“I’m almost naked,” she bit out, wanting him to do
“I am highly aware of that fact.” Reaching down, he stroked himself through his breeches, his long fingers rubbing along the length of the pronounced bulge.
“Have you no shame?” Her tone was curt, her emotions high. She was a virgin, for God’s sake, and he was giving her too much breathing room. She was achingly aware of everything around her, when what she wanted was to be lost to the barrage of sensations he could so easily overwhelm her with.
“None at all. And I would like for you to have none either. Eliza…” His tone softened. “Did I not explain myself clearly? Don’t you understand that you are uniquely appealing to me? You worry that exposing your body will make you vulnerable, but I’m the one who will be left raw by the experience.”
She stood there for a long moment, lip quivering. He was forcing her to reason everything out during the one occasion when she didn’t want to think at all.
Jasper watched her with those intense dark eyes, his body made golden by the flickering candlelight. How many times had he experienced this sequence of events to be so nonchalant? Dozens? More…?
She would not be surprised. What woman could resist him?
Her jaw clenched. He was right to avoid responsibility for her choice to be here. It was her decision, and she needed to claim it. Why should she tell herself that she was acting on instinct when that was a lie?
She was not like her mother. She was not driven to rashness by passion. She knew damn well what she was doing.
Eliza launched herself at him. Two running steps and a wild leap, and she was upon him. He caught her, laughing. Lifting her feet from the floor, he spun and strode into the bedroom.
“Not adventuresome?” he teased, setting her down at the foot of the bed. He looked at her with such an expression of proprietary pride that her throat tightened.
Pivoting on his bare feet, Jasper locked the bedroom door.
“I thought we were the only ones here?” she queried, her heart still racing from her leap off the proverbial cliff.
“You are assuming I’m locking others out, instead of locking you in…”
The thought of capture excited her. She had run willingly into the lion’s den, and now there was no turning back.
He leaned back against the door, his palms pressed flat to the panels and one ankle crossed over the other. The perfect appearance of insouciant leisure. But he’d never been able to hide his predaceous nature from her. She had seen it from the first and she saw it now: the high color on his throat and cheekbones, the fine sheen of sweat on his chest, the flaring of his nostrils, and the narrowed, concentrated gaze.
One wrong move and he would pounce…
Reaching up, she began to pull the pins from her hair. She dropped them on the floor, one by one, as he’d done with his cravat. There was something oddly freeing in that carelessness. The act of tossing aside the trappings that restrained. Here in this room with Jasper, she could finally cast off the confusing strictures of society and be what she had always wanted to be-liberated and independent.
After the last pin dropped, she shook out her hair, relishing the tingling of her scalp. She was clad in only her loosened stays and pantalettes, but she was not embarrassed or cold. There was no way she could be, when warmed by a stare as heated as Jasper’s.
He didn’t move, barely blinked. As the silence lengthened, she lost courage and clasped her hands in front of her.
“You are so beautiful, Eliza.” His hand lifted to his chest and rubbed, as if to soothe a pain there. “I adore your freckles. Do you have them everywhere?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded. “It is the bane of red hair, I’m afraid.”
“I will kiss every one of them,” he vowed. “They are delightful.”
“Fustian,” she scoffed. “No one likes freckles.”
Jasper’s eyes twinkled in the light of the bedside tapers. “Isn’t there anything about me you adore? Any part of me you want to kiss?”
“I am mad for every inch of you,” she pronounced with heartfelt fervency. “The way you smell. The cut of your hair. The line of your jaw. I’m especially taken with your hands. I can feel the strength in them when you touch me. You could crush my bones in your grip, but instead you are so gentle.”
He held both hands out, offering them to her. She rushed forward, knowing his touch would calm and distract her. “Sometimes I fear crushing you,” he confessed with a hitch in his voice.
Catching his hands with hers, Eliza pressed a kiss into each palm. “Is that why you stand so still?”
“Yes.”
“What would you do, if you had no need for restraint?”
As before, he brought her hand to rest over his heart, allowing her to feel its racing. “I would pin you to this door behind me and take you, swift and hard. Then I would lay you on the floor, spread you wide, and have you again. Slowly. Deeply. Eventually, we might make it to the bed, but I couldn’t guarantee it.”
“It sounds…savage.”
“You make me feel that way. If I could curb the need I have for you, I would. Perhaps, after tonight, it will be more manageable. I pray that’s the case.”
The roughness in his voice was a caress of its own. Freed from the pressure of her stays, the tips of her breasts throbbed and puckered tight. She was eye level with his chest, which made her wonder if his nipples were as sensitive as hers. The flat disks were surrounded by gooseflesh. Giving in to the urge, Eliza leaned forward and warmed one with a lick of her tongue.
“Bloody hell,” he bit out, jerking violently.
Jasper spun her away from him in a dizzying pivot. The ripping of her stays was like a crack of thunder in the room, followed by the rush of cool air across her back and the soft tickle of her hair beneath her shoulder blades. Her pantalettes were next, the tie at her waist digging briefly into her flesh before breaking in half. The flesh- colored stockinette was rent into two halves that clung to her ankles by the fastenings there.
She’d barely registered that she was excited by his loss of control when a hand at her lower back steered her forward, straight up the short steps at the foot of the bed and onto the mattress.
On her hands and knees, she crawled across the burgundy counterpane, highly conscious of everything she was exposing to him in the process. His hand caught her ankle when she reached the middle of the massive bed, halting her. She dropped to her stomach in a bid for modesty. The remnants of her pantaloons were stripped from her legs and discarded.
Eliza didn’t move, barely breathed.
“Are you frightened?” he asked gruffly.
She had to force herself to think about her feelings. “I d-don’t know.”
Jasper stretched out beside her, his arm extended above their heads. With his other hand, he urged her to roll to her side, so that her back was against his sweat-dampened chest. He leaned forward and rested his cheek against her shoulder, his silky hair brushing softly against her skin. His arm came around her waist and held her tightly to him. He didn’t move. Eventually, she relaxed into his warmth, inhaling the scent of him, which was made stronger by the tremendous heat of his body. He felt fevered against her flesh.
It took long moments, but over time his temperature cooled and his breathing slowed.
“Jasper…?”
His hand at her waist moved higher, cupping a breast. She tensed again at the unfamiliar touch.
“Shh,” he murmured, gentling her.
The feel of his breath gusting across her ear made her nipple harden into his palm. A rough sound escaped him and his hand flexed convulsively around her.
“Let me show you what you did to me,” he whispered, withdrawing enough to coax her onto her back.
Eliza stared up at him, awed anew by how handsome he was. How was it possible that such a man would find her so desirable?
She didn’t care. She was just grateful for her good fortune.
With no further warning, he lowered his head and surrounded her nipple with the humid heat of his mouth. She
