Her dress started to slide. She grabbed at it, but, “I have it,” he said, and eased it down over her hips and all the way to the floor. He knelt and looked up at her, waiting, and she had no option but to step out of it, leaving her in just her underclothes. He gathered up the folds and draped the dress over the bed rail.
She began to unhook her stays—she’d chosen front-fastening ones deliberately—but, “Allow me.” His voice was slightly husky.
She could barely breathe as one by one he undid the hooks down the front of her stays. She wore a chemise underneath, but even so, she felt the brush of his knuckles through the fine lawn fabric. Her nipples were hard and tight and extraordinarily sensitive.
On the fifth hook he looked up from his task. “You can breathe, you know.”
She huffed in a nervous half laugh, and he leaned forward and kissed her, lavish, leisurely kisses that sent shivers coursing through her again. Straightening, he slipped her stays down her arms and tossed them aside. He’d undone the rest of the hooks while kissing her; she hadn’t even noticed.
He was breathing more heavily now. So was she. He reached for the buttons on the fall of his buckskin breeches.
“I’ll get my stockings.” She turned away hastily and sat on the bed. She stripped off her stockings and then her drawers. All she wore now was her chemise.
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “My nightgown—it’s in the valise.”
“You won’t need a nightgown.” His voice was deep and a little hoarse. She turned to say something—but every word evaporated from her brain. He was naked. Completely, totally naked.
Alice didn’t know where to look. She’d never seen a naked man before. Thaddeus had always come to her either fully dressed or, in the early part of their marriage, in a dressing gown with a nightshirt underneath. And she’d always worn a nightgown.
She glanced at him, then away, and then back again, until she was unable to look away. She was fascinated by the hard-packed masculine shape of him, so different from her.
And his male parts—was that what they looked like? She’d only felt them—it—pounding into her. She swallowed. He looked bigger in that area than Thaddeus.
Would bigger mean more painful?
She closed her eyes briefly. Stop thinking about Thaddeus, she told herself. This was James, and it was going to be different—quite different. It had to be.
James stood and let her look, seemingly quite comfortable in his bare skin.
Did he expect the same of her? She couldn’t. She’d never been wholly naked in front of anyone before—only her maid when she was in her bath. She dragged her gaze off him and dived under the covers. The sheets were smooth and cold.
He slid into the bed as well, and she immediately felt the effect of his big, warm body so close to hers. He rolled onto his side, facing her, and pulled her close.
Rain spattered against the windows. Wind tossed the branches around and moaned around the chimney. The heat of his body soaked into hers.
This was it.
She opened her legs and braced herself.
He paused. “Relax,” he said softly. “Let’s just kiss for a while,” and before she could say anything, his mouth was on hers again, and she gave herself wholly up to the delights of kissing.
As they kissed, his hands roved over her body, caressing, soothing away some nerves while at the same time arousing others. He feathered kisses everywhere: across her eyelids, in the delicate whorls of her ears, along her jawline; finding a pulse here, a sensitive spot there; causing exquisite shivers of pleasure wherever he went. He nibbled his way down her neck and she found herself arching sensuously like a cat beneath his ministrations.
He brushed a hand across her breast and the tight, aching nipple thrust hard against him. Cupping her breast in one big hand, he scratched the nipple lightly through the fabric of her chemise. She gasped as tiny sparks of sensation stabbed through her.
“You like that, don’t you?”
A kind of humming noise came from her. She wanted to say something to him, but her mind was blank of words: there was only sensation. And James. She ran her hands over him, enjoying the contrast of his hard, masculine body with the softness of hers, his smooth, firm chest. She pressed her face against the skin of his chest and inhaled deeply, as she’d wanted to do in the carriage earlier. Essence of James.
His big, warm hands caressed her thighs and hips and belly. How had she never known the delight of skin against skin? She caressed him feverishly, her heart pounding, her whole focus narrowed to whichever part of her body he was touching.
He cupped her face and kissed her again—deep, drugging kisses. Then he bent and placed his mouth over her breast and through her chemise, teased her nipple with his tongue. Waves of pleasure rippled through her, and then he sucked hard, and she arched and almost came off the bed as a fierce spear of pleasure-pain spiked through her.
She lay back, gasping, and before she realized it, he was raising her chemise. Her scrambled brain focused and she braced herself for his entry. But he kept pushing the chemise up. “Lift your bottom.” She lifted, and he pulled her chemise up over her head and tossed it aside. And she was naked.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and she warmed at the appreciation in his voice.
He lowered his head to her breasts again, her full and aching breasts, unbearably sensitive, and she shuddered beneath him in waves of pleasure. And slowly her body built to an aching need for . . . she did not know what.
His hand slipped between her thighs and cupped her there. Warmth spread from where they touched, and her insides rippled and clenched.
One large finger moved, stroking the delicate folds, and a spear of hot sensation stabbed through her. Then another and another. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she trembled and writhed beneath his knowing caresses.
Her legs quivered, then fell apart, loose and trembling—her body was wholly out of her control. She thrust against his hand, frantically, feverishly, grasping for something, she knew not what.
Pressure built and built inside her, she thrashed against him, and just as she was sure she was going to burst, she heard a high, wavering sound as something happened and she . . . shattered.
Slowly her wits returned. She lay against him, her breath slowing, enveloped by a feeling of lazy euphoria. And amazement. Then as she was slowly drifting back to earth, he caressed her intimately again, rose up and entered her with one slow, sure movement.
Alice’s eyes flew open in surprise. There was no discomfort at all. It felt right, amazingly, wonderfully right.
He was watching her, his gray eyes intense, smoky with desire. He stroked her again in that place between her thighs, and she felt the excitement start to build again. He began to move within her, slow and deliberate, and she gasped with each thrust. Without conscious volition, she found herself lifting her body, pushing herself against him in time with each thrust.