Page 88 of An Extraordinary Lord

For the rest of this night, though, he was hers. She wouldn’t waste a minute of it.

Slowly, she reached to unfasten her sword belt and let it fall away to the floor around her boots.

His gaze snapped back to her, and the heat in his eyes flamed into a bonfire when she drifted a hand down her front to unfasten her waistcoat. The metal fastenings slipped free, and the leather parted.

He inhaled sharply through clenched teeth. With his gaze fixed on her, she shrugged and let the thick waistcoat slip off her shoulders, down her back, and off. Then she loosened the gusset tie for her breeches at the small of her back.

Her hand went to her corset next, and she temptingly tangled her fingers in the front tie. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” He swallowed, hard enough that his Adam’s apple bounced. “Not if you don’t.”

“I don’t.” She did her best to push down her sadness that this would be the last time they would be intimate and smiled as seductively as possible. “I might need your help, though.” She glanced down at the corset. “Silly me. I seem to have knotted the lace.”

“Damn shame,” he murmured as he slowly closed the distance between them. “May I?”

“Yes,” she whispered, agreeing to so much more.

He deftly pulled at the tie of the corset. With a long, slow, torturous slide of his hand down her front, from breasts to belly, he pulled the lace free. The stays dangled open, revealing the man’s linen shirt she wore beneath.

“There.” He stepped back and put several feet between them. “All untied.”

She dropped her fisted hands to her sides. Oh, frustrating man! “That’s not what—”

Without warning, he grabbed her into his arms, scooped her off the floor, and carried her to the fireplace. As he lowered her onto her feet, he slid his hands beneath the open corset and caressed her breasts through the soft linen. Her nipples immediately tightened into hard, aching points…Oh, frustrating man.

He leaned forward to bring his lips to her ear and nibbled at her earlobe as his hands continued to stroke her. “I thought you might be cold.”

“Not at all.” Despite herself, she couldn’t help arching into him, to encourage him to tease even more wickedly at her nipples and stoke the growing ache between her legs. “Actually, I feel…quite heated.”

His hands pushed the corset off her shoulders to the floor, then pulled the shirt taut across her breasts. Her dark nipples pressed against the white material. He stared hungrily down at her and said huskily, “My mistake.”

She inhaled sharply when he lowered his head and captured her nipple in his mouth through the soft linen. When he began to suckle at her in gentle but persistent pulls, she ran her fingers through his hair and let out a long, shaking sigh. Would any other man ever be able to make her feel this way again, this beautiful and desired? Would any other man stir this much longing inside her with only a caress of his lips?

She trembled with growing pleasure as his tongue laved at her, then moved to do the same to her other breast, leaving a damp circle in the linen. When he bit at her nipple, she cried out softly at the wanton sensation of pleasure-pain he spun through her.

“Then perhaps we should remove some of your clothes before you overheat,” he murmured against her breast and placed a soft kiss to its tip.

“A fine idea.” But even as she returned the teasing flirtations, she felt the anguish of losing him flood the dark corners of her heart. But wasn’t this where they’d always been the most comfortable with each other since the beginning—in the middle of teasing banter and conversation without consequence? This was what she would cling to tonight, this part of him that she loved, and somehow not think of the rest.

His hand slid lower to unbutton the fall of her breeches. Then lower still to slip beneath the buckskin and caress between her legs. Shamelessly, she moaned at his touch. She was already hot and damp there, and she was certain he could feel her desire for him throbbing beneath his fingertips.

He teased his middle finger against the hollow at her core, then slipped it inside her. But it wasn’t enough. She craved far more than this small bit of him inside her and longed for him to fill her completely, to end the emptiness that throbbed hollowly between her legs.

“Merritt,” she panted out and arched her hips toward him, begging with her body for more of him.

He tucked a second finger inside her tight warmth and wickedly stroked inside her. A soft whimper left her lips, and he smiled in triumph as his mouth darted down to seize hers. As he plundered her mouth with his tongue and lips, his hand continued to pleasure her. Every plunge rubbed his knuckle against that aching point in her folds, every retreat came as an agonizing loss. His free arm snaked around her waist to hold her steady as her trembling increased and her legs grew boneless, as he tightened an invisible coil tighter and tighter inside her toward the breaking point—

She cried out at the expected loss of him as he pulled his hand away from her just as release was about to overtake her. But with a devilish grin, he grabbed her breeches in both hands and stripped them down over her hips.

She stood in front of him, bare in the firelight from waist to ankles and without a trace of shame. She brazenly stroked his cock through his trousers. He was steely hard for her, his bulging erection tantalizingly enormous. When she licked her lips in anticipation, he growled and pulled her to the floor with him.

She wanted him too desperately to take the time to remove her boots and clothes, yet she managed to scramble enough to free one leg from her breeches and spread herself wide to him. “Make love to me, Merritt.”One last time…

With a groan of masculine need, he tore open the fall of his trousers. He covered her body with his and settled into the inviting cradle of her thighs.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the rough scratch of his trousers against the bare flesh of her inner thighs thrilled her with its wantonness. A small cry of pleasure tore from her as he sank inside her, and she welcomed him eagerly, encouraging him with a bite to his shoulder to claim her as greedily as he dared. Deep, powerful thrusts of his body stole her breath away and left her clinging helplessly to him, never wanting to let go.

Locking her ankles together at the small of his back, she arched into him as the breathless release she craved began to overwhelm her. It licked at her toes and fingers, stirred in her hair until her scalp tingled—untilevery inchof her tingled with a fierce yearning she knew only Merritt was capable of satiating. A yearning that went beyond mere physical desire, beyond the melding of bodies…one that made her want to brand him onto her forever.