Nothing happened.
His hands stayed tantalizingly close to where she wanted them, but not close enough. She bit her lip to muffle a frustrated moan.
Oh, Grace, you are a wanton. The angels despair of you.
She opened her eyes.
He was looking at her. At her…there.
She couldn’t mistake the unalloyed yearning on his face as he knelt between her white thighs.
It should disgust her. He should disgust her.
But the idea of him seeing that hidden part of her made her shake with raw excitement.
A good woman would close her legs, roll away, cover herself.
A good woman wouldn’t be in this bed in the first place.
His grip on her thighs tightened. His eyes blazed in his pale face and his cheekbones stood out in sculpted relief. Before she could speak, he moved further down the bed and bent his head. For one bewildering moment, she registered the heat of his breath on her cleft.
Then his mouth took her.
It was too much. For one long quivering moment, she lay unmoving. His mouth was hot, heat to her heat. She felt the probe of his tongue. Flame licked at her skin.
She couldn’t let him do this. It was depraved.
With trembling hands, she reached down to push him away, trying to ignore the springy softness of his hair under her fingers. Her arms had the strength of jelly and she couldn’t shift him.
Scrambling up against the head of the bed, she stared at him in shock.
He lifted his head and looked at her. To her horror—and reluctant fascination—his mouth glistened with moisture.
Her moisture.
She shivered, not entirely with revulsion. Although the thought that a man could do this, would even want to do this, had never occurred to her.
Goodness, until tonight, she’d had no idea a man needed to do anything other than shove his member inside a woman.
“You can’t!” she gasped, raising herself on her elbows.
“Why not?” His eyes were brilliant with pleasure. How decadently beautiful he looked caught between her thighs.
“It’s…it’s wrong,” she stuttered, knowing she sounded like a fool.
“Did it feel good?” the smiling devil asked.
“Not at all!”
He arched a cynical brow. “Really?”
“Really!” she said with breathless emphasis.
“Don’t you want to try again and make sure?” He sounded ridiculously reasonable for a man who wanted to do…that. “Aren’t you curious? I am.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.” She absurdly fell back onto the old proverb as if that answered anything. All the time, the curiosity she so derided built and built. What would it be like if he kissed her there? The brief instant when his mouth had touched her hadn’t been unpleasant. Far from it, actually, if she forced herself to be honest.
Of course, no decent woman would countenance such a thing.