Emboldened, she continued to tease him, drawing her fingers up and down the length of him, leaving him straining in his breeches.
How she longed to touch him, not just the wool of his breeches. To feel the steely length in her hands, to feel it within her, to let him ease the ache between her thighs by filling her, teasing her past the clamor of need that his kiss had awakened.
Unlike most young ladies, she wasn’t ignorant of what happened between a man and a woman. Her older sister had taken great delight after her marriage in regaling her two younger sisters with all the mysteries of the marriage bed. But the sweaty, ridiculous mechanics her sister had described scarcely resembled the passion Jemmy evoked, the heated frenzy his touch promised. And Amanda’s curiosity knew no bounds.
“Ruin me, Jemmy,” she whispered.
He groaned as her hand swept over him again. His mouth took hers, and he devoured her in a breathless kiss. Any tenderness he might have held was gone, as his hand slipped inside the décolletage of her gown and freed her breast.
She bit her lips together to keep from crying out as he took the hardened peak in his mouth and sucked and lapped on it until she thought her legs would buckle beneath her. With each sweep of his tongue, with each pull of his lips over the pebbled flesh, her thighs trembled, her breath caught in her throat in short, staggering gasps.
His deft fingers found the laces on her bodice and quickly undid them, freeing her from its confines and giving him ample leeway to explore her at his pleasure. His lips sought her again, trailing teasing kisses behind her ears, down her neck, and back to her breasts. It was like a waltz of passion, with each movement more provocative than the last.
How and when, she knew not, but she found herself undressed down only to her stockings.
For a moment he gazed upon her, and she held her breath.
“Demmit, Amanda, you are the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Truly?” she whispered.
“Oh, aye,” he said, with almost a reverent air to his words. “I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve what you are offering.”
“I think I’ll be the judge of that,” she told him, her fingers tugging at his coat, tossing it aside, and then setting to work on his waistcoat. Her fingers faltered over the tiny buttons, and he pushed her hands aside and ripped it free from his body, sending a shower of tiny pearl buttons across the cell floor.
She laughed, then eagerly helped him. As he tugged his shirt free from his breeches, she pulled and unwound his cravat, their hands and arms tangling in happy purpose.
As he flung his shirt over his head, Amanda wondered that she should deserve him. She laid her palm upon his chest, and marveled at the heat and strength emanating therefrom. Slowly she touched him, reverently she explored him with her fingertips, tracing a path through the triangle of hair at his chest, over the flat plain of his stomach, to the top of his breeches.
“Amanda, I—”
Her gaze flew to his, and she placed a finger on his lips to still his words. They held an air of reluctance, and she wasn’t about to lose her chance now.
This time when she pressed herself into his embrace, her body melded to his, her breasts brushing against his bare chest. She had never imagined such a feeling, such a mingling could occur.
It was as if they were becoming one. One to the other.
“Tonight, Jemmy,” she reminded him, running her fingers over his chest. “You gave your word.”
“Aye, I did,” he said, his voice filled with smoky promise. And with that, he caught hold of her and gently lowered her to the cot.
As he knelt before her, his fingers toyed with the ribbons on her garters. “I’ve wanted to do this from the first day we met,” he confessed.
Amanda thought back and remembered his lingering gaze on her stockings as she’d been packing them. Then she’d been embarrassed that he’d seen them. Now she wanted nothing more than to have him remove them.
And he did, untying one of her garters and setting the stocking free, rolling it down her leg, his fingers lingering over the curve of her calf, the arch of her foot. Amanda sighed with languid joy. She lay back on the bed and held out her other leg for him, but for this one he had other ideas.
His teeth caught hold of the ribbon and tugged it free, then with his teeth drew it from her leg.
And if she thought he was done, she was mistaken, for once the stocking was tossed aside, his mouth began tracing a hot trail up her leg, going from one to the other. Slowly he climbed up her limbs, leaving kisses on her calves, behind her knees, on the soft skin of her thighs.
Then to her shock, his mouth nuzzled over her most private place, his warm breath sending a message of passion. Her mouth fell open, but she couldn’t speak, for he didn’t stop there, his hands prompting her thighs to part while he continued to kiss and whisper over the petals of sensitive flesh between them. And as she opened herself to him, she tried to breathe, she tried to make sense of the passion spiraling out of control.
Then his tongue lapped over her, sending her hips bucking up to meet him as if of their own volition. He laughed and ran another long lap of his tongue over her.
This time she couldn’t restrain herself. “Jemmy, oh, dear. Oh, my!”
If his kisses before had held a passionate promise, this intimate invasion invited a torrent of need, a thunderstorm of tremors.