of his lips, his tongue, stroking and twining with hers, in so doing uncovering strata after strata of subtle pleasure that shivered through her bloodstream, lava, quicksilver, setting up camp between her legs, throbbing. She took hungrily, mesmerized, trembling, her hands clinging to his shirt hot from his skin.
And then she began to give, and to demand, and she could feel his need ramping in tandem with hers, in the hoarse oath he whispered, the low moan of triumph. Their breath sawed, hot and sweet; their tongues dueled, and their lips clung and released and went for more. And when the air slipped into her night rail she realized that somehow, sneakily, in the midst of this, he’d eased her night robe away from her shoulders.
He dragged his hands down over her throat, then with a tweak skillfully loosened the ribbon at its bodice so that the lawn confection collapsed like a scandalized maiden. And this, too, was eased from her shoulders, from her breasts, as she was in thrall to the things he was doing to her ear with his tongue. He filled his hands with her breasts, chafing his thumbs over her nipples, stroking. The shock of pleasure snagged the breath in her throat, and she choked an oath of her own as her head tipped backward. He buried his face in her throat, kissing the place where her heart was thundering. His lips, his tongue, his breath, laid a new trail of pleasure along her shoulder, a sensual Vasco da Gama, as his hands savored her breasts. She hadn’t known her own skin, her own senses, contained such magic, such potential for furious bliss.
Desire was like claws sunk into her.
“I need . . .” she choked. “I want . . .”
She didn’t know what she was asking for precisely.
“Anything,” he said, low and fiercely. “Name it.”
If only she knew what to call the thing he’d done to the hollow beneath her ear that sent rivulets of quicksilver pleasure through her veins. She’d name that.
“More” is what she said.
He knew. His grin was white in the gloomy light of the parlor.
She hadn’t realized he’d already, through the magic of drugging her senses, levered her backward until she looked up and there was the water spot and the plaster rose on the chandelier. She’d lost a sense of where her body began and ended; she was a creature who accepted pleasure.
And then Tristan caught hold of the hem of her night rail and tugged, and it became a caress as it slid down her legs. She felt like a caterpillar shedding its cocoon. A naked butterfly on a sagging velvet settee, which, when she shifted, caressed her bum. Everything in the entire world was making love to her.
Egad, she was naked. She’d never been entirely naked in front of a man. The awareness burned a little of the sensual haze away, she nearly crossed her arms and legs out of nerves until Tristan made a sound, half sigh, half groan, like a man who beheld a feast, and then stretched alongside her and wrapped her with his arms, clothing her in heat and his singular smell, man and sweat and tobacco and the musk of desire. Maybe it was the smell of valor.
She slid her hands beneath his shirt. He was indeed a wall. A hot, smooth one, satin stretched over stone. A little fuzzy with hair.
He sighed something that sounded like “God, yes.”
How lovely and erotic to make someone make those sounds.
So she did it again, marveling at the warmth and strength of him.
He shifted his body lower, ducked his head, and closed his mouth over her nipple. And sucked. Traced it with his tongue and sucked again. How extraordinary. How wicked.
His lips reclaimed hers again and she sank into the refuge of long sultry kisses while his hands dropped below, and his fingertips like delicate marauders lit fires everywhere they touched as they traveled the curving road of her waist, her hip, her thigh. She was rippling with waves of pleasure by the time his fingers crested the curve of her buttocks and slid between her thighs, which, she realized when they arrived, was exactly where she wanted them to be all along.
“I didn’t know . . . oh God.”
Her body was wiser than she was, and her legs dropped open even wider.
“Tell me what you want,” he murmured, his fingers circling, stroking, until her lungs labored with hot ragged breaths and she was wantonly undulating against