“We fit nicely,” he said, an understatement. “Let’s try a bit more kissing.”
He made those inane observations because he sensed Jeanette needed the commentary. She was unsure, and her courage would take her only so far.
Sycamore began by kissing her brow, then her cheeks, then her eyelids, as Jeanette gradually gave him her weight. When she was thoroughly relaxed, he touched his mouth to hers.
“You tease me,” she muttered.
“I invite you. Tease me back.”
Sycamore’s arousal had gone from a pleasant annoyance to a full cockstand in the duration of a few chaste kisses, and Jeanette had to be aware of that. She pressed nearer and sank her fingers into the hair at his nape.
Her kisses were delicate, and when Sycamore seamed her lips with his tongue, she startled, then reciprocated, and he opened his mouth on a groan.
Or perhaps on a whimper. In any case, Jeanette got into the spirit of the expedition, and by the time she was lavishly tasting him, she’d also pressed her breasts to his chest and rubbed against him in a manner designed to pop the buttons from his falls.
“A moment,” Sycamore said, his arms wrapped about her. “A moment to breathe, if you please.”
“You are breathing,” Jeanette replied, her cheek against his chest. “Breathing hard.”
“My breathing isn’t the only thing that’s hard.”
She eased back, though she didn’t leave his embrace. “Am I to accommodate you now?”
Her wary question gave common sense a small purchase on rampant desire. “You are never to accommodate me. If all I want is to spend, that’s simple enough to achieve. I regularly pleasure myself and hope you pleasure yourself too.”
Wariness gave way to confusion. “I am not naughty enough to embark on a liaison with you, Sycamore. I don’t even understand how to be naughty. The naughtiness was married right out of me.”
I’m naughty enough for both of us. That reply would have served for a different woman facing different challenges.
“Don’t be naughty, Jeanette. Be self-indulgent, curious, brave, and joyous. Play with me as a lady plays with her lover, rejoice in your animal spirits, and to hell with what anybody else thinks.”
She studied him as if he’d spoken in a language she barely understood, then she kissed him full on the mouth.
“I like kissing you, Sycamore Dorning. I like it a lot. Is there someplace we might take this discussion? For if I’m to become acquainted with your fiddlestick, I’ll want more light.”
Sycamore kissed her a swift, hard smacker. “I’ll light every candle on the premises and pull back every curtain too. There’s a bedroom upstairs off the office. Nothing lavish, but I hope you’ll be paying more attention to me than to the accommodations.”
“I usually do.”
He patted her bum and let her go, lest he back her onto the nearest barrelhead and introduce her to his fiddlestick in the next thirty seconds.
“Upstairs with us,” he said, taking her by the hand and making himself ascend at less than a dash. She had said yes, to next steps at least, if not to consummation, and her yes meant worlds to him. A cautious yes could be fanned into an exuberant certainty, and he was willing to exert himself to the utmost to inspire her to make that leap.
And to restrain himself to the utmost as well.
“This is pleasant,” Jeanette said when Sycamore had ushered her into the bedchamber adjoining the office. The room was almost feminine in its appointments, the quilt a lavender blue, the curtains white lace, the rug before the hearth blue, pink, and white.
“Off with your boots,” Sycamore said, “and I will light the fire.” He ducked into the office to retrieve a lit spill and considered tossing himself off, but discarded the notion. Left to her own devices, Jeanette would fret, and not for anything would he give her cause for worry. He instead took up an extra branch of candles and set them on the bedside table when he rejoined her.
Jeanette sat in the reading chair before the hearth, one boot on, one boot off.
“Shall I assist you?” Sycamore asked, lighting every candle in the room as well as the fire laid on the hearth.
“I can manage. Perhaps you have disrobing of your own to do?”
“I’d rather you disrobe me.”
She set her second boot aside. “I see.”
Clearly, she did not see, but she rose and approached him, then slipped the pin from his cravat. “I valeted my husband often enough. The job isn’t complicated.”
“Don’t valet me, Jeanette, drive me mad. Torment me with what I might never have.” He could not believe those words were coming from his idiot mouth, but he’d made Jeanette smile, and that mattered.
“Like this?” she asked, casually pressing her breasts to his chest as she unknotted his cravat.
“Exactly like that. You might have to unbutton my falls too.”
She draped his neckcloth over the back of the chair. “Why?”
“Because my hands are shaking too badly, and I cannot go about in public with half my buttons ripped off.”
She slipped his sleeve buttons free of his cuffs. “I don’t suppose you can.” She undid his waistcoat next, in no hurry what-so-damned-ever. By the time Sycamore was minus his boots and stockings and naked from the waist up, Jeanette was smiling.
“I’d best finish what I started,” she said, tugging Sycamore closer to the hearth by his waistband.
“Not so fast, madam. You are overdressed for the occasion.”
She looked at the bulge distorting the line of his falls, looked at his face, and her smile became a grin. “What will you do about that, Mr. Dorning? I refuse to miss supper because you were dilatory about your duties.”
“Hold still,” he said, then caught himself. “If you would please hold still, I will assist you to undress.”
“Be quick about it.” She followed up with a kiss to his mouth, then turned her back to him. “My hooks, if you please. And thank
