linen aside and marveling at the sight of his exposed throat. “So I think you’d better fulfill your promise of making me scream your name.”
He tipped his head back as she came up on tiptoe to kiss his neck, unable to help herself. His chest went rigid beneath her palms, his hands coming up to clutch her arms.
“Callie.”
“You know what to do, and I am mostly ignorant. I need you to teach me.”
Gaze still connected with hers, he allowed some of the tension to leech from his muscles. His hand slipped around her back, fingers nimbly working the fastenings of her gown. She clung to his biceps, getting lost in his eyes—which had turned dark emerald with desire, solemn and fixed solely on her. Her gown loosened and she shrugged it away, standing in a heap of jonquil satin as he slowly circled her, stroking his fingertip down one arm and pressing a kiss just below her ear before standing at her back.
She began to shake as he worked the laces of her stays, the weight of such a moment overwhelming her in an unforeseen rush. His lips were a soothing balm, tender on the back of her neck as he pulled her stays aside, his hand splayed wide on her belly.
His other hand pulled her chemise off one shoulder, his lips and tongue finding every bare inch of skin. The hard swell of his cock prodded at her lower back, insistent and alive.
The chemise crept down her body in slow increments, Dominick taking his time unveiling her. It was nothing like she had imagined, her mind prepared for a ravenous rake tearing her clothes away and plundering her in a mindless frenzy. For all his insistence that he’d never lain with a virgin, he seemed to understand that she required him to coax her along slowly, sweetly, if only this one time. She squeezed her eyes shut as the thin cotton whispered past her hips and down her legs, leaving her wearing only her stockings and slippers. Dominick’s fingers strummed down her spine, featherlight but sure as he traced a path lower. He palmed her hips, then brought one hand around to cup between her legs.
She stiffened, her thighs clenching together, but he simply pressed his middle finger into the seam of her mons. His lips brushed against the shell of her ear.
“I have you, Callie. Let go.”
She gasped, thighs easing apart as he pressed and circled his finger with just enough pressure to send waves of sensation arcing through her entire body.
“Anni,” she choked out.
He went still. “What?”
She slowly turned to face him, momentarily robbed of speech by his reaction to the sight of her. His fiery gaze seared her to the bone, down her naked breasts and belly, past the thatch of dark hair between her legs, over her stocking-clad legs, the back up again. His jaw flexed, nostrils flaring as he drew in a deep breath.
“My name,” she blurted. “When I was born, my mother named me Anni Manha. Before we undertook the voyage to England, one of my father’s superior officers suggested he change my name. The names of Greek deities were all the rage in England at the time, so I became Calliope Anni Manha, though he still refers to me as Anni in private. Only he and my old ayah call me by that name.”
He smiled and stroked her cheek, inching closer until the heat of his body sank through the surface of her skin. “Anni Manha. It’s beautiful. Would you prefer me to call you Anni when we are alone?”
“You may call me whatever you like. I simply want you to know me, Dominick. I want you to know me as no one else does.”
Pressing a soft kiss to her lips, he turned his attention to her hair, running a loose strand between his fingers. “My Anni.”
Her Bengali name on his lips was nearly her undoing. It was a part of herself she had never thought to give to Martin, but the choice to offer it to Dominick felt right. It felt like the truest part of her, entrusted into his care.
“I’ve wanted to do this from the moment I first saw you,” he murmured as he began plucking the pins from her hair.
He dropped them carelessly to the floor as her neat coiffure began to droop, falling against the back of her neck. Ekta always used dozens of pins to secure the thick mass, but Dominick was patient, eyes twinkling with