His words are wrong, seven shades of them, so why do they make me feel like they do. Standing so close to an open door, so close that the light from the hallway falls over my naked skin. I feel vulnerable. Powerful? Exposed and kind of wrong.
Maybe Alexander sees the conflict in me as he speaks again.
“I would never share you. Not ever. Not with anyone.”
Words spoken another night bring with them a sense of truth, his gaze shining like sin in the darkness. I like it. Oh, hell, I really do, as I find myself leaning back against the wall in nothing more than my thong and heels. I choose to revel in the power I feel in this moment. Revel in my power over him.
“What did I do to deserve you?” he whispers as his hands find my hips. The way he looks at me heats every inch of my skin, bloody coursing in my veins, a mixture of excitement and disquiet as the pair continue to converse just a few feet away.
“I think you’ll find you saved me from a three-way.”
He laughs, pressing a kiss to my shoulder as his thumbs hook under the string of my panties.
“They’re hardly worth wearing,” he murmurs, beginning to slide them down my trembling legs. As he helps me step from them, my hand falls to his shoulder as I teeter. “But they’re very pretty,” he adds, dropping them to the top of my dress. His wide shoulders turn as he deposits the garments to a chair to our left. And just when I think he’ll drop to his knees as he did in the library, he lifts me into his arms instead. Even as my hands feed around his neck, I fight the urge to protest being carried naked across the room.
Or maybe I just feel like I ought to.
The soft nap of his velvet jacket makes pebbles of my nipples, the coarser woollen of his kilt fabric a tantalising brush against my butt and thighs as we dip behind a folding screen, almost as tall as Alexander. Painted in the classical style with urns of flowers and little fat cherubs, I know (thanks to Chrissy) these were used to block out draughts when the family gathered around the fireside long ago. Set behind the screen is a lady’s desk with cabriole legs, writing paper laid out on the surface aids the sense that she’d just abandoned her morning correspondence. It crackles under my thighs as he lowers me to the desktop and begins pulling the bobby pins from my hair.
“Someone ought to paint this sight,” he murmurs, resting his hand against my collarbones, encouraging me onto my back along the length of the desk. “And call it The Triumph of Holland.” His hand draws down my body before he spreads my legs, his eyes glinting in the darkness as his thumb dips between them. My body jolts as he brushes the pad across my clit. “You’re so wet for me, my darling. Maybe you like the thought of being caught naked and spread out like some bacchanal feast.” He bends and quite suddenly swipes his tongue along my wet ribbon of flesh.
“Don’t tease,” I rasp, bucking up into his mouth, refusing to be drawn into the temptation his words create. But it isn’t much of a complaint as I have to bite my lip to stop myself from crying out as Alexander’s tongue begins to swirl and tease, painting my clit with my own arousal.
“Let me have you here,” he whispers. Bringing his body over mine, I taste myself from his mouth as he kisses me. “They won’t see. Not if you’re quiet.” Which is exactly the opposite of what I am as he draws my earlobe into his mouth.
“Shush.” The sibilant sound is a taunt, his smile pressed against my neck.
I suddenly decide one of us is wearing too many clothes and begin to grapple with his jacket, pushing it from his shoulders until Alexander begins to tug it down his arms. I move my attention to his snug-fitting vest, and I don’t know which of us is more startled by my actions as a button flies off, pinging against something on the other side of the room. Something that sounds very much like china that then sets to wobbling.
“Sorry,” I whisper when it becomes clear there’s no following crash. I’m so sorry that I’m already stripping him from his shirt. “But I want to see you.” I slide my calf up his leg, catching the edge of his kilt. “All of you.”
Alexander gives a satisfied hum, though as my leg rises higher, he grasps it, lifting it over his shoulder.
I swallow a gasp as he pushes his fingers inside, my body bowing as he twists his wrist. As he works me. As he watches. As he presses a kiss to my ankle before dropping to his knees on the floor.