the silence. If he clenched that jaw of his any harder, she was sure it would shatter.
“I’m waiting, Roth,” she said, her voice low and husky.
“Isobel—” Her name was a cross between a warning and a desperate plea.
Undeterred, she flung the cravat at him. “Disrobe and put that over your eyes, or so help me, I’ll put some of your wicked toys over there to good use.”
A tremor rolled through those wide shoulders, and then he pushed off the desk, his eyes holding hers as he did as asked. His coat went first. Then his cravat, followed by his waistcoat. With every popped button and each discarded article of clothing, her pulse escalated. By the time he slid his shirt over his head, Isobel’s mouth was so dry that she was ready to leap over the desk and gulp down that entire bottle of whiskey. But not before getting her greedy little palms all over that moral-smelting masculine body.
“More?” he asked in a low growl.
She could only nod, temporarily silenced by the overwhelming display of muscles. Lady Hammerton’s portrait had not done him a lick of justice, because Winter was sculpted to god-like perfection. Her hitherto dry mouth flooded with moisture. Holy hell, he was edible, and she was going to consume him. After she got him to yield, of course.
His fingers had stalled at the waistband of his breeches.
“Why are you stopping? Disrobe means disrobe.”
“And you?”
“I am the proprietress of the transaction,” she told him, her brain’s capacity to function reducing with every breath. “You are the performer.”
A surprised chuckle burst from him. “Now I know how a debutante feels on the marriage block. Or better yet, a Cyprian.”
Isobel stilled, remembering what he’d told her about the rules of consent in the club. “Lord Roth, do you grant me permission to proceed?”
“I do.” His gray eyes were so dark they were nearly black, but they shone with approval.
“And you accept my will in all things.”
“Yes.” The word was a primal growl that set her lady parts on fire.
“Good.” She rewarded him with a sultry smile and strolled around the desk. “Bind your eyes.”
Winter stared at her for a protracted moment, but then lifted his arms and wrapped the fine linen around the upper part of his face. Ragged breaths sawed past his lips, chest heaving as his clenched fists fell to his sides. God, she’d never seen a more beautifully made man.
And he was hers.
Isobel drew her own ragged breath into her aching lungs, ogling him without fear of him seeing just how desperate she was to drink him in. Freed of the hot press of his eyes, she traced a fingertip down his chest, watching as the muscle leaped reflexively beneath it, all the way down to his waistband that was still fastened.
“You disobeyed me, Lord Roth,” she chided, knuckles brushing over his flexing abdomen. They leaped, too, along with other still-covered body parts. “I seem to recall telling you to get rid of these.”
She let her hand drift lower, hearing his sharp intake of breath, her woolen mind dimly confirming that he was rock-hard everywhere, especially there. The thick shape of him had been burned into her memory, but she wanted to see him.
Emboldened, Isobel unfastened his falls, allowing his eager erection to spring free from its confines, and nearly swooned then and there. Rowlandson might have some disturbingly erotic drawings, and she might have been able to keep a clear head while paging through the filthy pages earlier, but none of them could compare to the real thing.
Winter was as formidable and as beautiful there as he was everywhere else.
“Isobel.” The three-syllable rasp of her name dripped through her like hot honey.
“Undress me.”
He exhaled a groan. “I cannot see.”
“Then feel.”
…
Winter wondered if a man could actually die from need. His ballocks were so tight, his cock so full, with every muscle in his body straining for release that he was sure he was balancing on the very edge of death. But hell, what a way to go.
He could feel his wife’s eyes on him, the lack of sight heightening every other sense—the smell of her, the sound of her own suffocated breaths, and now the feel of her.
As instructed, Winter reached out blindly, attempting to control the trembling of his hands when they contacted the front of her body. He fumbled with the buttons at first, but managed to get the first layer off and then her waistcoat. She helped with the shirt and then stepped