Page 72 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
Felicity.” He groaned her name as if he’d been shot instead of kissed, and his fingers trembled as he sank them into the sleep-tangled dishevelment of her hair. “Again,” he murmured, leaning in once more even as she withdrew for a moment to yank his cravat off and toss it aside.
Yes. Again, and again, and again. Her lips parted beneath the pressure of his, and she shivered as he sank his tongue into her mouth to stroke her own. Her hands landed upon the wall of his chest, fumbling for the buttons of his shirt. Somehow, despite the clumsiness of her fingers, she managed to shove several through their loops, baring warm flesh as the fabric parted.
He took pity on her as he struggled with the last button at his collar, and released her just long enough to pull his shirt over his head, crumple it into a ball, and lob it off the bed. “We’ll have to marry again,” he said as he reached for her once more, sighing as she explored the texture of his bared skin with the tips of her fingers, the light rake of her nails.
“Yes,” she said as he touched his lips to the delicate skin beneath her ear, sighing for the pleasure of it. The abrasion of that new growth of beard against her tender skin, the heat of his lips, the delicate rasp of his teeth.
“Properly this time.”
“So long asproperlymeanssoon.” A hum of approval slid up her throat as he nudged the neck of her nightgown out of the way, smoothed his lips over the curve of her shoulder.
“I want a real church wedding,” he said. “With your family in attendance, and you in a gown befitting a bride, and a finer ring—”
“I’ll agree to everything but the ring,” she said. “I have already got one.”
“It’s ugly. Even your sister thinks so.”
It wasn’tpretty. But it meant something to him, and now that she knew it, it meant something to her. “I want my ugly ring or none at all. I want one that means something. You couldn’t buy better.”
“Ireallycould.” It was uttered with the sulky petulance of a man who knew when he’d been beaten, though the high color that touched his cheekssuggested he was secretly pleased. Felicity laughed, and it came out giddy and bright and ringing, like the peal of the little silver bells frequently hung up around Christmastide. Ian sighed, pressed a kiss against the side of her neck. “I want you to do more of that,” he said.
“What, laugh?”
“Yes. I want you to be happy. I want to know you are happy.” His hands clutched fistfuls of her nightgown and whisked it over her head. And for a moment, as he held the loose linen in his hands, he only stared at her in mute silence, his dark eyes sliding over her bared shoulders, the hollow of her throat, the curves of her breasts.
She had not felt she had had much to smile over just lately, and less still to laugh about—but now, as a hard swallow rolled down his throat, as that faintly stunned expression settled over his face, as he shifted minutely where he sat as though his trousers had gone suddenly too tight for comfort, she smiled.
That smile galvanized him; he reached for her like a starving man, his mouth landing over hers hungrily. He pressed her back upon the mattress, and her shoulders sank into the fluff of pillows piled behind her. There was the pressure of his chest against her breasts, the nudge of his wool-covered knee pressing between hers.
“Your trousers,” she murmured between kisses, raking her nails through the fine hair at the nape of his neck. “Your shoes.”
“In a moment,” he whispered back. “Your toes are still freezing.”
She blinked, momentarily startled as she realized she’d tucked her toes against his calves. “What? You can feel them, even through your trousers?”
“You stood on the balcony with your bare feet against the cold stone for a solid ten minutes in the dead of winter,” he said. “Yes; I can feel them. Fortunately for you, I grew accustomed to you warming your toes upon me ages ago.”
Laughter bubbled up inside her chest; effervescent, airy, and delighted. With a feral-sounding growl, Ian tore himself away from her, bending to yank his shoes from his feet, tear off his stockings, and finally to fumble with the buttons of his trousers. “I’ll bear it,” he said as he shed the last of his clothing, sending his trousers flying with a vicious kick as he sought to free himself from the constriction of them.
And then he fell upon her once more, and valiantly suppressed a shudder as she toasted her toes upon his warm calves. “Christ,” he said somewhere near her ear. “You might truly be frostbitten.”
She hummed with the last glow of mirth, enjoyed the lightness it conveyed to her heart; a sense of warmth and satisfaction she’d been sorely lacking. How much lighter she felt, even pinned to the mattress beneath the weight of his body, once freed of that resentment which had bound her like iron chains. As if she might float free of the earth altogether, if not for his arms bracketing her, holding her close.
“I love you,” she said on a sigh, brushing her lips to the underside of his chin and breathing in the salty scent of his skin. The smooth plane of his back invited the stroke of her hands, and her fingertips grazed bands of muscle and warm flesh, provoking a shiver from him.
The coarse hair dusting his legs teased the smooth skin of her thighs as he wedged his knee between them once more and settled above her, braced upon his elbows. His erection pressed against her belly, hot and hard, throbbing with the beat of his heart. “I love you,” he said against her temple, shifting his weight to brush the tangle of her hair away from her face. A kiss to her shoulder, her collar bone, the hollow of her throat.
Her fingers still recalled the way he liked to be touched, nails scratching across his skin in the way that made him shudder, made his breath come harder and faster. He muffled a groan against the curve of her breast, turned his lips to her nipple and stroked the point with the tip of his tongue.
That same remembered zing of pleasure slid up her spine, tingled in her nerves. Her knees drew up, capturing his hips in the lee of her thighs. There was something almost magical in this, in the giving and receiving of pleasure, in the way they came together. In the way he fit her as if he’d been fashioned for her. In the way she fit him just the same. As if a whisper could not have fit between them.
There was a reverence in the fingers that cupped her breast and slid down her belly, in the fingertips that ruffled the sparse hair at the juncture of her thighs and stroked sleek feminine skin. A worship in the sigh that feathered out over her breast, and the release of the tension he’d carried in his shoulders, as if the hot, dewy flesh that had greeted his fingers had been an unexpected boon.
Her hips canted, as far as they were able, against his gently-probing fingers, inviting him to linger, to explore. Her nails prickled at his shoulders, and she squirmed restlessly in a vain attempt to capture more of that elusive sensation he’d only hinted at. Briefly his fingers breached her body, a stroke too shallow, too fleeting to provide any relief. His thumb found the bead of flesh hidden at the apex of her sex, swirled over it with a pressure far too light.
“Ian.” Her thighs nipped about his hips, holding him closer, and still he refused to be moved from his lazy, painstaking exploration.
And nowhelaughed, the cad, with a dark sort of amusement as he released her nipple from the gentle suction of his lips. “I always regretted,” he murmured, with the lightest brush of his lips to the top of her breast, “that I could never take my time with you as I would have liked to.”
