Testing Miss Toogood
Page 34
Dominic waited exactly where she’d left him. “Fleur?” He took a step closer. “I’m not shouting. But your voice is shaking. I can’t bear for you to be frightened of me.”
Fleur turned her back to him and said, “I can’t undo all the buttons myself. Hurry up, please.”
With her feet close together, her nightrail smoothed down and tidy all the way to her ankles and her arms at her sides, Fleur lay still beneath the sheet.
She started to jiggle, but deliberately made her muscles relax.
Dominic shouldn’t take so long. His clothes were much easier to remove than hers. And he didn’t have to take at least a hundred pins out of his hair.
She rose to her elbows and peered toward his dressing room.
Dominic gave up trying to wait. He wanted to be with her and the sooner he was, the sooner she would relax and stop being nervous. He shook his head and opened the door.
He was coming. Fleur heard him open the door and dropped to her back again and pulled the sheet to her chin. She closed her eyes.
“Fleur?” he said gently. “My love?” He stood beside the bed and looked down at her. Her hair rested across the pillow in a thick, loose braid and her eyes were closed. He touched her cheek lightly and shook his head again. As long as he lived, he would never understand women.
His wife of a few hours had fallen asleep before her husband could join her in bed.
Fleur opened her eyes the tiniest bit and tried to see him through her lashes. Not easy—except that she could tell he was naked. He had answered that question honestly, no nightshirts for Lord Dominic.
Her breathing grew shallow and rapid. The sheet was too heavy for her tingling nipples. No, not too heavy, the weight made the sensation more exquisite. Oh, my, she felt moisture flow in heavy, throbbing places.
The minx wasn’t sleeping.
Not unless she slept with her eyes partly open. Dominic saw the hint of a glitter where her eyelids didn’t quite meet and crossed his arms. His arousal made itself known and he braced his feet apart. Let her peek at him and think she did so in secret.
He could look at her for a very long time. Her face, her shape beneath the covers, filled him up with a warmth so possessive his throat tightened. So this was what it felt like to love. This was the beginning—and he did feel they were just starting their life together—and this incredible woman would be in his bed every night.
Dominic sat on the mattress beside her. “Fleur, I know you’re awake.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Of course I am. Who could sleep at such a moment? I was just resting my eyes.”
She put a hand on the side of his face and stroked him. With fingers that shook despite her brave words, she pushed into his hair.
No more waiting.
He surprised her. Thrilled her. One moment he sat beside her, quietly watching and waiting. The next he vaulted over her and slid beneath the covers. “This is the best moment of my life,” he said. “I have been afraid of what it would mean to commit to one woman. Now I know why. I hadn’t met you yet.”
Dominic lay on his side and Fleur turned to face him. She slipped an arm beneath his and wriggled until she pressed close.
“I love you,” he said, squeezing her against him. “I love you, love you. Why didn’t you make me admit it before? I’ve been wasting time.”
“I knew it, I think. That was almost enough.” But it hadn’t been. Nothing could feel as finished, as complete as this moment. Tears welled and she didn’t stop them.
She pushed her face against his neck and whispered, “I don’t want my nightgown, either.”
“Whatever you don’t want, wife, you won’t have.”
The nightrail all but disappeared. Unbuttoned and whisked over her head, it landed somewhere on the floor and she put herself back where she’d been, her skin to his, her heart beating with his, her body crying out to be joined with his.
Somehow she’d managed to get both arms around him. And she hooked a leg over his hip. “You’re driving me wild,” he told her. “How do you know to do that?”
Fleur didn’t know what he meant. “I only want to be so close to you we feel like one person.”
His manhood rested on her thigh, positioned where he felt the mad-making texture of hair and the slickness of her moisture mixed with his. He trembled from holding himself back. How easy it would be to slip inside her.
Fleur gasped. Dominic used his hands deftly, carefully, but he used them to draw her ever closer. His fingertips caressing her face, her neck, her shoulders, driving her mad when he didn’t touch her breasts but traced her ribs, lightly touched her belly, pulled her close and held her bottom, stroked it and the backs of her thighs.
He could touch her forever—as long as he didn’t have to wait forever to touch her in that dark, drugging place where he would find release.
Dominic pushed her to her back. He looked down at her, his face stark and possessive. Slowly, he bowed his head and licked circles around her breasts, each circle a little smaller, but never quite small enough to let him reach her nipples.
He raised his face enough to look up at her, and he smiled, a smile of pure, wicked delight. Extending his tongue, knowing she watched him, he delicately flipped the very tip of each nipple and he did so again and again until she held his head to her and strained upward against his mouth.
His. His wife. His lover. His friend.
Kissed, he kissed her thoroughly, stealing her breath, panting with his ardor, and then he lifted his head, squeezed his eyes shut and she saw a mix of ecstasy and sweet pain cross his features. She had taken him in her hand and guided him where he should be.
Fleur couldn’t close her eyes. She must watch emotion and sensation have their way with him.
He could not have stopped the drive of his hips, the burying of his rod deep inside her. Their pace speeded and he braced his weight on his arms, a hand either side of her head. They looked into each other’s eyes, their teeth gritted, the power of their joining rippling through their flesh.
She called out his name. He heard it as an echo in a dream, and fell on her, gathered her up and rolled to his back, nestling her on top of him.
Her hair had escaped the braid and spread over him, over his neck and shoulders. Her breasts rested soft and full on his chest and their legs tangled together.
“Dominic?” Her voice was muffled. “What promise didn’t you keep?”
He frowned then recalled what he’d said at the wedding breakfast. “I promised I’d be gentle if I taught you to love.”
“Oh.”
“Mmm, well, it gives me something to strive for. I’ll just have to practice until I get it right.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” she said.
“Sleep, love,” he murmured.
“I am.”
“But not for too long.”
“Ten minutes, perhaps five. One?”
They slept much longer and when Dominic opened his eyes the candles had burned out and the room was dark. He settled a hand on Fleur’s shoulder.
“Are you awake now?” she asked.
“Mmm.”
“Do you hear the rain?”
“Mmm.”
She kissed his chin and wriggled her hips the slightest bit. “Would you like to go for a walk with me? We could lie on the grass and feel the rain on our faces.”
He held her tight and said, “I’d really like to do that—some other night when it rains.”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6455-0
TESTING MISS TOOGOOD
Copyright © 2005 by Stella Cameron.
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