Page 52 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
He strode across the room, his steps multiplying and lengthening until he swung her into his arms. Then a shudder rippled through his entire body, and it was as if a mask had fallen from his face entirely, leaving his every emotion raw and visible there. She’d seen hints. Now she saw it all—the pain, the fear, the loss, and yes, the wanting. Her anger dropped away, though sheshouldclutch it to her. She’d never been good at being bitter.
She reached a hand up to cup his cheek, and he leaned into it, closing his eyes and muttering a curse at the same time. How very… Theo. She smiled.
“You have been a thorn in my backside since I met you,” he said. “Since before I met you.” Hardly promising, that, and yet something straining in his voice told her to hold her judgment, to stay in his embrace. His hands tightened on her waist. “There have been moments I would have sold my soul to purge you from that townhouse and be done with you.”
“I’m not sure you should continue,” she said.
“But the entire time, I’vewantedyou, too. Wanted your curves beneath my hand and your lips pressed to mine, wanted your hair wrapped like silk rope around my fingers.”
“Ah.” She stiffened, her brief wonder turning bitter. “I can do nothing well but be pretty.” She did not even try to hide the poison in her words.
“Pretty? Yes, but I wish to God that was the beginning and end of it. But you must insist on being more than that. Each day, you show me how strong you are, how brave and cunning. And damn, but that makes me want youmore.”
Her heart felt like a bird in a cage, fluttering, fluttering, needing out. She licked her lips, and his eyes sparked with all the colors of wanting, of desire.
“Do not ever think you are unwanted,” he said, “because I want you day and night.”
“Show me.” She went up on tiptoe, sliding her belly across his taut abdomen as she lifted her face closer to his. “Showme.”
The room became a blur as he whirled her, pushed her backward into an alcove lined with books. Her back hit the shelves, and books thudded to the floor, but all she felt, heard, and saw was Theo—his face descending to hers, his lips sipping along her jaw, his hair hiding the lust-hazed gray of his eyes, and his shoulders blocking out the world beyond.
His hands were everywhere on her—hair, jaw, neck, shoulders, and then down her spine and around the curve of her ribs to cup her breasts as his lips left hers to trace kisses along her modest neckline, low enough to show a hint of her curves. She sent up a silent prayer she’d not worn her high-necked gown today. She regretted any muslin that kept his skin away from hers.
She threaded her hands through his hair, silky and thick and just as marvelous as she’d always thought it would be. She fisted her hands in the strands, just a bit, and he moaned, nipped at her the sensitive flesh of her breast. Her head fell back onto the bookshelf behind her with her own moan, the hard edge of the board slicing into her neck. The slight pain only seemed to add to her pleasure as his fingers dipped beneath her bodice’s edge and pulled it low, low, so low her nipple first pebbled in the cool air and then beneath the ministrations of his skilled tongue.
She scratched her fingernails down the back of his skull to his neck, then along his spine as far as she could reach. Not enough. Wool and linen too much in the way. She ripped at his shoulders, wanting the jacket off, but his arms curved round her backside, lifted her, and she had no choice but to hold on, to wind her arms about his neck, past the snowy folds of his increasingly mangled cravat, and wind her legs around his waist. Beneath her rear, she felt the press of something hard as he pinned her to the bookshelves.
“Do you feel how I want you?” he asked, his harsh voice close to her ear. “Do you feel it? Feel me?”
“Yes,” she breathed, “yes.” And she wanted him, too, fiercely and with no doubts. As if every pretend touch and kiss and glance over the last week had wound her up tight and set her in this direction, as if every time he put her likeness on paper, he made her anew with a heartbeat and pulse and need tuned to him. Only him.
Perhaps she’d not been able to sleep because she’d wanted to sleep with him. Her loneliness, this time, a lonely yearning for a single man—Theo.
The man who snagged his teeth along her neck and nipped at her ear, who held her close and groaned her name. Then he lifted his mouth to hers once more, and they drank from one another until their hearts found the same rhythm.
He set her back on her feet.
“No.” She clutched at his shoulders, trying to pull herself back up.
But he sank to his knees, one hand finding a home at the curve of her waist while the other slipped beneath the hem of her gown and found her leg, cupped her calf, and smoothed a pathway up past the back of her knee and over her thigh. As his arm rose, so too did her skirt, then her shift, revealing—as her gown pooled in waves like waterfalls from where he’d pinned it at the hip of one leg—her pale-blue stockings and the little black ribbons that held them tight. Would he like them?
He must because he kissed the skin above the ribbons then squeezed her rear and kissed her still-covered belly. Low. Scandalously low, his lips burned her through worn silk and the muslin of her shift.
She tangled her hands in his hair once more, tugged, and he looked up at her, a grin on his face. The first full smile she’d ever seen from him—wicked and wonderful and only for her.
“Theo,” she breathed.
“Finally,” he said. “I should not.”
“Whatever it is, you’re wrong. Pleasedo.”
“Delia, I’ve wanted to touch you like this since I met you. I know it’s wrong, but—”
“It’s not.” She tightened her grip in his hair. Kneeling before her, looking up at her with something like adoration shining in his eyes, she no longer wanted words. Only action. “No more words. Show me what you’ve wanted to do.Showme.”
That wicked smile flashed again, and he pressed his lips to her belly once more before ducking his head beneath her skirts. His hand on her backside slid around the side of her hip to splay low on her naked belly, his thumb extending into her curls between her legs as he placed hot kisses along the inside of her thighs. He trailed tingling sensations along every inch of skin he stroked, kissed, and when he lowered his mouth to her very center, she almost shattered.
So long. It had been so long since anyone had touched her like they wanted her, and no one like this, kissing there. She clutched the bookshelves behind her, fingernails digging into soft wood, elbows digging into the spines of books packed tight in rows at her back.
