Wolfe’s fingertips closed over the velvet peak of Jessica’s breast. He plucked delicately, listened to the husky breaking of her breath over his name, and felt her nipple harden in a rush that left it pressing against the sheer white silk of her gown.
«I think,» he said thickly, «the bud isn’t frightened of the sun.»
His fingertips moved again and again. He heard the tiny cry from the back of Jessica’s throat. When he finally looked away from the hungry pink bud, she was watching him with wide eyes.
«You’re trembling,» Wolfe said.
«I can’t help it. When you look at me like that it’s all I can do to breathe.»
«How am I looking at you?»
«As though you want to…»
Jessica’s voice dried up. The heat of her blush radiated beneath his hand.
«As though I want to…?» he asked huskily.
«Kiss me,» she whispered. «There.»
«Yes. Hold onto me, Jessi. It begins now.»
Frozen between disbelief and anticipation, Jessica felt Wolfe’s body shift along hers, felt his mouth against the pulse beating frantically in her neck, felt his breath flow warmly over her skin, felt him smooth first one cheek and then the other over her breasts. Distantly she realized that his hands were moving down her body as well. The tiny little fastenings at the front of her gown were dissolving like snow beneath flame. The feel of silk falling away from her breasts made her shiver as her nipples drew into peaks.
Then she realized he meant to undress her completely.
«Wolfe —» her voice broke.
«This is part of intimacy. I won’t hurt you, Jessi. Will you let me undress you?»
Her breath came out in a ragged rush. «Yes.»
There was a shimmering silence broken only by the secret sounds of Jessica’s gown being eased from her body by Wolfe’s hands. She trembled visibly, but made no effort to cover herself when the cool air of the room washed over her naked breasts.
«You’re perfectly formed,» Wolfe said in a hushed voice. Upon the heels of that discovery came another. «And I have dreamed of seeing you like this since your fifteenth summer.»
The intensity of Wolfe’s voice and his indigo eyes devouring her made Jessica feel both nervous and beautiful. It was a moment before the meaning of his words sank in.
«When I was fifteen?» she asked in a low voice.
«Lady Victoria was right. I wanted you so much I didn’t let myself think of you as a woman. But I couldn’t control my dreams.» Wolfe’s voice deepened. «In my dreams I came to you, undressed you, tasted you. My dreams drove me from England.»
«Not the duchess and the scandal?»
Without answering, Wolfe ran his fingertips from the pulse beating in Jessica’s throat to the lush mahogany cloud at the apex of her thighs and back up again. The sound of his name shivering from her lips made him smile despite the need raking him with claws of fire.
Once Wolfe would have been afraid to continue touching Jessica, afraid to trust his own control. Once, but no longer. He had only to think of what her childhood had been like and ice condensed within him, taking the pain of unrelieved hunger from his body, giving him the strength to enjoy her without claiming her.
Yet the hunger remained, growing with each breath.
«The duchess was a convenience,» Wolfe said simply, tracing a line of fire down Jessica’s body again. «I thought if I took a lover, my dreams would be my own.»
«Were they?»
The words were breathless, squeezed past the tension in Jessica’s throat. She wanted to cover herself and hide…and she wanted to stretch like a cat beneath Wolfe’s hand. The conflicting impulses rippled through her, tightening her nerves until she shivered.
«My dreams haven’t been my own since we took shelter from a rainstorm beneath an oak. You were drenched. Your dress clung to your breasts and your nipples stood hard against the cloth.»
Wolfe’s dark head bent until he could kiss the wild pulse in Jessica’s throat.
«I wondered if your nipples would tighten like that for me,» he whispered.
The tiny sound Jessica made licked over Wolfe’s senses. He set his teeth delicately where her neck curved into her shoulder.
«You haunted me,» Wolfe said. «I told myself it was my age, the cold rutting with aristocratic women, my unruly body. I told myself everything but the truth. I wanted you until I couldn’t look at you without being aroused.»
His mouth glided lower, exploring the warm valley between Jessica’s breasts. Her heartbeat shook her, but it was Wolfe’s words as much as the warmth of his breath on her bare skin that made her tremble. The tip of his tongue drew a line of molten heat over her.
«You taste like a rose,» he whispered.
Wolfe turned his head from side to side, savoring Jessica’s warmth and her scent, enjoying her with a frank sensuality that made breath fill her throat until she ached. With a shivering sound she moved beneath him, turning slowly against his caressing mouth without understanding why.
«You’re burning me,» he whispered.
«’Tisyou who burn me. Your mouth is fire.»
Hunger ran through Wolfe, tightening his body until he let out his pent-up breath in a long, soundless sigh.
«You’ve burned me for so many years,» he said. «I was trying to find an excuse for leaving England when the duchess threw her very public tantrum over my absence from her bed. Finally Lord Robert agreed that he could live without the company of his bastard for a time.»
Wolfe’s dark cheek smoothed over the swell of Jessica’s breast. Her hands lifted, but not to push him away. His words disarmed her, seducing her even as his caresses set her afire. She threaded her fingers into the midnight thickness of Wolfe’s hair until she could feel the living warmth of his scalp. Sensing the response that went through him, she drew her nails lightly over his scalp once more.
«I wept when I heard you were leaving,» she whispered.
«Did you? I saw only your smile and heard only the sharp edge of your tongue over my taste in duchesses.»
«I was angry with you.»
«You were jealous of me, Jessi. The way a woman is jealous of her man. Lady Victoria saw that. Just as she saw what I concealed even from myself.»
«What was that?»
«I couldn’t hear your voice, I couldn’t smell a rose, I couldn’t pass a room where you had recently been without becoming aroused. I was being drawn upon a rack. There was no end to it, no relief in other women, nothing I could do but leave.»
Wolfe looked up at Jessica, making no effort to conceal the desire for her that had sunk so deeply into him through the years that he no more noticed it than he noticed the marrow of his bones.
«I didn’t know,» she whispered.
Trembling, Jessica met Wolfe’s eyes. The elemental need in him rushed through her body in a glittering tide.
«I kept my need from you even more carefully than I kept it from myself,» he said.
Slowly Wolfe turned his head away. His dark glance went back down her body. The contrast between pale, luminous skin and mahogany fire was new each time he saw it. So was the fullness of her breasts and hips, a lush feminine promise that was repeated in the graceful curves of her legs.
«You took the color from the sky when you left,» Jessica whispered. «Oh, Wolfe, I missed you until I thought I would die. I loved you so much. I’ve always loved you.»
His heartbeat hesitated, then resumed with a heavy pulse.
«Don’t love me, Jessi. It will only hurt us both. I should have kept my need from you even now. But I can’t. You are too beautiful and I have dreamed of you too long.»
