“You hate being imperfect.” Abigail knelt and started on the buttons of his falls. “I’m none too keen on some of my shortcomings either. My breasts are different sizes. I never noticed, until Champlain kindly pointed it out to me.”
“He pointed it out to you?”
She finished with his falls. “He made something of a study of the matter, and even wanted to measure…It’s all ridiculous. Do men go around measuring their cocks?”
“Some of us, figuratively if not literally. Promise me you won’t run shrieking for the carriage?”
Abigail wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. “I won’t run shrieking to the carriage.”
“There’s something else. About my canes.”
She swiped her tongue across his nipple. “Hmm.”
“I can’t…you know…unless my cane is within my reach. That feels lovely.”
She teased him for a moment, long enough to get herself stirred up—more stirred up—then she sat back. “I will take off my chemise when you remove your breeches.”
“Dear God, Abigail, that’s rather…Oh, very well. You first.”
He’d risen to her challenge, but she had expected no less of him. Taking off her chemise was harder than she’d thought, though. Perhaps one lost the habit of physical intimacy, or perhaps one learned the price of folly. Abigail remained kneeling before Stephen and drew the shift over her head.
“The right one is larger,” she said, looking down at her bare breasts.
“Nonsense. They are both perfect.”
If Stephen’s expression was any indication, they were. “Champlain was an idiot,” Abigail said. “Thank you for illuminating that fact. Your breeches, Stephen. Now.”
He stood, put a hand on her shoulder, and used her for balance as he stepped out of his breeches and kicked them onto the reading chair.
When she’d risen to stand next to him beside the sofa, he took her hand and bowed. “Miss Abigail Abbott, may I make known to you Lord Stephen Wentworth, in all his abundant natural glory, and more than a bit aroused. Will you please come to bed with me?”
She wrapped her hand around his shaft, which was arrowed straight up along the midline of his taut, muscled belly. “Yes. Yes, absolutely, I will come to bed with you.”
“Don’t you want to inspect my knee?”
“No. Stephen, I do not want to inspect your perishing knee.”
He pulled her close and fell with her straight back onto the sofa.
Stephen did not normally make a fuss about taking off his clothes. He was usually too eager to get to the part about mutual pleasure and bone-deep satisfaction. Abigail Abbott, however, had ambushed him.
He hadn’t been able to manufacture subdued lighting, a big bed that sat low enough that no steps were needed to climb into it, a perch for his canes, and other accommodations that freed him to focus on frolicking. Instead he was sprawled on the pulled-out sofa in a room full of ledgers and correspondence, sunlight finding its way through the cracks in the curtains.
Abigail crouched over him, her breasts a soft wonderment against his chest. “There’s a name for this,” she said, nuzzling his neck. “When the female is atop the male. I forget what it is.”
“You will forget the day of the week, if I acquit myself properly. The term for it is happiness, at least for the male. I want to be inside you.”
Oh, that was gracelessness incarnate, that was.
She nipped his ear. “One did get the impression you were interested in making my intimate acquaintance. Guess what I want?”
To have me inside you. “To have the size of your breasts compared by a man with science running in his very veins.” A trickle of science, next to a roaring torrent of lust.
Abigail brushed her sex over his cock, and the roaring torrent threatened to overflow its banks.
Get hold of your damned self, bucko. Show the lady some consideration. Stephen palmed Abigail’s breasts and she ceased sucking on his earlobe. His next foray was to trace the curve of her hip and stroke his hands over her bum. She sighed, her breath breezing past his ear.
She liked to be petted. Thank the heavenly powers, Stephen could work with that.
“Let’s get comfortable, shall we?” He elbow-walked himself over the cushions so the sofa could serve as a proper bed and tugged Abigail down beside him. “There’s a quilt…” He hooked the blanket with his good foot and dragged it up within reach. “Wouldn’t want you taking a chill.”
He’d no sooner arranged the quilt than Abigail had a knee resting on his thighs and a hand drifting across the hair of his chest. She was gently pinning him down—as if he might totter off to do a spot of naked accounting when she wasn’t looking?
“Now what?” she asked.
“Now we get to know each other. I’m ticklish.” He took her hand and placed it right beneath his ribs. “I suspect most people are, but you can reduce me to begging if you tickle me here. What about you?”
“I won’t tickle you if you don’t want me to.”
“Good to know.” She sounded in complete earnest, and Stephen’s desire ebbed the tiniest bit. He tried again. “I like to sleep with a window open on even the most bitter nights. If a window is locked, I can’t crawl out of it.” He’d never told that to anybody. Duncan hadn’t remarked it in all their travels, probably considering a cracked window just one more among numerous eccentricities.
“I sleep with a window open in summer, I suppose.”
The lady who’d been so eager to get Stephen into bed had retreated somewhere behind a locked window. Why?
“Abigail, what’s wrong?”
Her hand remained right where it was, no happy explorations to the south. “Nothing. I like that you use my name.”
Stephen plumbed the depths of that admission and came up with a few possible insights, none of them reflecting well on the late Lord Champlain.
“I like that we are to become lovers, Abigail.” He wrapped his arms around her and wrestled her over him. “Kiss me, please.”
She obliged, and by slow degrees and sweet caresses, he felt the passion rising in her once more. Her breasts were sensitive, and he’d just graduated from teasing her nipples with his fingers to indulging that same pleasure with his mouth when she gave his cock another delicious caress with her sex.
“Whenever you please,” he said, lifting his hips to move with her. “You choose the moment, Abigail.”
She sat back, and he died a little, though the chance to behold her was lovely.
Her expression was thoughtful as she casually circled the tip of his cock with her index finger. “Champlain would be done by now. Dressed and one boot out the door, tossing a string of stupid pet names at me over his shoulder.”
“As a wise woman once said, Champlain was an idiot. Lovemaking with you is worth savoring, Abigail. I will tarry on this sofa all afternoon if you’ll allow it.” All week, all year. Stephen traced the curve of her jaw, then her brows, wishing he could make her smile, loving that she wasn’t pretending jolliness for his sake.
She caught his hand and kissed his palm. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought to bring memories to bed with me, but then…” She curled down against Stephen’s chest, the sweetest gesture of trust a woman had ever bestowed on him.