“You can have it all tonight,” he said, his voice harsh and graveled and unfamiliar to him. “Every bit of me. Everything you want.”
She leaned back, the curve of her bottom pressing into his thighs, sending wicked, wonderful ideas through his filthy mind.
She began to roll her gloves down her arms. “I want to feel you.”
Not ideas. Plans.
“I want to touch you,” she added. One length of black silk was lost to the darkness of the other side of the carriage, and her hand was on his face, fingers tracing his cheek, his jaw, tilting his head up as she moved down, her lips skimming over the places where her touch had been. “I want to kiss you.”
If she didn’t kiss him, he was going to lose his mind.
She was seducing him with words and touch and scent, and he loved every goddamn bit of it. He wanted to pull her to him, to take her lips and remove the damn wig, to lift her skirts and make love to her until neither one of them could remember their names, let alone the ridiculous arrangement to which they’d agreed.
But he didn’t move. He wouldn’t. There was something about this woman who dealt in desire and sin and sex, something about the way she looked at him, the way she spoke, the way she touched, that made him wonder if she’d ever in her life taken her own pleasure.
And so he waited for her to do it. She would kiss him that night, or they would never kiss. This was her moment. Her pleasure. Her desire.
Once he got her into his house, it would be his turn to give her every inch of pleasure he could.
But now, it was her turn to take it.
She leaned in, and he thought she was going to kiss him. But at the very last moment she pulled back, making him think she’d devised some new and wonderful form of torture. He said her name, and it came like a curse in the darkness.
“Two weeks,” she said.
“What?”
She smiled. “I do think you are addled, sir.”
“This is what happens when you tease a man.”
She ran her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, and every inch of him responded to the pretty sensation. “Two weeks. No more. Nothing that would get us into trouble. Two weeks and then we are through.”
The fact that he’d thought nearly the same thing mere minutes ago did not stop him from being slightly irritated that she could think about terms for their arrangement.
He agreed, nonetheless. “Two weeks. Now kiss me, goddammit.”
And, blessedly, she did.
She’d never kissed a man.
Oh, she’d been kissed, certainly. On multiple occasions, both wanted and unwanted. She’d been kissed by this man, and it had been magnificent. But she’d never once taken control of a moment such as this one, and kissed a man. Even with Jonathan, when youth and folly should have made her bold.
The heady pleasure of the experience was not something that she would ever forget. She adored it, the way he let her dominate, the way he leaned back against the seat, his hands at her hips only to steady her in case the carriage moved unexpectedly. The way he let her lead the caress, first with hands and then with lips.
And she adored the way he felt against her, hard and unyielding and so incredibly warm. He did not touch her, and she at once hated and loved the fact. She wanted the exploration. She wanted to tempt him. And touch him. And do her best to seduce him, for in all the years that she’d dressed as Anna, she’d never tried seduction.
Something that he seemed to do so effortlessly. Without even touching her.
She let her lips linger on his for a moment, getting her bearings before placing her hands on his shoulder and letting her tongue edge out to lick at him. He growled deep in his throat at the sensation, and she felt the rumble as much as she heard it. His lips parted, and she leaned in. Tested her power.
His grip on her hips tightened, and the kiss grew deeper, more intense. She turned her head, fitted herself more carefully to him. The growl turned into groan, and one of his hands finally, finally moved, coming up the side of her neck, cupping her jaw, holding her for his kiss. His tongue met hers, and she pulled back at the lovely sensation. For a moment, he seemed lost, and then he met her gaze and with complete control, reached up, pulled her back to him, and took the kiss for himself.
His hands were everywhere – sliding over skin and silk, up to her hair. She pulled away from the touch, “Wait,” she gasped, grabbing his hands, pulling them away from her. “Not the wig. Not yet.”
“I want it off. I want you,” he confessed.
“And I want that, as well,” she said. “But if anyone sees —”
It had to be Anna entering his house in the dead of night. Alone. Wearing black silk.
He groaned his agreement, placing his hands at her hips, instead, pulling at silk, shifting her, bringing them closer together. “There is far too much fabric in this dress,” he growled as he pulled her down, lifting himself, fitting them together, hard and soft, rocking against her once, twice, before biting at her bottom lip and taking her mouth with lips and tongue.
It was her turn to groan at the onslaught of his kiss – and it was an onslaught, a carefully waged war of long, slow, drugging kisses, matched with movement and unspoken promises that made her hot and cold and desperate for him all at once.
She lifted her head, wanting to see him. To understand this moment, when they seemed the only two people in the world. His eyes opened at the loss of her. “I had not planned this,” she whispered, her fingers running along the crests and valleys of his face.
“The carriage?” he asked.
“The pleasure,” she said.