She only realized that he’d stopped kissing when his hand stopped moving.
“Sweetheart?”
She frowned at him. Simeon didn’t say that sort of endearment to her. Nor did he smile like that, a kind of wide, joyful smile like a child in a playground.
“You’re gripping me very tightly,” he said, sparks of mischief in his eyes. “I might have bruises on my arms.” He moved his fingers again and she arched backward with a gasp.
She showed her teeth in a warning. “Simeon…”
“Enough pre-kisses,” he muttered. Before she knew what was happening, there was a warm wet tongue where one finger had been, and still his hand was there, filling her, making her shake all over until she finally dug her fingers into his arms and threw back her head and screamed.
Thirty seconds later she remembered where she was. “Godfrey!”
Simeon cocked an ear. “Still snoring,” he said cheerfully.
She fell backwards.
“No thanks to you,” Simeon added.
“Oh…my,” Isidore said. Her body was slowly coming back to earth. The pleasure felt as if it were still trembling in her toes, singing in her fingertips.
Simeon stood up and started taking off his clothes. He was as methodical as she would have expected. He neatly aligned his boots by the wall. He took off his neckcloth and hung it over a chair.
If Isidore hadn’t been feeling a kind of outrageous, limp pleasure, she would almost have been annoyed. But then she kept looking at his front, and she couldn’t get annoyed. He wanted her, yet there was a part of Simeon that resisted chaos so strongly that he couldn’t rip off his clothes and fall on her like a ravening wolf.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t strung as tightly as a drum. His eyes were glowing with a combination of controlled power and pure lust. Her body stopped being quite so limp and a prickling awareness overtook her.
Naked now, Simeon bent over to place his carefully folded breeches on the old rocking chair. The line of his flank gleamed golden in the firelight.
So what if he were an example of control and methodical thinking? He was gorgeous, and he was hers.
She rolled over on her side and propped up her head with one hand, checking to make sure that her breasts were not flopping inelegantly. They looked quite delectable and round, thank goodness.
He stopped and put a log on the fire.
She bit back a smile. He was afraid. Making love didn’t suit Simeon’s wish to be in control. To be in charge. In fact, she would guess that the parts of it that she most enjoyed, he most disliked.
What she wanted was to see that look on his face again, the one which surrendered to the moment, to the pleasure, to her.
Simeon straightened from the fire, turned and started to sit down next to her, probably intending, gentlemanlike, to ask her what she would prefer. Or something like that.
“My turn,” Isidore said, putting her hand over his mouth before he could speak. She was getting feverish again. She pulled him and pushed him until he was lying flat on the bed. Of course, he was too much of a gentleman to resist, though she could see he didn’t really like it. Simeon wanted to be in control. He felt too vulnerable, lying on his back.
She smiled at him, a sweet, dangerous smile. He was just where she wanted him. Then she reached out to touch him. He was hard, like a marble statue, but burning hot. Smooth and erotic. Made to stroke. He didn’t move while she explored him, soothed him, coaxed him.
He didn’t even make a sound until her hand closed around him again and she made an experimental move—
And then he uttered an odd strangled noise that made her head jerk back. But she knew, she knew that it wasn’t pain, and her fingers curled even tighter.
Then she started all those pre-kisses he had perfected, using two hands instead of one. And she followed them directly with real kisses, dusting his golden skin with the press of her lips. When she reached his nipples, he surged up under her. She looked up to find his eyes wide, full of passion, with no thought of control or order. It was hard to smile and kiss at the same time, but the taste of his skin calmed her giddy pleasure, brought on another kind of wildness. She tasted him, bit him, sipping his skin and his smell. Of course he didn’t scream, the way she did. But his breath came quickly, forcefully, especially the lower she went on his body.