The firelight glanced off his velvety skin. She pushed her hands over his muscled shoulders and stroked him. Then she took a deep breath. The line of hair that trailed from his chest led down past the top of his trousers. She desperately wanted to see that part of him. She closed her eyes briefly and breathed in the intoxicating male scent of him. He was glorious, gorgeous, as if he’d been chiseled in stone. James might not be the dashing charmer that Lord Ashbourne and Lord Colton were, but he was so handsome and unassuming and funny and steadfast and true. Why any woman would look twice at a rogue when they had a man as deliciously perfect as James in their presence, she would never understand. But the other ladies’ loss was her gain, and she intended to take absolute advantage … in every possible way.
She let her tapered nails drift down his hard abdomen and come to rest on the buttons of his breeches. James squeezed shut his eyes and moaned. “Be gentle, darling,” he said with a bit of humor in his voice.
“Oh, I intend to pay you back for the exquisite torture you afforded me the last time we were alone together like this.”
His teeth tugged at his bottom lip, and a surge of lust shot through Kate and pooled in between her legs. Oh God, she wanted to rip off his breeches, pull him on top of her and beg him to take her. Instead, she braced her hand on his flat abdomen and slowly allowed her fingers to descend.
James shuddered. She slipped her fingers into the holes and, one by one, released each straining button. Through the fabric of his trousers she felt him, big, hard, wanting her, reaching for her. She traced her fingertips over him. No surprise. He was better than George in that regard too. She’d never spent much time touching George
James groaned as she stroked him up and down through the fabric. After all the buttons were undone, she slipped her hand in his trousers and wrapped her fingers around him. His groan intensified. “Kate,” he gasped.
She squeezed him. She stroked him. And then she leaned down, slowly, oh so slowly, and she kissed him. There. His hips nearly bucked off the bed. “God damn it,” he cried out, his fingers tangling in her long hair.
He rolled her over then, and suddenly his breeches were completely gone. “Kate,” he whispered. “I need to see you, to feel you.”
“Yes,” was all she said.
James pulled her flimsy night rail over her head and discarded it in a rolled-up ball that he tossed away with one hand. He leaned back and took in the unreal beauty of Kate’s body. She was like a painting come to life, all alabaster skin, perfect large breasts with pink tips, a tiny waist, enticing rounded hips, and the hair and eyes of a goddess. “You’re perfect, Kate. You take my breath away.”
She smiled at that and met his eyes. “I was going to say the same thing about you.”
His hand shook a little. The red triangle of hair between her thighs beckoned him. He leaned down and breathed in her maddening scent just before he kissed her there, just as she had done to him.
Kate gasped. Her hips twitched beneath him. She spread her legs. “James, I want you,” she breathed.
“I want you too, goddess,” he said just before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Then he moved his head to her breasts and lavished them both with his tongue. He tugged one with his mouth, while the other he tortured with his fingers, rubbing the nipple between his thumb and index finger, nipping at it, plucking at it, all the while keeping up his mouth’s assault on the other breast. He kneaded it with his lips, kissed it, sucked it, and Kate arched her back off the bed and cupped his dark head to her chest.
Then James’s hand traveled down her belly to the juncture between her thighs and his finger slipped into the slick folds. He rubbed her there, enough to make her mad and wet with need. He slipped a finger—a single finger—inside of her and rubbed it in and out. Kate moaned. Her head moved back and forth fitfully on the pillows. He moved his finger up to the little nub between her legs and rubbed her there too, in perfect little circles. Kate arched her hips off the bed, clutching at his hand, moaning his name, begging him not to stop.
He brought her to the pinnacle, her hips were nearly bucking off the bed, and then he moved his hand away. “No,” she gasped.
He smiled against her neck. “It’s better this way,” he assured her, kissing her neck. “Trust me.”
She wanted to sob, but she nodded. “I trust you. But I want to do it to you, too.”
He opened his mouth to deny her, but she’d already rolled over and was busily moving down, down, down. Her perfect pink mouth hovered so near his hard throbbing cock he couldn’t breathe. Instead, he held his breath. Time stopped. Her pink tongue flicked out to touch his tip, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Oh God. Kate.”
“Shh,” she whispered, torturing him with the same words he’d used to torture her earlier. “Trust me.”
He growled deep in his throat but let her do whatever she wanted with him. His hands clutched at the bed sheets on either side of his hips as Kate’s hot wet mouth slid down his cock. “Jesus Christ!”
Her mouth moved in a smile just before it descended again in a maddening rhythm that made him desperate for release. She was good. Too good. Going about this too well and too fast. And it had been too damn long. He would embarrass himself and spill his seed in her mouth—oh God, dream come true—if he allowed her to continue any longer.
No, he needed to regain control of this situation and he needed to do it now. He couldn’t wait a moment longer to make her his.
He pulled her up forcefully into his arms, kissed her passionately on the mouth again, and rolled over on top of her. He spread her legs with his knee wedged between hers and positioned himself in between her legs. “Kate,” he whispered, nudging her forehead with his so she’d look into his eyes. “Tell me you want me one more time.”
“Oh, James, I do want you. I want you. I want—”
He slid into her then, so hot and strong and hard. Kate’s words ended on a long moan. She couldn’t stop herself. And then he was moving inside of her, up and down. Owning her, possessing her, raining little kisses over her face, whispering words of desire and longing into her ear, making her his in every single way.
Kate had never felt such bliss. Having James inside her, filling her, kissing her, his hot chest rubbing against her breasts, the erotic friction of it making her wet all over again. She couldn’t stand it. He moved his hand down between them and found the nub of pleasure between her legs again, and he rubbed it, over and over in an unending, maddening pattern. He didn’t stop. Kate whimpered, her head moving from side to side on the pillow. She begged him, pleaded with him not to stop.
“I won’t stop, Kate,” he promised. “Come for me.”
His finger moved up and down, up and down, her hips were helpless to follow his rhythm, the sensuous pace he’d set for them. She followed him, and he took her there. She raised her hips from the mattress, convulsing, just before her world shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, and she screamed his name against his strong, burning-hot shoulder.
“Oh God, Kate,” he murmured, just before pumping into her again … again … and then one last time before he spilled himself inside her.
Kate surfaced slowly from the cloud of euphoria that encased her brain. James had rolled to his side to relieve his weight from her and he sat, running his fingertip along her hairline, kissing her nose, and tucking little strands of her hair behind her ear.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
“So are you,” she replied, smiling.
He rolled his eyes at that.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t believe me?”
“Hardly.”
She pulled the blanket underneath her arms and watched him from the corners of her eyes. “You know what I thought the first day I met you?”
The sheet was pulled up to his waist and he looked over at her, a surprised grin on his face. “In the Tower?”
She nodded and one of her red-gold curls bounced out from behind her ear, making her look absolutely adorable. “Yes.”
