“I’ll say,” he gritted out.
She fluttered her wings lightly, and the breeze she created washed over his skin, making his manhood spring to immediate attention. Or perhaps it was the sight of her naked that did that. He couldn’t be certain.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He reached out one tentative hand to touch her. But she jerked forward. “They’re very sensitive,” she warned. A slow flush crept up her body, and her wings blushed as well. Good God, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, flushing scarlet there the way she was. He pulled his hand back.
“I want to touch you,” he said, recognizing the hoarseness of his own voice.
“Could you get me your dressing gown?” she asked, turning her body so that her front faced away from him as he stepped toward the wardrobe to retrieve it. But as she turned, she faced his full-length mirror that stood on the floor by his dressing table. Her eyes met his in the looking glass, and she blushed scarlet. Her wings took an even brighter hue, turning a soft but startling pink. He turned his head, though doing so was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and held his dressing gown out to her on a crooked finger. He felt it fall away from his hand and heard it rustle as she put it on.
“You can open your eyes now,” she said.
He slowly opened his eyes to her and wanted to cry with despair when he saw her wrapped in his gown, her pretty pink wings gone. “Where did they go?”
“I can make them come and go at will,” she informed him with a shrug. “They’re a little unwieldy beneath clothing.”
“They’re beautiful,” he said. He couldn’t come up with anything better than that. Just “they’re beautiful.” He probably sounded like a complete dolt.
“Thank you.” Another pretty blush crept up her cheeks. A clock down the corridor chimed the midnight hour, and she said, “My time here is drawing to a close.”
“You can’t go yet,” he complained. There had to be something he could do to make her stay. There had to be something.
“I have a few more hours,” she said quietly as she crossed to his bed and climbed atop it. “Let me sleep with you for one night.”
He dragged a hand down his face. He nodded.
She turned down the linens and the counterpane and settled herself against his pillows. He went to join her. “What shall we do to occupy the night?” she asked, a grin tugging at her lips.
He could think of plenty of things to keep them occupied. But he started with her stockings. Ashley picked her tiny foot up in his hand and tickled the bottom of it. She giggled and tried to jerk back from him, but he held fast. God, she made him feel like was an adolescent again. But then she suddenly stilled, her eyes hot and limpid.
***
Ashley trailed his hand up the back of her calf, sending tingles to every single part of her body, from her head to her toes. Her breaths were already shallow, and she could barely concentrate on anything but him. He tugged at her garter and rolled her stocking down her leg. Then proceeded to do the same with the other.
“Will you douse the lights?” she asked, hating to hear the quiver of her own voice. But she was frightened. He doused every light in the room but a single candle, his chambers growing darker and darker until there was a single dancing shadow playing upon the wall—his. She watched his graceful form as he began to shrug out of his jacket and waistcoat, and then tugged his shirt from his trousers and over his head. He sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots, laughing as he tossed them one by one to the floor with gentle thuds. He sounded more carefree than she’d ever heard him.
“Are you happy?” she asked. She could sense that he was. But her senses had been wrong in the past.
“Happy to have you in my bed?” he said as he shucked his trousers and crawled across the bed toward her wearing nothing but his smallclothes. “I’m bloody ecstatic.”
He reached for her in one quick move and she shrieked as he drew her beneath him. “Ashley,” she cried.
“Sophie,” he crooned in retort, as he reached between them and tugged open his dressing gown, which she still wore. He devoured her with his gaze as her skin was revealed, and he lowered his head to tease her belly with his stubbly chin.
“God, you’re exquisite,” he growled. His mouth traced a fiery path across her stomach and up to the swells of her breasts. He uncovered them with reticence, his breath leaving his mouth in a hot rush of air when he’d uncovered her. Sophia shrugged her shoulders from the dressing gown and reached for his hair. She threaded her fingers through his dark locks, pulling him tightly to her as he explored her stomach and the line beneath her breasts with his tongue.
He didn’t go any higher, seeming content to caress her, but her nipples were aching for his touch. She very gently tugged his head toward an aching peak, and he raised his gaze to meet hers for a moment as he drew
the tip of her breast into his mouth.
“Oh,” she cried out, arching her back to get closer to him.
He very gently licked across her nipple, watching her face as he did so, and then closed his eyes tightly as he burrowed more closely to her, seating himself between her thighs. She spread her legs for him, and he settled there.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered to him, her breath hitching in her throat as he moved from one breast to the other.
“I won’t harm you, Sophie. I promise.” He stopped his ministrations and looked up at her, as though he needed her permission to continue. She nodded, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth to worry it. He dipped his head again, taking her nipple back into his mouth as his hands played up and down her sides. He began to rock against the center of her, and she could feel the raspy coarseness of his smallclothes against her tender skin.