wide, shucking it off her, reveling in the way her body moved as she helped him, twisting and stretching, revealing the curves she’d been teasing him with all night. No. Not all of them. He slid one hand from her curving hip up her side, until he felt the ridges of fabric beneath her shirtsleeves.
Like lightning, he fisted his hand in the fabric at her back, pulling it from the waist of her trousers. “Hattie . . .”
Her eyes went wide as he repeated the motion in front, tugging, revealing bare torso. She immediately caught the hem of the shirt and tugged it down. “No.”
The word stung. “No?”
She shook her head. “It’s very—bright.”
He smiled. “I know.”
She shook her head, her gaze flickering to the doorway to the next room. “Do you not have a bed somewhere? Somewhere dark?”
He did. But that wasn’t what she was saying. “Hattie. Let me see.”
She closed her eyes. “I’d rather you not.”
He leaned back against the loveseat, refusing to remove his hands from her, letting his fingers slide over her thighs and play at the tops of her leather boots. “Shall I tell you what I wish to do?”
Her eyes flew open and he almost laughed—he had her attention. His curious girl wouldn’t be able to resist his telling her precisely what he wished to do to her. In full detail. “I wish to remove this shirt that is too plain for you,” he said softly, his fingers sliding back up to the lawn hem, not stopping until they were underneath the fabric, on her warm skin.
He teased along the soft strip just above her trousers, and whispered, “I need to remove it, you see, because I can’t taste you until I have.” Her lips fell open on a little intake of air. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me tasting you?”
“I . . .” She hesitated.
“I’d like to run my tongue over you here,” he said, his hand splaying wide over the soft curve of her stomach, his cock growing harder with every new inch of her. Had anything ever felt as good as the silk of her skin? The curve of her body?
He sat up, burying his nose in the curve of her neck as he wrapped his arms around her. “Let me,” he whispered at her ear before capturing the lobe between his teeth. “Let me taste you.”
She exhaled her “yes,” as though it was the only word she could find.
He pressed a wet kiss just beneath her ear and released her, his hands returning to the hem of her shirt and pulling it over her head, sending it sailing across the room, forgotten before it hit the ground, because he was too focused on what he’d discovered.
The vision of those bindings, the way they disappeared her beautiful breasts—they made him want to do damage. He set a finger to the uppermost edge of the bandages, where her skin was straining white against the binds. “You know, my lady, when you spoke of undergarments, I did not expect—”
She gave a little breathless laugh, and he was grateful for it . . . for the way it pulled her from whatever doubt she had been having. “I don’t imagine you did.”
“Mmm,” he grunted before leaning forward and tracing the pale line just above the too-tight bandages with his tongue.
“Oh, my,” she whispered, her hands coming to his head, threading into his hair. “That feels—”
It was nothing compared to what he was going to make her feel. He found the end of the linen and untucked it, pulling it free before beginning the work of unbinding her.
She reached to help him.
“No,” he said, as he worked to lay her body bare. “This is for me. You, on my lap, wrapped like a parcel. It’s like Christmas.”
She flushed at the words. “Is it?”
He slowed, holding her gaze for a long moment before he answered, “How could you not know?” The strips fell away and her eyes went hooded with the pleasure of their loss—so keen that Whit felt it like a blow, his mind going blank but for the single goal of making her feel a pleasure to rival it again and again, forever.
She returned to her senses too soon—almost immediately—and instantly moved to cover herself, an impossible task as the beautiful globes overflowed her hands. The vision was the most erotic thing Whit had ever seen, and he could not contain the growl that came from low in his throat as he leaned forward and