tightened in response, their interest starkly visible as they jutted up through the insufficient layers of thin linen and fine cashmere.
This was what she got for refusing to ride hindered by cumbersome stays. She got a devilishly handsome scoundrel peppering kisses over her bare flesh.
She might never wear stays again.
“I want to touch your nipples,” he murmured.
Did he just say...?
He did.
“Do it,” she stammered.
“No.” He shook a finger at her. “Kisses only. An agreement is an agreement.”
“Oh,” she said weakly.
Did that mean Elijah was going to kiss... her...
Up came her shirts. Slowly, torturously, giving her plenty of time to decide if she wanted to put a stop to this game.
She wished she’d allotted him unlimited kisses.
“Four.” The word was a breath of soft air against her left nipple, and then it disappeared into his warm mouth.
Olive’s entire body tightened with a familiar, delicious pressure. She wasn’t certain which was the more erotic: the feel of his wicked mouth and tongue on her shamelessly attentive nipple, or the fact that she was watching him do it. His pillow provided an absolutely phenomenal angle from which to ogle his wide shoulders and chiseled cheekbones. She could barely breathe from the headiness of such an erotic sight.
He lifted his mouth. “Five.”
And now it was her other nipple’s turn.
It couldn’t possibly be better than... Good heavens, was he using his teeth? The pressure was feather-light, with just a hint of danger, before his tongue and mouth resumed their play.
The pressure between her legs built higher. She wished he would touch her there, and knew he wouldn’t. She must console herself with kisses. Next time, she would suggest a much more flexible arrangement.
“Six,” he said, and covered her mouth with his.
He had kissed her a thousand times over the past week, but never like this. Him, fully clothed. Her, with her shirts hiked to her neck and her sensitized nipples rubbing against his cashmere-covered chest.
It felt licentious and luxurious; a sensual harbinger of impending ruin.
She hoped it never stopped.
“Seven,” he said, and lowered his mouth back to her breast.
This time, he teased by dancing around the nipple, rising up until his lips almost touched the peak, then falling back down the other side of her breast to rise again, until she was ready to grab him by the hair and force her nipple into his mouth herself.
He indulged her deepest desire for the briefest of moments before announcing, “Eight,” and performing the same dark magic on her other breast.
Every time he almost-but-not-quite reached her nipple, her breath caught and her spine arched, shamelessly tilting her tight peak into his waiting mouth.
She could have cried with frustrated passion when he said “nine” and lowered his kisses back to her stomach.
That was, until she felt the buttons slip away over her hipbones. The flaps of her breeches gapped open in the early evening air. One small tug, and she would be bare right down to her—
He tugged.
“Ten,” he said, and put his mouth exactly where she’d hoped he’d touch her.
Her eyes fluttered backward at the onslaught of sensation. Her wide-open breeches were just loose enough to allow his face between her thighs, yet just tight enough to restrict her from flinging her legs wide to offer him more access.
She was pinned in place by her own scandalous trousers, affording her no other possibility but to melt into his pillows and attempt vainly to breathe, whilst his mouth and tongue brought her right to the edge and... over.
She came apart beneath his hands, pressing her body into his face as her trapped legs tightened with each exhilarating contraction of pure pleasure.
He stopped only when she lay spent beneath him, no longer capable of rational thought.
She managed to mumble, “Means nothing...”
“Mm-hm.” He fastened up her buttons with care, then gently pulled down her shirts before wrapping her in his arms and cradling her to his chest.
He made her feel cherished, damn him. He made her feel desirable. Wanted. He made her feel as though he might one day come to love her just as much as she—
Heaven help her. Olive squeezed her eyes shut tight. She’d fallen in love with the wretched knave.
Her head bolted upright.
“This means nothing,” she announced, firmly this time.
He nodded. “You mentioned.”
“But I’m not opposed to doing it again.”
His eyes widened, then crinkled at the edges. It should have been arrogant, not seductive. It was both.
“Are you negotiating?” he asked.
“No one consulted my opinion before you first turned up,” she reminded him. “The arrangement was