She felt bereft, as if she had lost something infinitely precious.
But even as the sense of loss washed through her a new realisation took its place.
He was stripping her.
She could feel the material of her dress slip from her shoulders, taking her loosened bra straps with it, and then suddenly, shockingly, she felt her breasts engorge, her nipples harden.
Slowly, seductively, he slid the dress down her arms. The touch of his hands moving over her bare skin ignited another intense sensation that shimmered through her again. She sought to still it, but it was beyond her power. Everything was beyond her power—except to yield to the exquisite, magical feelings that were rippling through her body.
But as she felt the dress slip completely from her, her bra tumbling to the floor, revealing the swell of her breasts, instinctively, protectively, she shut her eyes.
Immediately she felt the stroke of the backs of his fingers along her cheek. His voice as he spoke was low, commanding.
‘Oh, no, Portia—not that way. This way—’
She felt the trail of his fingers glide downwards, softly knuckling the line of her throat, and then continue to descend. Softly, very softly, he stroked the side of her breast.
The breath stopped in her throat. He repeated the movement, and this time he brought his other hand to her other breast, stroking outward and downward from the topmost swell of each engorged orb.
The world disappeared. Disappeared completely, utterly. Just as it had when he had stroked along the nape of her neck, so now the entire world simply became the touch of his hands at her breasts.
Sensation dissolved through her.
Her body dissolved.
Into a feeling and emotion she had never, ever in her life felt before. Had never even known existed.
Wonder took over. How, how could such feeling exist? Her drawn-down lashes quivered on her cheeks and she gave herself to his soft, exquisite exploration.
She thought she heard Diego Saez say something, but she paid no attention. Her whole being was focused, unseeing, on what she was feeling. That soft, feathering touch, she realised in confusion, was making her breasts feel so strange, so heavy. An extraordinary lassitude was sweeping through her. She felt weak, boneless—his.
She gave a low, helpless moan, deep in her throat.
Her breasts were just as he had wanted them to be. High and pale, with a soft swell to them peaked by small pink tips. As he stroked them to ripening fullness, watching the nipples tighten, he felt his own body echo that hardening in response.
She was giving that low, helpless moan again, her eyes still shut, lashes like silk against her flushed cheeks. Satisfaction scythed through him. Portia Lanchester might not have wanted to soil her fine, aristocratic hands on him, but she was responding to him all the same—completely.
He had known she would. Known from the moment her bored gaze had been speared by his the first time he had set eyes on her, known from the way her body had tensed, signalling its awareness of him, that she would be helpless against him.
Now the pleasure he felt in her response to his touch was more than sensual, lending an edge to his possession of her that quickened his appetite.
He stroked her breasts again, hearing again that soft, blind, helpless moan.
It pleased him, pleased him very much, but he wanted more. Much, much more.
He wanted her naked.
And more—much more.
His hands slid down her silky flanks, feeling the slenderness of her body. As he did so he pushed down the fabric of her dress until it slithered free over her hips and cascaded to the carpet. He rested his hands on her, splaying his fingers around her soft curves.
He looked down at her. Her eyes had opened, and they were staring, wide, dilated, up at him.
For a moment, just a brief, fleeting moment, an emotion jerked through him that had nothing to do with the powerful, throbbing urgency of his state of arousal, nothing to do with the low anger banked down inside him.
It had everything to do with the expression of helpless, wondering vulnerability in her wide grey eyes.
Then, as the needs of his own body surged again, he felt his hands tighten over her hips. And Portia was lost, lost—in a world so wonderful she never wanted to leave.