Page 50 of The Forbidden Lord
He kissed her long and hard, with all the hunger of a man who’d never been so reckless. She didn’t fit his usual pattern. She was a marriageable girl, but not an innocent. And she wasn’t Emily.
Still, he kissed her. And when her slender arms crept about his waist, he groaned, then backed her toward the table a few paces away. He didn’t stop to think, didn’t break the kiss. He merely set her on the table and fit himself between the thighs that parted naturally under her loose skirts.
Something otherworldly had seized him, shattering all thoughts of propriety or sense. He had to touch her all over, feast on her, stroke the legs and arms and breasts that had driven him mad.
She tore her lips from his, shock written in her face. “Wh-What are you doing?”
“Playing with fire,” he muttered, then seized her mouth again.
Fire, Emily thought as Jordan swept his large, knowing hands along her sides to her waist, then down her thighs. Yes, fire … heaps and heaps of coals bursting into flame. That’s what it felt like all over … in her breasts … in her belly … in the secret place between her legs. His mouth and hands sowed sparks all over her body, and like a fool, she gave herself up for kindling.
Surrendering to the urge to touch him in return, she threaded her fingers through the auburn hair that resembled dark flames in the midday sunlight streaming through the windows. His thick hair was soft and yielding, so different from the firm hands taking liberties with her body.
God help me, she thought as he slid one of those hands beneath her skirt and glided knowing fingers up the length of her stocking to her garter, stoking more fires as he went. She shouldnever have let him kiss her. She should never have used her saucy persona to fool him when he’d tried his blatant attempts to unmask her.
Yes, it had worked. He’d called her Emma, not Emily.
But now she was reaping the results of her foolish game. Lady Emma was wild and unruly. Lady Emma craved a man’s touch, a man’s kiss. The wicked Lady Emma had taken her over.
And with a seducer’s unerring instincts, he knew it. There was none of the reticence he’d shown to Emily Fairchild that night in the carriage; he was transgressing every boundary. One of his hands now caressed her thigh sensuously; his other rested on her waist.
Not for long, however. Drawing back, he lifted his hand to seize the lace scarf loosely knotted over her bodice. “Let’s get rid of this useless bit of fluff,” he muttered as he deftly unknotted it and tossed it aside to bare the tops of her breasts.
Her breath caught in her throat. His hot gaze was fixed on the swells pushed up by her short corset until they nearly spilled out of her gown. She ought to cover herself, but her hands inexplicably stayed tangled in his hair. Starting in the hollow at the base of her throat, he dragged his index finger slowly down between her breasts.
“Don’t … you shouldn’t … be so wicked, Jordan.”
“Wicked?” he rasped. “I’ve not been nearly wicked enough with you.” Hooking his finger beneath her bodice and chemise, he tugged the muslin down on one side. Her breast sprang free as if eager to flaunt itself for him.
Shocked at her own acquiescence, she dropped her hand to her bodice, but he caught it, imprisoning her fingers while his other hand reached for her exposed breast. His eyes met hers in a look as potent as opium and just as mesmerizing. Wordlessly, he ran his thumb over the nipple, which puckered into a tight little knot beneath his deft touch.
“Goodness … gracious,” she gasped when he stroked and teased it again. Curse the seductive wretch. It felt so … so thrilling!
She couldn’t bear looking at him, at the triumph in his face. But as her eyes drifted shut, she didn’t stop him from touching her either. The urge to experience his caresses overwhelmed her modesty as the exquisite sensations turned her knees to putty and her resolve into air.
When he took her mouth again in a searing, sensuous kiss, she rose to it, welcomed it, slid into it as if into a waking dream. She was as boneless as a sleeping cat, except that she wasn’t asleep. She was awake, and so very alive, more alive than she’d ever been in her life.
Somewhere in the swirl of wild, ungoverned excitement, she realized that his hands launched twin assaults—one freeing her other breast while his other hand inched above her garter to stroke the soft, inner skin of her upper thigh. At the intimate caress, she abandoned all pretense that she might resist. The reckless Lady Emma had completely possessed her, filling her with a fierce urge to feel his hands on her.
How could she have spent so many years in complete ignorance of what a man could do … could tempt a woman to do? She craved every glide of his fingers across her sensitized nipples, every wispy caress, every sweet, tormenting motion.
His parted lips left hers to trail open-mouthed kisses over her cheeks, her closed eyelids, her temples. She couldn’t think or move or do anything but be. Her world had shrunk to this alluring exchange of intimacies. The scent of marble dust and the rough wooden table beneath her curling fingers were her only links to the physical world beyond him.
Then his mouth followed a path down the slope of one breast, and before she knew it, he was devouring it as he rolled the nipple of the other between his thumb and finger.
Goodness gracious! How wanton, how sinful!
How delightful. A moan escaped her lips as she arched back, letting him suck her breast so hard she nearly shot up off the table from the sheer pleasure of it.
“Jordan,” she whispered as she raised her hands to grip his shoulders. “My God … Jordan … this is … this is … so … so …”
“Scandalous?” he murmured against her breast.
“Heavenly!”
He drew back from her with a grin. “That’s what I adore about you,” he said as he took his hands off her long enough to remove his coat and toss it on the table, then unbutton his waistcoat. “You aren’t ashamed of a little honest pleasure.”
Somewhere in the depths of her fevered brain she registered that he shouldn’t be removing his coat. But then he caught her hands and placed them inside his waistcoat to rest against his ribs, and the urge to explore his body the way he was exploring hers became almost painful. Shamelessly wishing he would also remove his linen shirt, she felt along his sides with curious fingers, molding the muscles as she went. They were as firm as the sculpted ones of the naked figure behind her, hard and lean and very male.
