Then he saw her face and good intentions shattered.
She leaned against the bed as she had when he came into the room. But instead of presenting a picture of nervous determination, her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was swollen with kisses. She reached out to touch his chest, stroking the scattered hair across his pectorals.
“You’re magnificent,” she said softly.
Her thumb grazed one nipple and he shuddered. This was torture. Exquisite torture. The fascination in her eyes made him feel like a king.
“I’m just a man who wants you beyond reason,” he said rawly.
Speech evaporated as she touched his belly. He sucked in an agonized breath while those seeking fingers seared his flesh.
Her open curiosity puzzled him. Surely she knew how a man was made, even if her husband had been an unsatisfactory lover. But her face reflected his own wonder as she tested the firmness of abdomen, the dip of navel, the rim of hip.
And lower.
He groaned when her wandering hand settled on his erection. Her fingers took up a hesitant rubbing motion. He closed his eyes so hard that stars exploded in his vision.
If she kept touching him, this would be over in seconds. He still wouldn’t know how it felt to lose himself inside a woman.
Inside this woman.
“Grace, no,” he said in a strangled voice, grabbing her wrist.
“Don’t you like it?”
Her uncertainty brought him back to himself as nothing else could have. “You threaten to unman me, Grace.”
Comprehension flared in her eyes, turning them the color of the sea at sunset. Then she smiled, a witch’s smile, a siren’s smile.
Her hand was steady as she reached up and pulled at one of the negligee’s ties. The knot came free. With a slowness that made the breath hitch in his throat, the material sagged. It slipped softly down the slope of one breast to snag on a pebbled nipple.
He stopped breathing altogether.
His attention followed her hand as it rose to the second tie. And gave a short tug.
The soft white nightgown slid down. And down. And down.
A heart-stopping wiggle, then one delicate step to the right.
She was naked beneath the nightdress.
He’d known that. The sheer material didn’t hide much. But knowing and seeing were two totally different things.
His eyes feasted on her. Her breasts were breathtakingly lavish. Firm, white, tipped with tight rosy nipples. His brief glimpse in the darkness three nights ago had only hinted at their perfection.
The curves and indents at waist and hip and thigh. The long slender legs, smooth and pale like the rest of her. The delicate ankles and slender feet.
She was Eve. She was Venus. She was Diana.
She was every dream that had disturbed his lonely nights made flesh.
She was more than any of these. She was Grace.
And soon she’d be his.
Soon? Now!
With shaking hands, he fumbled at the fastening of his trousers. He was all thumbs and the material fought him. He bent and tore his short boots off, grappling for control. His hands still refused to obey when he returned to his trousers.