She had done that, she marveled. She. Her power to provoke such a reaction emboldened her. She nipped at his lip and, when he responded with his tongue, gave him her own. The growl he made in his throat nearly undid her.
“I have wanted to touch you,” she whispered, “for quite some time. I wonder if I might …” She dragged her hand down the front of his chest, letting her fingers graze the soft fabric of his shirt.
A corner of his mouth quirked up, and he leaned back to give her more of him. “By all means.”
She brushed her hand down farther, over his hips and thighs, and in answer he gripped her buttocks and drew her hips against his body, where a throbbing hardness beat intently with a pulse that matched the flame burning low, so low, in her stomach.
She had never before touched a man in such a way, and the botanist in her was suddenly at full attention, rapt with the project of matching the contours of his sex to the drawings she had seen in books. Her fingers moved to feel him, grazing his erection through his breeches until he gasped.
She withdrew her hand. “That hurts?” she asked.
“No, Cavendish,” he said wryly, a sheen of pleasure cast about his eyes.
Oh.
For a moment they both paused, laughing. He gripped her thighs and wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled her with him to the sofa. She felt him pulsing against her as his hands slipped inside her bodice.
He paused, his eyes a question. “Stop me if I—”
She didn’t want to stop him. She did not want caution. She wanted to be consumed.
She placed her hands on his over her aching breasts, urging him onward, hoping he could sense what was inside of her, that he would know how badly she wanted this, how little she cared for proprieties. That she trusted he would know just what to do, because she didn’t, and she wanted to.
“I want to feel you,” she whispered. “Everywhere.”
She felt him throw off hesitation like a cloak. He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in, molding her breasts out of her stays until the nipples rose above the sober gray ribbon of her neckline. They were hard and pink in the firelight, and the sight of them, feverish in his large hands, puckering for his attentions, made her feel like a rod of lightning.
She lost all thoughts of science. She instinctively pressed herself against him until the juncture of her thighs came flush with his erection. The pressure of it against her own sex was a revelation, and she gasped and moved closer, wanting to feel the shock of it again, wanting to feel the parts of him that were hard and rough against the parts of her that were soft and pliant. “Please,” she whispered mindlessly, not quite sure what she was asking for.
His hand found its way beneath her gown and petticoats, until it rested on her chemise, his fingers grazing her through the linen. The feel of his hand against the juncture of her body was nearly shattering. She rocked against him, abandoning herself to the lovely pressure of his palm.
“I want to look at you,” he murmured in her ear.
“Yes,” she whispered. She wanted to be seen.
He grabbed fistfuls of her skirts and bunched them around her waist until she was exposed, the dark heart between her thighs bare to him. He spread her legs and sighed.
“Fuck,” he breathed in softly. A declaration that should not have melted her. But did.
His gaze fell back upon her face. “So beautiful,” he murmured. And indeed, she felt beautiful. Desirable and lush, an orchid blooming for the sun. Like the lady in the plate, aroused and queenly in the warmth of her lover’s gaze.
He slowly stroked along her thigh, brushing his fingers up, up until they dipped inside her. She gasped. His hand lingered just below the swollen nubbin at her center, teasing it until he had her shaking. She wanted more—to be full of him. She pressed herself up against his thighs, searching for the pressure of his cock.
“Yes, move against me,” he moaned, encouraging her with his own movements to follow her instincts. She opened her thighs to clench him as his hands brought wave after wave of sensation, turning her into something slick and molten and thrumming. She arched her back as the pleasures began to rise into something combustible.
But at the critical moment he lifted himself off her and pinned her hands above her head. “Not yet, Cavendish. First I want to taste you.” Before she could think to be shocked, he shifted so that his mouth was at the edge of her thighs. “May I?”
His breath on her flesh dissolved anything but the desire for more of it. “Please.”
He parted her, running his hand along her sex with reverence, his eyes dark with desire. Rapt, he traced the wetness there with his tongue. And then his mouth was on her fully, urging her to be wanton, to breathe him in, to use him to take what her body wanted.
The room went white. This man must have indeed spent a great deal of time studying that book.
She writhed against his lips. He took his mouth away for a searing instant and looked into her eyes. “Come for me, Poppy,” he whispered. “I want to feel you.”
His mouth closed around her bud and his tongue spread softly, softly, and with a mind-shattering clench, sucked right where she pulsed most desperately. She exploded, a pang spreading into a wave and cresting higher and higher until she was underwater, gasping. She buried her face into the sofa and allowed herself to moan with pleasure, heedless of passing ears, bucking against his face with each tremor, clutching at his hair. He encouraged her cries with his mouth, nuzzling gently, helping her return to herself as the waves slowed and she came, finally, apart.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. He was sultry and beautiful, his glossy hair dark and shimmering in the firelight, his eyes drinking her in from beneath his lashes. She was transfixed by him, his male beauty, his sorcery over her body. She pulled him toward her to kiss him and could taste the salt of her desire on his lips.
The luxury of holding him, with his heat and linen crispness and that way he had of trembling when she touched his skin, made her feel rich.
Curiosities she’d pondered in the dark for years flooded her head, and she scarcely knew which parts of him she wanted to linger over first. She ran her hands down his broad chest and back over the fine snowy fabric of his shirt. He was so much larger than her, and yet, in her arms, she sensed a shyness—he held himself back like he thought he might crush her. Tentatively she ran her hands over the place where the long length of his shaft announced itself. Beneath his shirt the velvet tip of it had pushed out above the waistline of his breeches, where it strained against the trail of hair at his belly. At its tip, a tear. All at once she was wild again, her hands searching for the placket to unleash him. His cock jumped at her touch. She ran her hands around it, enjoyed his gasp in response, then dragged her fingers up over his flat belly and into the hair beneath his shirt. Her hands grazed something cold.
“What’s this?” she asked, finding a rather intricately wrought iron key on a leather cord beneath his shirt. She lifted up the linen farther to investigate.
His hand clamped down over hers so quickly it startled the breath from her. “No.”
She dropped the key and placed her hands back on his hips, but he jerked away from her.
“Stop,” he ordered. His voice had lost the husky tone of arousal. It was ice.
He moved out of reach. A tendon in his neck twitched.
She drew back, alarmed. She had never been intimate with a man in this way. There had been only the one half-permitted, oft-regretted fumbling moment in the woods with Tom. This had all happened so suddenly, a blinding burst of wanting falling upon her like drunkenness or a fit of madness. Had she been too forward? Done something to cause him offense?