him moved but his eyes. Her ragged breaths were too loud in the silent night and her heart performed a drunken quadrille. She swallowed away her nervousness, and the sound of her gulp, so embarrassingly loud, made her unfreeze. She whipped the shift in front of her and clutched it over her breasts.
“Perhaps I should not have done that,” she said, her voice strange, uneven.
She watched, mesmerized, as he extended one arm, with slow, deliberate care, and flicked the door shut. His eyes were dark and liquid in the candlelight, and a matching liquid heat pooled in her belly.
“Done what?” His voice was rough velvet caressing her anguished skin. “Taken off your shift, or tried to cover up again?”
“Um.”
He eased closer. The height of the bed brought their faces level. If she leaned forward, her covetous breasts would graze his chest. She pressed her arms more urgently over her breasts, not for modesty now, heaven help her, but because they needed to be touched and pressing them like this felt good.
A gleam in his eye suggested he knew, or maybe that was her imagination, because how could he know, and why did he have to be so wicked, and why did she long for his teasing to continue even as she longed for it to stop?
“I think you’ll find, my lovely wife, that both of those were a mistake.”
He tugged at her nightshift. She clutched it more tightly. He raised an eyebrow, wicked playfulness mingling with heated promise.
“It’s only fair,” he murmured. “You saw me naked.”
He tugged again, and this time she let him take the shift and drop it onto the floor.
Chapter 15
Joshua caught barely another glimpse of Cassandra’s exquisite breasts before she crossed her forearms over them, her hands on her shoulders. A thrillingly inadequate effort. Her hair was tumbling down around her face, her eyes were wide and dark, and she breathed in short, shuddering breaths that echoed his own.
She was sheer perfection, and he was lost. What a fool he was to have started this. But he had, and here they were, and now he was nothing but need for her. Need and a faint clanging, somewhere in his brain, saying that he must not touch her. Because…Because…Something.
Ah, yes, because if he touched her, the world would collapse.
What utter nonsense.
“I thought you didn’t want this,” she said.
“I can stop any time I want.”
“So why don’t you stop now?”
“Because I don’t want to yet.” He hooked his fingers around her wrists. The world did not collapse. “Because first I want to look at my wife.”
She allowed him to lift her hands away from her body, to rest them back by her sides. Her full breasts, rising and falling. The round curve of her stomach. The softness of her hips and thighs. The promise of the dark curls at that sweet juncture.
His hands yearned to caress every inch of her. His tongue to taste her. His cock to fill her. Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, for she gasped and covered her eyes with her palms.
He chuckled unevenly. “I can still see you.”
“Cannot.”
“What a shame, because I so like looking at you.”
He came as close as he dared, let his lips find her ear. Her hair tickled his cheek and he resisted the urge to bury his face in it. She kept her eyes firmly covered.
“Do you like me looking at you?” he whispered, breathing in her scent, feeling it fill his veins. “Be honest now.”
With a long shuddering breath, she said, “Yes.”
Oh sweet mercy. “Would you like me to touch you?”
“I…It’s my…I mean…Must you consult me at every step?”
She did not even know what she wanted, still less how to express it. Could she imagine what he wanted? To trail his mouth and hands over every soft, fragrant inch of her, from those luscious breasts down to her belly. To part her thighs and touch her and kiss her until she lost all coherent thought. Until she forgot everything that she wanted except his touch.
He had started this stupid game, and she had upped the ante, and now she did not know the next play. His turn then: He would tease her and taunt her, torment her with her own desire, until she understood its power and would think twice before playing with him again. Risky? He took risks every day. And he could stop any time he wanted. He could always walk away.
He retreated to a moderately safer distance. “The trouble with