As he unhurriedly pursued the answer to his question, and flooded her mind with pleasure.
Pleasure that swelled, grew, built, until she was squirming, arching lightly as the heat rose, as passion took hold, and that nameless yearning grew ever more insistent.
He paused; she felt his breath, as ragged and shallow as hers, wash over her swollen flesh, over her sensitized skin. Then his hand closed over her breast, his touch harder, more driven; his head rose and he found her lips—and whirled her into a more heated kiss.
This she knew, this she recognized; she opened her senses and embraced the moment—gathered to her all the sensations he offered—and felt her world quake.
He growled something through the increasingly ravenous kiss, then his hand left her breast, but to her relief not her body, moving lower, possessively claiming midriff and waist, hip and belly and upper thigh. He gripped briefly, then released the taut muscle and moved his hand to the juncture of her thighs.
He touched her through the thin material of her gown, sliding the silk of her chemise against her most sensitive flesh. She shuddered, held him more tightly to the kiss, tempted and challenged with her tongue—sensually reeled when he responded with a devastating invasion that left her trapped, caught, driven to some indefinable peak.
Then she realized it was his fingers, cleverly, expertly caressing between her thighs that were making her feel so. Making her feel as if her world—the one he’d swept her into—was about to end.
To erupt, to shatter.
Then it did.
Gervase knew the instant her climax overcame her, so powerful, so dramatic that his head reeled. Drawing back from their kiss, he watched her—watched passion tighten her features, peak, then fracture, to be erased by a sweeping wave of satiation.
He continued to drink in the sight of her, of the lovely lines of her face as they eased—inwardly victorious at being the first to evoke that particular expression.
Inwardly affirmed that he would also be the only.
He hadn’t intended this interlude—this latest step in his campaign—to progress quite so far, yet he was in no way sorry that it had. Her curiosity, her willingness, were the defining aspects; he’d had to adjust his pace to suit.
Which, thank Heaven, meant he was closer to success—and therefore to relief—than he’d been an hour ago.
Her lashes fluttered, then rose. For a long moment, she simply stared, dazed, into his eyes. He hid a self-satisfied smile, but couldn’t stop his gaze from lowering, lingering first on her lips—swollen from their passionate kisses—then lowering still further over the expanse of creamy, now pinked skin to her bare breasts, full and bearing the telltale marks of his possession.
It took effort not to allow what he felt at the sight to show in his face. With a sigh he let her hear, he moved back, straightened; taking her hands, he drew her up, until she slid from the desk to her feet.
They both looked at the desk, at the ledgers and papers now scattered in disarray across its surface.
Raising one hand, cupping her nape, his thumb beneath her jaw, he drew her face to his. Met her eyes for a finite moment, then bent and kissed her—long, slow, deeply but with passion well banked, restrained.
Lifting his head, he released her, then brushed his thumb over her glistening lower lip. “We’ll meet again tomorrow evening. For now, I’d better leave you to your business.”
She stared at him, but he only smiled, then turned and crossed to the door. He felt the distracted confusion in her gaze as, transparently struck dumb, she watched him leave.
As he closed the door, his smile took on a grim edge.
Riding when aroused wasn’t his idea of pleasure, but with any luck at all, the end of his campaign was nigh.
She wasn’t a wanton.
Late that night, when all the rest of the household were long abed, Madeline sat before her dressing table, restlessly, idly, brushing her hair.
Unbidden, her gaze lowered to her breasts, decorously concealed beneath her fine linen nightgown. She’d never thought much of them before, but he’d seemed fascinated…he’d certainly been thorough in his studies…
She blinked, sucked in a breath—stared at the evidence that just thought, just the memory of what she’d experienced that afternoon courtesy of his expertise was enough to stir her. Again. To make her breasts swell, her nipples pucker.
As for the rest of her….
She pressed her thighs together, and determinedly refocused on the mirror. She might not be a wanton, but when in his arms, she became abandoned, lost to all good sense.
A creature of her senses.
She’d never been that before.