Amelia looked around the room at her options. There were several animal heads lining the upper walls of the room toward the ceiling. Different species of deer. A wolf. Large cats and other predators. She chose the boar’s head directly across from her.

“Just a little higher,” Dominic advise, tilting her arms up. “There. Perfect.”

He pulled the hammer down at the top of the gun, then wrapped his pointer finger around hers at the trigger.

“Bang.”

A whimper escaped Amelia’s lips as the rumbled word brushed against her ear and her nipples hardened to the point of pain. Her arousal had been a terror to deal with lately, and now was even effecting the way she looked at guns. Yet the very idea emboldened her somehow.

She let her grip loosen on the Derringer so that it was cradled completely in Dominic’s strong hands, then turned in his arms. Unable to help herself, she curled her fingers around the open hems of his parted shirt, and felt another bout of desire course through her as her knuckles brushed against his chest hair.

“Promise me,” she whispered, searching his eyes imploringly. “After this season is over. After this whole mess is over, you take me back to Ellsworth and show me how to properly shoot.”

Dominic’s silver eyes searched hers as he lowered the pistol the table, and she nearly whimpered again as his hands rested on her hips.

“You truly think you would enjoy it?” He asked.

“I think I’m learning to enjoy many things,” she murmured, pressing herself closer to him.

Dominic’s fingers tightened at her hips as a low growl escaped his chest.

“Amelia Hollowcroft, you are without a doubt the most confusing woman I have ever met,” he told her, a smile tugging at his lips.

She smirked as she slid the fingers of her right hand fully into his chest hair.

“It is Astorfield now,Your Grace,”she purred, and tugged at the hair in her fingers.

A growl erupted from Dominic’s chest and in an instant she was losing herself to his kiss. She tried, for a moment to battle his dominance but all too quickly she found herself submitting her control to him; reveling in the way it felt to be able to hand her needs and body someone else.

“Tell me stop,” Dominic commanded between kisses, his tone ragged.

“No,” she moaned, and in her own need to touch him, she ripped at his shirt; sending buttons flying everywhere.

Their sexual tension had been building all day and she needed it released- they both did. The “why’s” and “how’s” of what their relationship was dissolved, and Amelia gave herself over to her desires.

She dragged Dominic’s shirt down his muscled shoulders and he helped her rip the rest of it off him before his hands came back to her body. His fingers clawed at the buttons of her high-collared blouse, and the moment he was able to undo the ones down to the hollow of her throat, he gripped the loosened edges and ripped.

The sound of her dress being torn in two made Amelia whimper with need; and she could barely stand staying still long enough to let him finish the work. The moment she was able to step away from it they flew to another again, their kisses hard and equally possessive as their hands ran rampantly over one another.

“You have vexed me all day, you know that?” Dominic voice quaked with need as he added her corset to the growing pile of ruined clothes.

“You loved it,” she whispered wickedly against his lips as her fingernails bit into his pectoral muscles.

“Damn you but I did, you wicked woman,” he rasped.

He then seized her by the throat with a quickness that only furthered her arousal, and he forced her stand away from him. Dominic’s silver eyes were bright as they traveled down slowly down her naked form. She should have been ashamed, she realized then. Perhaps even shy over being seen like this by a man for the first time…but she didn’t.

There was too much approval, too much need glittering in Dominic’s eyes to feel any shame at all. As he examined her she took the opportunity to examine him, too. Though she’d never admit it she’d spent a night or two imagining what her husband would like naked- and her mind had not done him justice.

His muscles were thicker and more well-defined than her imagination had conjured. Ropes of solid strength wrapped perfectly around his torso and arms; covered only by a spread of black, curly hair that almost formed an upside down triangle that started at his broad chest and ended at his navel.

Her mouth watered as she thought of what it would taste like to run her tongue over every part of him; even down to what his trousers left covered.

“You like what you see?” Dominic asked.

Despite the eagerness of the moment, Amelia blushed at the blunt question as she raised her eyes to his. She met a look of pure desire that was very obviously barely contained. She licked her lips, her grip on his wrist pulsing a little.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Do you like what you see?”