Lifting his head, he found her lips again, kissed her again. Still slow, still hungry. Lowered his hand to her breast, let the warm mound fill his palm.
She reacted instantly-immediately wanted him to release her hands so she could sink them in his hair and set the pace. He knew, but still he held her, kept her hands trapped while he kneaded, while his fingers searched and, through the black silk crepe, found and circled her nipple.
Her kiss grew hungrier, more demanding, yet still he held her back. Forced her to feel his unhurried assessment of her bounty. He traced, stroked, ran his thumb over the furled peaks, until her breasts were swollen and firm, straining beneath the confining silk.
Only then did he consent to move on. It was the work of a minute to slip the black buttons closing her bodice free, releasing the pressure. Holding her to their kiss, he found the lacings at her back and swiftly undid them.
She sighed when he released her hands and slid her gown from her shoulders, down her arms, let it slide slowly down her slender body until it slithered over her hips and down her legs to puddle on the floor.
Leaving her clad only in her fine silk chemise and even finer silk stockings. And they were black, too-dark veils too insubstantial to fully screen her white skin. The filmy chemise shifting over her curves distracted him.
Letitia saw, and felt a spark of amazement lance through her desire. He’d seen her naked often enough; to see him transfixed now was a curious delight. She shifted, stretched, watched his eyes track her breasts, her hips, trace her waist through the screening chemise.
Setting one hand to his shoulder, she slipped off her slippers, stepped out of her discarded gown and into him.
To her surprise, he caught her, his hands locking about her waist. Holding her as she was, the tight peaks of her breasts just brushing his coat.
An excruciatingly tantalizing caress; she needed to get closer, to ease the ache in her heavy breasts, but he held her trapped.
He looked into her face, searched her eyes, her expression, in the dim light. She had no idea what he saw, but then he bent his head, still moving far too slowly for her liking. But at least his lips closed on hers, and this time his tongue surged deep into her mouth. Not in any fury of desire, not as it usually was between them, all fire and unleashed passion, but with a slow intent, a measured, unhurried, almost languid claiming that somehow, to her reeling senses, was strangely erotic.
With her lips and tongue, she tried to urge him on, to make him go faster, to ignite the flames that between them usually roared and drove him.
To return to the familiar.
But he wouldn’t, not this time. He held to his slow beat, and refused to let her push him. Even though the heat between them was palpable, he kept it at simmering, steadily burgeoning, escalating, but totally under his control.
A shiver went through her as she realized what was so different-so sensually exciting it was setting her nerves flickering, skittering, with expectation.
Control. His.
Whenever they’d come together in the past, neither had exercised any real measure of control-for herself, she’d never sought it, and she’d always, in the past, been able to cinder his.
Not this time. As the kiss went on, spun out, and left her slowly whirling along the outer edges of a vortex of pleasured delight, she felt all resistance fade.
He wished her to know this, and so she would. The conqueror within him, a being she’d always known existed beneath his debonair charm, wasn’t going to give her any choice.
A primitive shudder of anticipation ran down her spine.
He sensed it; he paused in his slow, devastatingly thorough claiming of her mouth, then the kiss changed. Deepened. As one hand drifted from her waist.
She felt the brush of his fingers as they slid beneath the hem of her chemise. With his fingertips he traced-slowly-upward from her hip along her side to the underside of her breast.
Moving slowly, smoothly, he palmed it. At last skin-to-skin, he closed his hand about her flesh and the flames leapt.
Just so far. They flared and fell as he touched her-everywhere. As he claimed every inch of her skin-unhurriedly, explicitly, as if he had all night and intended to use it.
His desire, his absolute intent to make her his, to claim her, brand her, reached her through his touch. Through every caress of his hard hands, through every sweep of his palms as he sculpted her body. Through every slow, languid, thorough exploration.
It almost felt as if he were learning her anew, as if those long-ago times had been in some other life and they were both different people now.
As if he were claiming her for the first time.
That thought filled Christian’s mind; that was indeed his intention. Always, before, he’d let her have her head, let her burn and take him with her-let them plunge unrestrained into passion’s fire and be consumed. Never before had he extended himself, never before had he fought to give her this. Never before had he held the flames back so she might see what, to him, beneath the flames and the fire, being intimate with her was all about.
He’d always hidden the emotion that, from the first, had driven him with her.
Tonight he held the flames back, and laid his heart and soul bare before her.
He was who he was, and that was something she understood.
But not something he’d before let her see. Never completely. Never clearly. Hardly at all.
Tonight was different. Tonight he intended to love her-and let her see.
She kept trying to push him, to let the flames free, but if he truly wished, he could hold her back. Could keep her with him, gasping, breathless, as he caressed every inch of the lush body he would possess.
Her breasts were a delight he savored at length, purely with his hands, knowing she ached for more. “Later.” He breathed the word across her swollen lips then took them again in a long, deep kiss, one sufficiently demanding to keep her absorbed-that together with his caresses left her no mental space to gather her resolve and press him. To summon the will to reach for him and touch him as she usually did.
The long sweeping planes of her back, the graceful indentation of her waist, the flare of her hips-he learned them all anew, as if he were some pasha and she his latest acquisition, his newest slave.
He set his thumb to her navel, and pressed in and out in a rhythm she knew very well. Her hands were on his shoulders; they shifted to his throat, fingers curling over his nape as she clung. He sensed the heat rising within her, drew his thumb from her navel and skated his hand down.
With the backs of his fingers he brushed the crisp curls at the apex of her thighs. Felt her shudder, felt her fingers tense.
He drew back from the kiss, eased back and looked at her-at her body, skin flushed and heated, all but quivering with need, screened by the filmy black veil of her chemise.
The sight had rocked him; it still aroused him. Her skin was so white, pearlescent in the dimness. He’d never had a widow in her weeds before. Nevertheless…
One hand on her waist, anchoring her, with his other he grasped the chemise, gathered a handful and drew it up. She obediently lifted her arms and wriggled. He pulled it up, free of her hair, then let it fall.
Immediately she reached for her garters.
He stopped her, caught her hands again in his, moved her arms back and once again locked them in the small of her back. He drew her full against him. She looked up, eyes wide-struggling to hide the effect of his clothing rasping her sensitized skin.
“Leave your stockings on.”
His voice was a bass rumble, coming from deep in his chest.
Letitia made out the words-had just enough brain left to decode them. Her skin felt alive, her nerves aroused by his caresses and now shocked into heightened awareness by the realization he was fully clothed while she was…naked but for her black garters and black silk stockings.
It wasn’t modesty that had her reeling.