When he reached the plump petals at her apex, she closed her eyes and dropped her head back, exposing her slim, graceful neck and thrusting her chest higher. Long curls had escaped their pins and dangled over the surface of the table.
His blood, which he was certain had all pooled in his cock, roared in his ears. Or was that the rain thrumming on the rooftop? He drew one knuckle along warm, slick flesh, unable to move his gaze from her face, and located her swollen nub with his thumb.
“Jules?” she half-whispered, half-whimpered.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No. Don’t stop.” Her mouth parted and Jules wondered if the flesh of the lips beneath his hand was as rosy as the lips he’d already tasted. Or were they a duskier scarlet like the warm wet flesh inside her mouth?
He had to stop himself from imagining too much or he’d never get through this without embarrassing himself.
Unable to resist, he trailed his other hand up her other leg, past her hip bone, past the softer flesh of her belly to cradle the weight of her breast.
She was even wetter now, pulsing beneath his hand. And still, he couldn’t stop watching her expression. With each breathy gasp she made, he learned more of what she wanted. With each moan, he took special note.
“It’s all right. Let go,” he urged her, sensing that she was afraid to give in.
“I don’t know how.” Her eyes squeezed closed, but tears of frustration had escaped, nonetheless.
Jules’ throat thickened and in one quick motion, he scooped her up and carried her to the cot. She kept her eyes pinched together and didn’t open them until he lay down beside her.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?”
The doubt he saw as she stared up at him only made him more determined to convince her. How had he ever imagined he could marry anyone but her?
He threaded his fingers into her hair, carefully removing the few remaining pins. “Look at this. Under the sun, it’s like fire. In the shadows, it’s the color of a sensual dream.” He smoothed some curls on the pillow around her and along her face, hypnotized by the different shades of the strands in the flickering firelight.
“You hated it when you first saw it,” she half-teased; half-accused him. “Do you think I wasn’t aware of your disapproving scowl that first night?”
“You sneaky little minx.” But he continued stroking her hair and explaining the wager he and Stone had made on the moth. The smile on her lips was no longer sad by the time he finished regaling her with that story and some of the other ridiculous antics he and his friends had gotten into. At some point, he’d retrieved the flask and they took turns sipping from it.
Facing each other, lying sideways on top of the thick quilt, she dropped her lashes and studied a thread she’d been worrying. “I didn’t want you to stop, you know, but I didn’t know how to… let go?”
Jules watched her closely. “What was going on in that brain of yours? When I was touching you?”
Her teeth worried her bottom lip. “I thought I ought to be embarrassed. That even though it was one of the most amazing feelings in the world, surely I would do something wrong.”
Jules placed his fingertips on her chin and tilted her face up so she could see him. “Never. If you knew how I felt as I watched you, you’d flush an even deeper rose than normal.” He had her full attention now.
“I couldn’t stop staring at your lips, the flush on your cheeks, your neck. Knowing that you looked like that because of me—because of how I was touching you—” The sound of his heart grew louder in his ears as he remembered. “Even telling you now fuels my desire for you.” He took her hand and placed it over his heart. “Do you feel that?”
“It’s the same as mine,” she whispered.
“But I want you to know, Charley, my sweet little American, that I will never do anything you don’t want me to. I promise you that.”
“I want it,” she said. And then more forcefully. “I want to know all of it.”
In the time he’d come to know her, short though it had been, she’d been true to herself in a way he’d never known in a woman. Honest with herself—and honest with him.
He owed her the same.
“There is no going back after this. You will marry me then?”