Page 39 of Season of the Scoundrel
“What I know is that I want this one night with you.”
Ross reached up to still her hands. “One night?”
“Maybe it’s reckless. Maybe it’s brazen. But I won’t regret it.” Her gaze locked on his lips, then his eyes. “Because what I feel for you is the one thing I know for certain in all of this. Nothing else seems as important as that knowing.”
Ross swallowed hard and reached up to stroke the backs of his fingers across her silken cheek. “Turn around.”
She did, glancing back at him over her shoulder as he slipped one pin from her hair, then another, and all the rest until her hair hung down her back in glossy sable waves. He stroked his fingers through her hair, then slid it aside to bend and kiss her nape.
He felt her fingers reach back and realized she was freeing the hooks of her gown. Then she slipped the bodice down and let the garment pool at her feet.
When she turned, her hands went immediately to the buttons of his waistcoat and then his shirt, as if she was as eager to free him of his garments. She looked into his eyes, and he sawall that boldness and fire back in her gaze, none of the doubt he’d seen earlier this evening.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
Her eye flicked down, as if she couldn’t embrace the compliment.
Ross slid a finger under her chin and tipped her head up gently. “You are beautiful, Ivy.”
She beamed at him in answer.
And you’re minewhispered through his mind.
She’d made no promises. He’d offered her no true proposal, but he knew she was what he’d been waiting for, even if he’d not acknowledged to himself that he’d been waiting.
Her boldness, her determination, her trust in him—he took none of it for granted. It all felt like a gift, as much as that moment had been when she’d stumbled into his arms.
Ivy unhookedher corset as Ross watched hungrily.
Even when he wasn’t saying the words—you’re beautiful, Ivy—the way he looked at her, the way he touched her told her that he meant it. And she felt beautiful in a way she never had before.
Here, in this room, with just the two of them in the shimmering light of a blazing fire in the hearth, she felt no fear or doubt. Oddly, it felt as if everything in her life had been leading her to this moment, this man.
She could no longer see their first encounter as happenstance because it marked a moment when so much had shifted, and now she was here, feeling as if it was precisely where she belonged.
If there was nothing else to consider, no duties and expectations of a role she could never imagine being suited for,she’d ask that they make the betrothal real, just as he said he’d hoped they would.
No.She shook those worries away and focused on Ross.
He untied the satin ribbon at the throat of her chemise, and the fabric gaped wide enough for the soft cotton to slip off her shoulders and to her feet.
“Gorgeous,” he breathed, tracing his fingers along the line of her throat, then lower, between her breasts.
He touched her with reverence, rushing none of it. The way he seemed to relish every touch made eased a bit of her impatience, but she still wanted to be closer to him, with no barriers between them.
She dropped her hands to the waist of his trousers, and he smiled. He nodded as if to urge her on.
Ivy worked the buttons of his fly, then he helped her slide the trousers over his hips. At some point he’d toed off his boots, and she’d slipped free of her shoes.
Ross pulled the bowed ribbon on her drawers, tugging at the satin until the soft fabric whispered down her body.
Only her stockings remained, and he shocked her by lowering himself to his knees, lifting one foot onto his thigh and slowly rolling her stocking down one leg, then treating the other to the tender unveiling.
He stood and she marveled at the beauty of him, the muscles and sinew, the dark hair dusted across his chest. She pressed her lips together and a little shiver rushed through her when stepped closer. His skin was deliciously warm against hers, and she ran her hands over his broad shoulders and felt the hard length of him against her belly.
Please, she wanted to say, and yet all of this was new. She wasn’t even certain what she was pleading for, except that her body was humming with want.
He kissed her and she moaned. The sound seemed to stoke something in him.
