He shrugged off his waistcoat. “I didn’t look your way once the entire evening because I wanted to avoid the speculation I knew would ensue, and I know you won’t like.” He looked down as he dropped the waistcoat on top of his coat; he paused, then lifted his head and met her eyes. “I also didn’t want my cousins getting any ideas about you-and they would if they knew you were sharing my bed.”
Truth-all truth. She heard it ring in every clipped, precise vowel and consonant. And the thought of his cousins approaching her-all the males were as sexually aggressive as he-had been the prod that had affected him most powerfully.
Before she could consider what that might mean, with a barely restrained tug he pulled his shirttails from his waistband.
His gaze lowered to her body, to the offending nightgown. “Take that damned gown off. If it’s still on you when I reach you, I’m going to shred it.”
Not a warning, not a threat, not even a promise-just a pragmatic statement of fact.
He was barely two yards away. She mentally threw up her hands and turned to draw the covers down so she could slip beneath them.
“No. Stay where you are.” His voice had lowered, deepened; his tone sent a primitive thrill racing up her spine. He spoke increasingly slowly. “Just take the gown off. Now.”
She turned back to face him. Her lungs had constricted again. She drew in a tight breath, then reached for the hem of the fine lawn gown, and drew it up, exposing her calves, her knees, her thighs, then, still sitting, her eyes locked on him, she wriggled and tugged until the long gown was bunched around her waist.
The roughness of his brocade counterpane rasped the bare skin of her legs and bottom-and she suddenly had an inkling of why he might want her naked on the bed, rather than in it.
And she wasn’t about to argue.
From the waist down, she was no longer sheathed in the gown, but the folds shielded her hips and stomach, and all the rest of her, from his gaze.
Her mouth suddenly dry, she swallowed, then said, “Take off the shirt, and I’ll take off the gown.”
His gaze lifted from her naked thighs, locked with hers for an instant, then he grabbed the hem of his shirt and hauled it up and over his head.
She seized the instant-the barest fleeting instant-to drink in the arresting, arousing sight of his heavily muscled chest. Then he tore his hands free of the sleeves, dropped the shirt. His fingers reaching for the buttons at his waist, he stepped toward the bed.
Grabbing the folds of her nightgown, she hauled it up and off.
He was on her before she could pull her hands free. In a surging, muscled wave, he flattened her back on the bed.
Before she could blink she was stretched naked on her back across the crimson-and-gold brocade, with him stretched over her, one heavy hand locked about her tangled ones, pinning them, leaving her with her arms stretched out above her head.
Lifting off her, he set his hip alongside hers; leaning on the arm holding her hands captive, he looked down on her body as she lay displayed, naked and helpless, for his delectation.
For his taking.
Raising his free hand, he set it to her flesh. Used it to quickly, efficiently, ruthlessly arouse her until she writhed, until her body lifted and arched helplessly into that too-knowing hand, seeking, wanting.
His hand cupped between her thighs, working the slick, swollen folds, with two long fingers buried in her sheath stroking deeply, he lowered his head and set his mouth to one breast.
He licked, lipped, nipped, then drew her furled nipple deep into his mouth and suckled so fiercely, body bowing, she shrieked.
Releasing her tortured flesh, he glanced at her face, caught her gaze, and thrust his fingers deep inside her-watched as she gasped and instinctively lifted her hips, wanting to, straining to, reach completion.
Through the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, she heard him mutter something deep, dark, and guttural-she couldn’t make out the words.
Her skin was so flushed, so excruciatingly sensitive, she felt like she was burning-literally burning with unslaked desire. Bare minutes had passed since he’d spread her beneath him on the bed, yet he’d reduced her to this-to needing him inside her more than she needed to breathe.
His fingers withdrew from her. She opened eyes she hadn’t known she’d closed as he moved over her.
She tugged, wanting her hands free, but his hold didn’t ease.
“Later,” he ground out.
Then his body came down on hers and her lungs seized.
He was naked to the waist-the hair on his chest abraded her breasts, keeping her nipples painfully erect-but he still had his trousers on. The woolen fabric, finest worsted though it was, rasped the bare skin of her legs, made her gasp as it scraped along her inner thighs as with his legs he spread hers wide and wedged his hips between.
The skin on her back had already come alive, teased by the roughly textured counterpane. Her senses reeled under the concerted impact of so much sensory stimulation-of his weight pinning her to the bed, of the anticipation that soared as she felt him reach between her thighs and release his erection.
He set the broad head at her entrance, then gripped her hip, and thrust powerfully into her. Filled her with one long, forceful stroke, then withdrew and thrust in even more deeply.
He held her down and rode her, with long, powerful, pounding strokes; every thrust shifted her fractionally beneath him, every inch of her skin, every nerve, abraded each and every time.
Royce watched her, watched her body undulate beneath him, taking him in, wanting and accepting. He watched her face, saw passion overtake desire, saw it build and sweep her up, catch her in its heated coils, saw them tighten, gripping, driving.
He waited until she was nearing the peak. Releasing her hip, he closed his hand about her breast, lowered his head and took her mouth, claimed her, possessed her, there, too, as his body drove hers on.
She came apart beneath him more intensely than ever before.
Minerva gasped, sobbed as her world fractured, but the climax rolled on and on. He kept it going, thrusting deep within her, making her body shift slightly against the abrading fabrics, keeping her nerves flaring even as inner satiation swept through her.
It was like nothing they’d shared before. More blatant, more powerful.
More possessive.
She wasn’t entirely surprised when, after she’d slumped, spent and done, yet with her nerves and senses still alive, still flickering, he slowed, then stopped and withdrew from her.
He left the bed, but she knew he wasn’t done with her yet; he hadn’t yet claimed his release. From the sounds that reached her, he was dispensing with his trousers.
Eyes closed, she lay sprawled, naked and ravished, across his bed and waited. She hadn’t freed her hands from her nightgown, couldn’t yet summon the energy.
And then he was back.
He knelt on the bed, grasped her hips, and flipped her over. She rolled bonelessly, wondering how…Straddling her legs, he slid one large hand down and around to splay over her lower belly, then he lifted her hips up and back so she was kneeling slumped forward before him.
Hands still tangled, she drew her arms in so she could lean on her forearms. He pressed close behind her, his knees outside hers, then she felt the engorged head of his erection nudge her entrance.
Then he was inside her.
Pressing deeper than he’d ever been. Her toes curled, then he withdrew and thrust in again, seating himself even more fully within her.
She struggled to catch her breath, lost all she’d gained as he again thrust into her hard and deep.
Holding her to him, open and helpless, he set up a steady, driving rhythm that had her fingers curling, sinking into and clutching the crimson-and-gold brocade as he pounded into her, then he varied the speed, then the depth, then rolling his hips, he somehow caressed her deep inside.