Page 39 of To Tame the Wild Rake
He was stroking her hands as he spoke, long brushes of his fingers, and the tingling he produced was making it hard to think. “I like what you are doing now,” she said, and he smiled.
“I’m glad. I like it, too. Third, I want you to remember that the journey is not just about the destination. As we travel this path together, we will take as long as we need, and we will enjoy everything we do together. It does not matter if you do not, this time, reach your paroxysm; if I do not. We will have a memorable journey.” He lifted her tingling hands and placed a lingering kiss in first one palm, then the other.
“May I help you off with your pelisse?”
She nodded again, and then grasped her courage and told him, “If I can help you with your coat.”
He pressed his next kiss to one corner of her lips. “We shall disrobe one another, then. You start, my angel.”
How to do this?His coat was moulded to his form, fitting his shoulders like a second skin. If he turned his back on her so she could ease the garment off from behind, he would have to stop kissing her, running his lips down one side of her face and then up the other.
She slipped her hands out of his, put her palms on his chest and slid them under the coat and up towards the shoulders. He took a shuddering breath at her touch, and nuzzled her ear, which distracted her from her task and set her trembling.
Focus, Charlotte. She ran her right hand over his shoulder, pushing the coat backwards and down his arm. He dipped and twisted that side, then used his other hand to pull the sleeve over his wrist and down. The other side slipped easily, and she caught the coat, folded it by its shoulders, and leaned away to lay it on the nearest chair.
“My turn, Cherry,” he said, catching her around the waist and pulling her to him for another kiss, this one full on the lips, his mouth open, his tongue shaping her lips until she gasped at the shock of pleasure that speared through her, and his tongue darted inside. She sank into the sensation, conscious of nothing but his mouth on hers until she felt him easing her pelisse off one shoulder. She turned her head to look, breaking the kiss, grateful for the firm hand around her waist and for the support of the sofa, for all her bones had turned to jelly. She had not even been aware of him unbuttoning her garment with his free hand.
“Too fast?” he asked. She shook her head, her voice having got lost somewhere during that kiss.
The concern faded from his eyes, to be replaced by heat, as he changed the supporting hand and removed the pelisse from her other arm, tossing it onto the chair after his own coat.
She evaded his mouth so she could find his cravat pin, but she unknotted and unwound the cravat blind, as she allowed him to indulge her in another melting kiss.
He pulled her close again, kissing and nibbling down one side of her throat and then the other as his hands deftly undid the buttons of her gown. He pushed it off her shoulders and followed the neckline with his mouth, down to the lace that trimmed the top of her chemise. His tongue swiped underneath, across the nipples that were tight and aching, first on one side and then on the other.
She moaned, and he murmured, “That’s right, beloved. Tell me what you like.”
More. She wanted more. She fumbled his waistcoat buttons open and stripped it from him, captured one hand after another to unfasten his cuff links, undid the button that closed his shirt. He pulled his arms from the shirt one by one so she could tug it over his head.
Bare to the waist, he was beautiful—an athlete like those immortalised in stone by the Greeks, but in full colour, alive and warm, his skin firm to the touch. And touch him she did, exploring the wonder of his chest and his back with eager hands.
His breath came short, and his muscles twitched with the effort at self-control, but he held still and let her examine his torso, cataloguing its similarities and differences.
When she dipped her head to taste him as he had tasted her, he lay back against the padded arm of the sofa, sprawling so she had to kneel between his thighs and splay herself across him to continue her experiments. She didn’t stop even when she felt her laces loosen, and her petticoat slipping from around her waist. In a moment, all she wore was the knee-length chemise and her stockings. And it was his turn to offer up an item of clothing. His doe-skin pantaloons? Or his stockings? She knew all too well what had been pressing into her stomach as she draped herself across his lower torso. She sat back to undo the buttons of his fall, but shied away at the last minute and removed a stocking instead, then leaned back on the other arm of the sofa and offered him a pointed toe.
He supported her ankle with one hand, running the other up the silk-clad leg to her knee to unfasten her garter, caressing the soft skin of her inner thigh as he did so. Gently, slowly, he rolled the stocking down her leg, featherlight touches on the skin he bared chasing the stocking down and sending shocks of pleasure up her leg and into her core. By the time he removed the stocking entirely, she was rocking from side to side, moaning. And then he put her foot to his mouth to kiss and lick the arch, to suck each toe, before placing it gently on his thigh and taking his hands away.
His eyes smiled and his brows lifted in question. He waited. She narrowed her eyes, but she knew a challenge when she saw one, and she would not be defeated. She picked up his other foot, and repeated his actions as well as she could. Well enough, from what she could tell of his reaction.
By the time her other stocking was gone, he had had his revenge, driving her near demented with his teasing touches. “Shall we move to the bed?” he asked, and she nodded. He could still walk, which aroused her competitive spirit but was just as well, as her knees didn’t want to hold her up.
He placed her gently on the bed, then stepped back. “May I take your chemise off now? Not if you don’t want to, Cherry, but I would love to see all of you.”
“You first?” It was his turn to remove something, after all, and he had only one garment left.
He raised those expressive brows again, but obediently unfastened his fall and peeled his pantaloons off one leg and then the other. He posed, winked, and did a slow turn, while Charlotte gaped. He was gorgeous. And much larger than she expected. She knew what happened next, and surely it was going to hurt?
Anthony joined her on the bed. She lay back and looked up at him and was confounded when he moved up to sit against the piled-up pillows at the head, and patted the pillows beside him. “For the next stage, we will do better sitting, and side by side,” he said.
His move had brought the spectacular evidence of his desire level with her eyes. She shimmied up onto the pillows next to him where she did not have to look at it. “The next stage?” she asked.
“We use our hands and mouths on one another’s naked bodies,” he explained. “But if you’d like to keep the chemise, I’ll improvise.”
Quickly, before she could change her mind, Charlotte pulled the chemise over her head. Anthony caught it and tossed it onto the floor, not taking his eyes off her as he did so. His voice hummed with emotion as he said, “You are even more beautiful than I imagined.”
“You imagined me naked?” she asked, trying to sound indignant.
“Darling Cherry, ever since I met you. Even when you were a schoolgirl and I imagined what you would be like once you were a woman.”
