Page 71 of After the Abduction

Easing back from him, she ran her hands down his chest as she’d wanted to do earlier in the forge. It was as eloquently crafted as any of his pistols, and far more dangerous to her peace of mind. She rubbed her thumbs over his flat male nipples, and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing madly.

Her heart leaped at that sign of his vulnerability to her touch. She could get used to holding the reins. Knowing his reluctance to relinquish anything, she’d best take full advantage of this opportunity, since she might never have it again.

She let her hands roam his ribs, his trim belly, even his shadowed navel. “You have a magnificent body, you know,” she told him.

“So speaks the woman with the wealth of experience,” he choked out.

She gave his chest a little shove. “It’s too awful of you to throw my inexperience in my face.”

“Trust me, sweeting, you make up in enthusiasm for what you lack in experience.”

“Somewhere in there is an insult, I think.” She skimmed her hands down to the fall of his breeches. “But I don’t care.”

“I meant no insult at all.” He sucked in a sharp breath as she unfastened two buttons of his breeches. When he spoke again, he sounded as if he were strangling. “I like enthusiasm. I love enthusiasm. I much prefer it to the opposite.”

“Even if decent, respectable young ladies aren’t supposed to—”

“Yes, even if.” He shivered when she slipped loose the other two buttons. “I…I prefer an enthusiastic woman to a respectable woman any day. Decent young ladies can be deuced boring.”

She laughed. “I suppose they can.” Being a respectable young lady had gained her nothing but loneliness. Decency did seem highly overrated at times.

She stared down at his breeches, satisfied to see them bulge every bit as obviously as they had that day in the conservatory. “And do you find me boring?” she teased.

His gaze burned into her. “You know the answer to that.”

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

That was all it took to have his arms around her, his mouth on hers. She met it with all the eagerness of a wanton, and oddly enough felt no remorse. She was about to abandon everything she’d been taught, and she didn’t care.

Because she knew no one else would ever satisfy her. That was why she’d never considered any other man from the day she’d met him. It was why she now prayed she could accept his explanations. The thought of life without him had simply become too unbearable to contemplate.

His hand slid up to fondle her breast through her chemise, and for a moment she rose to it, reveled in the deft caress. But when he then slipped his hand beneath the muslin with a husband’s possessiveness, she shoved him away.

He was breathing heavily, his eyes black as the devil’s soul. “Let me touch you,” he whispered. “I want to touch you, sweeting.”

She shook her head wordlessly. She was probably being perverse, since she wanted him to touch her more than anything. But she didn’t want him taking it as he took everything else. For once she wanted to give it to him. “You said I could hold the reins.”

His hands fell into fists at his sides. “Indeed I did. Though I’m starting to regret it.”

With a chuckle, she considered what to do next. Not tell him to touch her, because then she’d be falling in with his wishes. Instead, she flicked her hand to indicate his breeches. “Take those off,” she ordered. “The breeches and your shoes and stockings.”

His eyebrows arched high on his forehead. But he did it, all the while keeping his eyes on her with wary uncertainty. “Aren’t you going to remove your chemise, sweeting?” he asked in the compelling thrum of a voice that usually dissolved her insides.

“Not yet,” she responded, though she blushed. “I get to look my fill first.”

“Then shall I remove my drawers, too? Or is that too much for you?”

The hint of mockery in his smile told her he knew very well that it was. Which was precisely why she would make him do it. “Y-yes, take them off.”

She couldn’t believe she was doing this shocking thing, ordering him to strip down to nothing for her. She couldn’t believe he was letting her.

Apparently, he couldn’t either. With a faint look of surprise, he divested himself of the glove-tight scrap of stockinette and set his “thing” free. He stood motionless while she gaped at it transfixed, fascinated by its nest of dusky hair, its smooth length…its immensity.

What had he called it before? His John Thomas. Leave it to men to name the thing, as if it were a person. And such a respectable name, too, for what looked terribly improper—bold and reckless and belligerently male. Anything that could lie so dormant inside a man’s breeches, yet in an instant become this amazing wonder of flesh, had a dangerously unpredictable nature.

The longer she looked, the more it stiffened, so she prolonged his torment, strolling around him in a circle to survey his physique from every angle. My oh my oh my. So this was how Sebastian looked beneath his breeches—all muscle and taut skin and impossibly hard flesh.

When she returned to the front of him, she marveled again at the astonishing rigidity of his “thing.” “C-can I touch it?” she whispered, remembering what she’d done in the conservatory.