so quickly after being fully satisfied. She shifted beneath him, pushed up against him, amazed at herself as she issued the silent demand.
His hoarse laugh warmed her ear. That laughter made her go still. She heard in it a wealth of knowledge she didn’t yet share.
“Tomorrow,” he said as he lifted his head to look into her face. The curve of his mouth bespoke satisfaction—and a promise he underscored by the light touch he traced over her bottom lip. “I have the license,” he said, his slumberous gaze intent on hers. “We’ll be wed, and then …” His smile tipped into a lazy angle. “You’ll decide which you like better: this table, or my bed.”