Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,32
or impressed that he knew that? “Might someone be roused if...if we make noise?”
His eyes flared as he approached her bed, but he made no move to join her upon it. Instead, he crossed his arms and propped his shoulder on her tall bedpost.
If he was dangerously handsome in the sunlight, at night he was utterly fatal.
The darkness embraced him as a creature of its own. Blessed him with satirical beauty and fiendish grace.
He was a demon in a bespoke suit.
“You are so open,” he noted. “So straightforward and bold. There isn’t a hint of coyness or artifice about you.”
A defensiveness welled in her chest. “I don’t know how to be coy and I don’t have time for artifice. Besides, why are women expected to be shy or tentative? Why must the fact that I am bold or inquisitive be revolutionary?”
“I was admiring, not admonishing. I find everything about you refreshing. Alluring.”
“Oh... well... thank you.” Mercy chewed on her lip, trying to figure out a way for them to not say anything further. The longer men spoke with her, the more likely she was to drive them away.
“Why don’t you undress and get in?” she ventured, tucking back a section of the covers.
He made a sound of disbelief deep in his throat. “You want me to undress here? In front of you?” He uncrossed his arms and lowered them to his sides, regarding her with a wicked scrutiny. “Are you a voyeur, Mercy Goode?”
“I don’t know what I am,” she answered honestly. “But you can’t get in bed with your shoes on. Nor can we—accomplish our aim—while you’re dressed, I expect.”
“Accomplish our aim?” His mouth flattened with chagrin. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
The tips of her ears began to burn again, she ducked her head under the covers. “Don’t make me say the word while I’m looking at you.”
His chuckle was like the purr of a tiger and washed her in prickles of awareness, pebbling the tips of her nipples. “How can you do the deed if you cannot speak the word?”
He made an excellent point, though she’d die before telling him so. “Fornicate,” she spat from beneath the coverlet. “Now could you take off your clothes and join me please?”
This time his laughter was genuine and rich. She shivered with pleasure at being the one to have produced it.
Even if it was at her expense.
She peeked out at him.
Bucking away from the bedpost, he blinked at her from beneath dark, suggestive lashes. “Oftentimes, lovers undress each other.”
“Oh...” She struggled into a seated position, clutching the sheets to her unbound breasts. “Well, I undressed myself so you wouldn’t have to.”
Raphael closed his eyes for a moment and brought his fist to his mouth where his teeth sank into a knuckle.
Suddenly uncertain, Mercy asked, “Should I not have done? Do you want me to put my nightdress back on so you can be the one—?”
“No!” He cleared his throat. Inhaled. Exhaled. And tried again. “No... I will undress and join you there. Keep the damned covers on or I’ll not be able to contain myself.”
“I shouldn’t think you’re here to contain yourself, rather the opposite,” she teased.
“For a woman’s first time, a man should always contain himself.” He said this as if lecturing himself.
She didn’t know enough about it to disagree with him.
The sight of Raphael’s deft fingers undoing the knot at his collar did something wicked to her insides. All her boldness deserted her as he undid the buttons of his shirt and vest, shucking them down his shoulders.
Mercy’s eyes widened at the sight of his tattoos. Black ink danced and swirled over his tawny skin, rising over broad, round shoulders and circled down one corded arm. They were a chaotic array of blasphemies. A religious icon inked adjacent to a naked woman in a suggestive pose. A raven perched on a skull. Other beasts interspersed with pagan symbols and words or verse in his native language.
One thing became instantly obvious. He was the art...the depictions were merely decorations.
The disks of his chest were smooth, unfettered by hair or adornment, and sloped down to the slight corrugations of his ribs and the deep etchings of abdominal muscles.
The only hair she could see, aside from his head, was a dark line disappearing into his trousers.
He undressed without hurrying, watching her watch him.
Touching her, all of her, without touching her at all.
His hands rested at the placket of buttons beneath which the barrel of a bulge nudged to be uncovered.
Mercy almost