this time on the cheek.
“You smell good,” he murmured. “Like spring.”
“That’s another thing. You always smell delicious, better than a man should, and it isn’t just your shaving soap.”
“No?” She spouted the oddest, most endearing notions when she was flustered.
“No. You are clean about your person and in your habits.”
“And this disqualifies me from friendship?” Nick queried, his lips landing on the unbruised side of her jaw, slowly working their way up to her cheek before he lifted back up to sitting position.
“You smell too good to be just my friend,” Leah informed him desperately. “You kiss too well, your touch is too… too…”
“Yes?” He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips and retreated one half inch. “You were saying?” Lazily, he brushed her hair back again, his gaze following the caress of his fingers.
“Kiss me, Nicholas.”
“What are friends for?” Nick whispered, claiming her lips gently. He plied her with easy, relaxed strokes of his tongue, burrowing his hands under her shoulders and bracing himself on his forearms. He nibbled, he tasted, he teased until Leah’s tongue entered the lists and her fingers winnowed through his hair and her body began to shift on the bed in slow, needy undulations.
“Please, God… Yes, more…”
“Easy, lovey,” Nick crooned, drawing back one half inch again. “We have all the time in the world.”
They did not. If she didn’t stop moving against him like this, if she didn’t stop touching him everywhere he’d exposed his skin, he would soon lose his wits entirely.
Leah whimpered into his mouth and half rolled to hook her leg over his hips. “What, lovey?” Nick murmured. “Tell me.”
“Come. Here.” Leah’s hands went dodging south, to try to encircle Nick’s waist and drag him over her, but fortunately for his flagging self-restraint, she got distracted on the vast plane of his chest, delineating slabs of muscle, ribs, sternum, and… nipples.
“Easy.” Nick tried to catch one of those hands as it skimmed directly over a nipple, paused, and returned for closer investigation.
Leah left off plundering his mouth long enough to gaze up at him. “Will I hurt you? Here?” Another feathery, shivery brush of her fingers.
“Never. Not ever.” Though she would kill him dead, dead, dead with her innocent explorations. He closed his eyes and waited for her to set her hands loose on him again.
She used both hands, and Nick lifted a few inches to allow her free run of his chest. Kissing paused as the fascination of caressing and being caressed became too absorbing, then too frustrating.
“Nicholas, get in this bed, please.”
He knew a moment’s indecision—did he get under the covers with her? Try for the nightgown now? Shuck his bloody, bedamned, infernally too-tight breeches? No, not that, because the sight of his erect cock would give her the vapors, virgin or not—and do nothing to calm the riot in his body. He stood, lifted the covers, and budged in as Leah obligingly shifted to the center of the bed.
“Better,” Leah muttered, turning her face into his bicep.
“Let me hold you.” Nick smiled at her shyness, having already seen enough—felt enough—to know he could coax her past that and have a wonderful time doing it, too.
“No.” Leah kept her nose pressed to Nick’s arm. “I want you to…”
“You want me to what, lovey?” Nick heard a novel note of tenderness in his own voice, some humor, and a hint of puzzlement.
“Here.” Leah threaded an arm under his neck and pulled at his waistband until she conveyed her general intent. “Over me. Please.”
The last was whispered against Nick’s collarbone, but he heard her, oh yes, he most assuredly did. Slowly, he let her tug, pull, wiggle, and whisper him into position over her, his weight braced on his knees and forearms.
“This is where you want me?” Nick asked, crouched above her. He kissed her forehead again, needing to kiss her somewhere. Anywhere.
“For now,” Leah replied, her tongue running along his jawbone. “Don’t worry that you’ll crush me.”
“I’m tangled in your nightgown,” Nick said, his frustration real. He bunched the cotton in one hand and drew it up to Leah’s hips. “Lift up, Leah, it’s coming off.”
“But then I’ll be naked.”
“You’ll be naked under the covers,” Nick reminded her, not sure how that made things any better. “I can’t see you, and I can’t get tangled in your nightgown.”
She lifted her hips, and the nightgown went sailing to the foot of the bed. Nick’s reward for this bit of swashbuckling was to feel Leah’s naked chest pressed to his, and to feel his control go careening across his mental decks like so many loose cannon.
“Kiss me, Nick,” Leah ordered, her mouth seizing his.
Too late, Nick realized he was in bed with that most voracious and fascinating of creatures, the near-virgin. Leah had lost her reputation when she’d run off with Frommer, but she had by no means had her curiosity appeased. She was already deemed lost to propriety, and she’d been royally cheated of the pleasures such a sacrifice should have gained her. She was bent on making up for lost time, and Nick was the lucky, bedamned man in her bed when her passions slipped the leash.
“Leah.” He lifted up then rested his cheek against her temple, caging her with his body. “We are gobbling up our pleasures. Can’t I savor you for just a bit?”
“This is as much frustration as pleasure,” she said, accusation in her tone, and Nick considered she might not like that she wanted him, but she wasn’t going to lie about it or linger over it.
“You will be more comfortable soon,” he promised, wishing the same could be said for himself as he shifted carefully to his side. “Let me touch you now. Your only job is to enjoy it, or tell me to stop if you don’t like it.”
Leah nodded against the pillows, her expression guarded and impatient.
“Close your eyes.” Nick leaned over to nuzzle her neck. “And keep them closed, the better to focus on my touch.” He ran his nose the length of her collarbone, and God’s unmentionables, she smelled divine. “Your skin is the softest thing I’ve felt in ages. Every inch of you begs to be stroked, handled, nibbled, and caressed. I need more hands, the better to enjoy you.”
He went on like that, half musing to himself, touching her with languid indulgence as he spoke, his tone admiring and his touch purely reverent. She was exquisite, she was passionate, and she was his to pleasure and protect.
Truly, truly, seducing his countess this way was his very best idea ever.
He must have sensed the direction of her thoughts, because he chose then—right then—to drift his mouth down over her throat, pausing to push his tongue against the pulse at the side of her neck. He nuzzled the juncture of her neck and shoulder then curled lower against her, so his cheek rested on her sternum.
“Your breasts,” he whispered, “are so lovely, so beautifully, abundantly womanly. I am aroused just looking at them, Leah, and now, you are going to let me touch you, touch your breasts.”
She’d been peeking, watching him in the dim firelight, but when he announced this intention, she closed her eyes and held her breath.
“Or maybe,” Nick mused, “I’ll simply taste you and indulge one of my most fervent wishes.” He let several beats of silence go by,
Her hands threaded through his hair, and without her intending it, Leah’s back arched, and she offered herself to his mouth again.
“You like that,” Nick concluded, pleasure in his voice. “I like it too, lovey.” He got down to business, settling
