The pleasure of shocking him was almost as good as the kiss.
She lifted her eyes to his face.
His eyes were all pupil now.
For a moment, it was hard to know who was breathing in and who was breathing out. It was a small storm contained between them.
“I’m not certain you’re in your right mind at the moment, Lady Derring.” His voice lulled, nearly hoarse.
“I’m not using my mind at all. You ought to take advantage of that.”
The next two breaths he took and released were audible.
“Delilah... don’t tease.”
Ah. Stern Captain Hardy, issuing an order.
But the words were ever-so-slightly frayed. She recognized that he was in truth asking for mercy, this man who had probably never begged for a thing.
And they both knew the torment of wanting something out of reach.
She was disinclined to torture him. One man had tried to take her against her will tonight.
It was her glorious right to give herself to another.
So she kissed him again.
This time he captured her face with his hands as her lips touched his. He tipped her head back into the cradle of them with such deliberate grace she fleetingly wondered how many times he’d done precisely that.
And he plundered.
But from that moment on there was no question about who was in command or what was about to happen. Anticipation and uncertainty and fear and joy were all distinct feelings, all at once, and nearly physical pleasures. She knew nearly nothing. She suspected he did indeed know everything.
And everything was what she wanted.
He drugged her with the heat and dark sweetness 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.