Until he shifted, until his hands, until then passive on her hips, started to tighten, until the muscles in his upper arms tensed.
With one last, long lick, she sat up.
Rose up on her knees, shifted back, pulling her skirts from under her, then sat straddling his hard thighs.
Leaning forward, she placed her hands again on his chest, then slowly, gradually, slid them down.
Over the corrugated muscles of his stomach. Down to his waist.
Beneath her palms, muscles shifted. Locked.
Satisfied, she sat back, waited. Watched as his anticipation eased. He drew in a breath.
She reached for his waistband.
Flicked the buttons free, laid open the flap, and closed her hands, both her hands, about him.
He went rigid, all of him, every muscle in his body seized; for the first minute, as she eased her hold, then tightened her grip again, then caressed, explored, fondled, he didn’t breathe.
Then he did, shallowly. “If I can make a suggestion?”
She considered, then invited in her sultriest tone, “Suggest away.”
He lifted his hands from where they’d fallen to the coverlet and closed them about hers.
Taught her exactly what she wished to know. How to touch him, how to pleasure him, how to press delight on him until his breath strangled in his throat.
Until he dragged in a huge breath, pulled her hands away and shifted beneath her, struggling to remove his trousers.
She rose and helped, wriggled back down his legs and stripped him.
Naked.
Flat on his back, with only the white band of his cravat over his eyes, with not a stitch to conceal him, he was a sight that took her breath away.
All this was hers.
If she dared claim it.
She licked her lips, then on her knees moved back up over his legs. Lifting and flicking out her skirts so they pooled around her, to the side and behind her, so that he could feel them against his bare skin—and feel the heat of her, of the place that ached and throbbed between her thighs, tantalizingly close as she again sat across his thighs, watching his face carefully all the while.
Gauging his state as she settled, hitching up her chemise so her bare skin met his—in the instant she closed her hands once more about his rigid erection.
The rush of impulses through him was strong as a tide; it broke against the wall of his will, straining under the pressure, but it refused to break. He clung on, his breathing increasingly harried.
She smiled; she wasn’t finished with him yet.
Looking down, she admired the prize locked between her hands, then bent her head and set her lips to the hot, baby-soft skin.
He jerked; caught his breath.
Lovingly, she traced the head with her lips, then licked, around, down the long shaft . . . watched his face, watched his jaw lock, clenched tighter than she’d ever seen it . . .
Brazenly bold, she opened her lips and took him in.
He uttered a strangled sound. Reached for her, his fingers tangling in her long hair.
“No. Don’t.”