hands and his mouth, roaming freely over her torso, claiming it for himself, as though there could ever be anybody else. He slid down, and then his hands were moving over her belly and down over her legs. He paused, and sighed. And ran his hands down her legs.
“Your legs,” he said softly. “Beautiful, long, strong legs.”
He unfastened the buttons of her trousers, and drew them down, and swore softly at her shoes. But he had them off quickly enough. Then the trousers were off, dropped on the floor with other garments. He untied her garters, and slipped the stockings from her feet.
She lay there, exposed to him from the waist down and barely covered from the waist up. She was shameless, clearly, because she felt no shame at all. She loved him and wanted him. And she trusted him.
His hands, his big, clever hands glided over her belly and down her legs, and he sighed.
He slid off the sofa and began to kiss his way up her right leg, starting with the toes and moving up over her ankles, and up, to linger at her knees. Then up again, kissing the outside of her thigh then the inside, and then his hand was on her most private place, stroking, and she was shaking with need. The heat she’d felt before was nothing to this, tiny fires dancing over her skin and inside her, pulling her toward that distant place.
Then he put his mouth there and her mind went dark. There was only the sparkling whirlpool and sensations, pulling at her harder and harder, until she seemed to fly up and into the heavens, into the stars. She let out a cry. Then he was kissing her again, coming up over her belly and breasts and at last to her mouth. She grasped his head, and her eyes filled with tears.
A long, long kiss, while she floated back to earth.
Then, “Oh,” she said, her voice broken and hoarse. “What have you done?”
A long moment passed while she listened to his breathing, fast and hard, then gradually slowing, and while she slid her hand over his chest and felt his heart thud against her palm. After this time, while the world began to return, he said, “Now don’t you wish you’d married me the first time I told you to?”
He oughtn’t to have done it, but Ashmont was no good at being noble and self-sacrificing. He was a man hopelessly, helplessly, over head and ears in love, and the world ought to make allowances. Not that he cared whether it did or didn’t.
She loved him—he had it in writing—and he needed no other approval.
She’d said yes, and nothing else mattered.
Now he had no choice. He had to be noble and self-sacrificing, like it or not, and get her home . . . undetected. She’d taken an appalling risk. Even marriage wouldn’t smooth over this sort of outrage against propriety: coming to his house, of all men, and dressed in trousers!
The satirists would have a Roman holiday. They’d been having a fine time with him for years—and with her, on occasion. But all the jibes that had gone before would be nothing to this. Her family would be utterly humiliated. Her father would become a joke to his colleagues. Her sister . . . that didn’t bear thinking of.
And Ashmont couldn’t bribe all of London to make it go away.
He let his gaze travel over her—the smooth skin and perfectly shaped breasts and the sweet curve of her belly under the man’s shirt. The linen, pushed up, left the coppery triangle between her legs exposed.
Her legs. As perfect as everything else about her, and strong, as she was. She rode and drove and fought, and she knew how to scale a wall. A hoyden, people must have called her when she was a young girl. They probably still did. But that was an obnoxious epithet meant to make women feel ashamed for wanting exercise and freedom. So unfair.
He wouldn’t have realized this several weeks ago. But a book had opened his eyes. Now, a part of him ached for her and for what she must have endured, trying to grow up while holding on to her true self, in a world that didn’t approve of her. Small wonder Keeffe was so important to her. He understood her and encouraged her. No doubt he’d helped toughen her as well.
“I regret nothing,” she said, “and most certainly not rejecting that ridiculous offer. You were