Page 21 of The Viscount and the Vixen
He wanted her. She could sense it in the tension radiating through him. She could give him anything he fancied, all he desired. He could ask anything of her and she’d not refuse his request. He could demand anything and she wouldn’t fight him. She could make him grateful to have her. She could ensure he never had regrets.
As for her own regrets—she would find the strength to ignore them or to live with them. She was too close to having what she desired—what she required to survive—to let guilt win out over sensibleness. Starve or feast. Cold or warmth. Death or life.
He opened the door, walked through, and slammed it shut with a kick. She expected to find herself tossed on the bed, her skirts thrown over her head, as with a powerful thrust he took what the law now gave him the right to possess.
Instead, he lowered her feet to the floor, slowly, gently, in the center of the room. The bed loomed behind him, yet he suddenly seemed in no great hurry, as though whatever madness had urged him here with such haste had been tamed, tethered. But the fever in his eyes as he looked down on her told her that it was hovering dangerously close, that there was a primal quality to him that once unleashed could possibly destroy her.
She should have been frightened, terrified even. Yet she couldn’t seem to feel anything other than wonder and an urge to take him down to the bed and order him to have his way with her. He was no longer touching her, and yet tremors cascaded through her. Her nerve endings sizzled, and her skin seemed to ache for his touch. It had been so long since she had yearned for a man’s touch.
Not since she’d lost her innocence. Not since she’d known betrayal.
Leisurely, following the décolletage of her gown, he lightly skimmed the blunt tip of one long, thick finger from one shoulder down, over the swell of one breast, then the other, before traveling up to the opposite shoulder, barely touching the cloth, mostly branding her skin with heat that fairly devastated her plan to remain aloof. His eyes never left hers, and she feared he could read the confusion and weakening in her gaze.
She should have known that he wouldn’t have been content with coldness in his bed.
He guided his finger back along the path until it returned to the beginning of the trail that he had mapped out like the explorer he was.
He glided his fingers down her arms, all the way to her fingertips, before going back up. “I like your arms bared,” he said, his voice low, feral, deep. “Don’t wear gloves in the future.”
Following dinner, she hadn’t put them back on. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t quite regret it at that moment. “It would be improper.”
A corner of his mouth hitched up, his eyes darkened. “Before this night is done, you’ll learn that I enjoy a good many improper things. Turn around.”
She’d said he could take her from behind. She couldn’t fault him now for wanting it. Hiking up her chin, calling forth her steely resolve, she whipped around and only then dared to squeeze her eyes shut, waiting for the assault.
“You’ve tensed up again,” he said.
“I’ve told you. I don’t know you well enough to know what to expect.”
“And I’ve told you to expect pleasure.”
“You’re taking your sweet time at delivering it.”
His heated mouth landed at the juncture where her shoulder met her neck. “We have all night, Lady Locksley.” He nibbled his way to her ear. “I want you wet, hot, and begging me to take you.”
A shiver of anticipation skittered along her spine. “Perhaps it will be you who begs, my lord.”
His tongue outlined the shell of her ear. “I’m counting on it.”
She jerked her head around, her gaze slamming into his. “You want me to make you beg?”
He grinned. “I want you to try.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “But not yet. Not until I’ve had the pleasure of removing your clothes.”
And her hairpins apparently, because he buried his fingers in her hair, removing them one after another, tossing them onto the floor without care. Facing forward, staring at the low fire burning in the hearth, she tried to make sense of this man. He wanted her. She had no doubt there, and yet he was drawing out the torment with a sweetness to it that she’d never before experienced.
As her hair tumbled down, he growled with satisfaction and gathered some of it up in his hands. “It’s been wanting to do that all day. And I’ve wanted to touch it. So thick and silky.”
“It’s unruly.”
“I like unruly.”
“Even in a wife?”
“That I can’t say, as I’ve only had one for a few hours. But I like unruly in my lovers.”
She hated the spark of jealousy that ripped through her, recognized the irony in her reaction. It wasn’t as though she was coming to him a virgin. “How many of those have you had?”
He slowly draped her hair over one shoulder and kissed the nape of her neck. “Enough to know how to bring you pleasure.”
