“How closely should I look?”
His eyes were almost black. “As closely as you want,” he replied in a low voice.
She laid her palm on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart. “You promised I could touch, too.”
His expression didn’t falter, but his breathing sped up. “Yes.”
Bianca undid the remaining button at his throat, then paused. “Don’t you want to touch me? Or kiss me?”
“I want you to want me,” he growled. “I want to hear you say you want to be here, in my bed, for the rest of this night and every other night of our marriage.” He inhaled roughly as her eyes widened. “Until then, I don’t dare touch you or kiss you, because I might combust on the spot if I can’t have all of you.”
No one had ever spoken to her like that. No one had ever looked at her this way. It made her feel wild and beautiful and powerful, that this man wanted her. She had wondered why, after Vauxhall, he hadn’t pursued her, why he hadn’t pressed her for more even as he watched her with banked desire in his eyes. After Vauxhall, he could have persuaded her, far more easily than she would have admitted to anyone.
Someday you’ll come to me . . .
Deliberately, with both hands, she pushed his shirt open and pressed her lips to his bare chest. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want you.”
His chest heaved. He lifted her face and kissed her, lightly at first but quickly growing feverish. Bianca kissed him back, sucking on his tongue and holding on to his shirt as if for dear life.
Suddenly she couldn’t be too close to him. She was on her toes, clinging to him, meeting his ravenous kisses with her own. She barely felt him strip off her dressing gown, though she quaked when his broad hands stroked firmly down her back, lifting her against him.
She yanked at his shirt, wanting to touch him as promised, and when she got it loose, Max broke the kiss long enough to whip it over his head. Bianca slid her hands over his bare chest, marveling at the heat pulsing from him. No cold stone statue, as Lady Dalway and Mrs. Farquhar had tittered over in the gallery, but a hot-blooded man of firm muscle and ragged breath, pulling loose the tie of her nightgown and cupping his hand around her bare breast.
Bianca gasped, her hands closing convulsively on Max’s arms.
“You can stop me with a word,” he breathed against her temple, his thumb rolling over her nipple.
Bianca raised her head and looked him in the face. “More,” she whispered.
It took mere moments to strip him of his breeches and drawers. Max muttered curses as he peeled off his stockings, his eyes fixed on her as she shrugged off the nightgown. The sharp burst of embarrassment, to be naked in front of a man, lasted only until Max’s scorching gaze slid over her. He flung aside his second stocking, and caught her to him with a groan of joy.
Together they tumbled onto the bed. Bianca couldn’t touch him enough, and she wasn’t shy about urging him to do the same. Her body remembered, intimately, every wicked thing he’d done to her in Vauxhall, and wanted all of it, all over again. He was the one who laughed quietly and whispered that there was no rush, he meant to please her from now until dawn. But when she spread her legs in mute, shameless appeal, he went still, and his languid whispers grew short, and when he slid down and put his mouth on her, Bianca gripped his hair in both hands and begged for more.
“I love you wild like this,” he said in a guttural whisper, sucking at the flesh of her inner thigh. “And this.” His fingers were inside her, tormenting her. “And this.” He moved over her, pausing to lick her breast until she shivered. “And this . . .” He shifted his hips and edged inside her.
She strained against him. She had thought of this every night. “Max,” she pleaded. “More.”
He pushed forward in a sudden motion. For a moment he was still, and then he let out his breath and began to move, riding her with long hard thrusts that made her gasp. His hands roved, stroking, squeezing, holding her in place for his ravishment.
She came, almost too soon. She had wanted him so much, and been so worked up by the cricket, he hardly had to do