Jasper’s smile curled her toes. “Do you have any notion of how sexually arousing I find your intellect? One day I should like you to expound upon this topic while I’m inside you. I suspect I would find it highly erotic.”
A flush swept over her face.
He shut the door to the hallway and locked it. The soft click of the latch rippled through her.
“I tested you today,” he said, with his back to her. “Considering how irritating I find such ploys, it astonishes me that I did so.”
“Did I pass?”
Facing her, he shrugged out of his coat. “You are in my home, so I would say so.”
He swiftly unfastened the buttons of his waistcoat. Eliza found she could not look away, despite the voice in her head that lectured about privacy and proper maidenly modesty.
She cleared her throat so she could speak. “You sent for me without telling me why.”
“If Montague had sent for you, would you have gone?”
“Of course not. He does not work for me.”
Jasper stiffened. When he returned to the act of shaking off his waistcoat, it was with notable impatience. “If Reynolds had sent for you, would you have gone?”
“No.”
“But he works for you.”
Clearly the expected responses were not the ones he wanted to hear. He wanted the truth.
“I would not have expended the effort for anyone else,” she admitted, her mouth drying as he untied and unwound his cravat, baring his throat. The sight was intensely provocative to her. His skin was darker than her own, firmer. She wanted desperately to touch it, to feel him swallow beneath her fingertips.
He toed off his buckled shoes. “That was the test. I needed to know if you would place me in a different category from other men you know. I was also curious to see how deep your adventuresome proclivities were buried.”
“I am far from adventuresome,” she protested.
“You would like to believe that.” Jasper tossed his cravat on the floor, then yanked his shirtsleeves over his head.
Eliza’s knees weakened and she staggered over to the nearest chair, half-sinking and half-falling into it.
Dear God, he was beautiful. Astonishingly, breathtakingly so. She remembered how he’d urged her to touch him the first time he kissed her. He had been so hard beneath her questing fingers, like stone. She could see why. Her hand lifted to her throat. As dry as her mouth had been, it was now flooded with moisture.
She had never seen a rendering of a male body that could compare. The washboard-like cording of muscles across his abdomen and the light dusting of dark hair that thinned into a fine line were new to her. And delightful. Her gaze followed the trail to where it disappeared beneath the placket of his breeches.
Then lower…
He was hard there, too. Cupped by the expertly tailored doeskin, the outline of his erection was thick and prominent. The knot in her stomach tightened. He was such a blatantly masculine creature. Primitive in the most vital of ways. A male whose appetites were undoubtedly fierce and expansive. How could she, a woman who knew nothing about exploiting her own femininity, sate such a man?
When he didn’t move, she jerked her gaze upward to find him staring back at her. A tight smile preceded him taking a seat on the opposite settee. He had allowed her to look her fill, she realized. Unashamed of the visible proof of his lust. Unabashed.
Jasper rolled down his hose, one leg at a time. “I need you to be adventuresome, Eliza. You wouldn’t tolerate me and my profession for long if you were not.”
“I do more than tolerate you,” she rejoined softly, having lost the strength to speak louder.
He stood, and her eyes stung. She was enamored with the sight of him. Smitten as she’d thought she could never be. There was nothing she would alter about him, nothing she found fault with. In that moment, she was certain she would pay any price for the pleasure of looking upon him indefinitely. The sensations moving through her were drugging and addictive. She wondered helplessly if there was any way she could feel like this every day.
Approaching her with hand outstretched, he said, “From the moment I first saw you, I desired you and knew I had to have you. Since then, I have come to realize it isn’t mere craving that drives me. It is wanting, Eliza. I want you. I’ve never wanted anything in my life, until you. Nothing. Do you understand what I’m saying? Gaining and losing a possession means nothing to me. There is always a replacement.”
“I understand.” She allowed him to pull her to her feet. “But I don’t know what conclusion to draw from that understanding.”
He gestured for her to face away from him. “I ceased trying to find reason in it. I cannot waste any more time trying to puzzle out what I don’t know. I must act on what I do know—you are the one thing in the world I want, and I can have you. I’m also lacking the scruples that would prevent me from doing whatever is necessary to keep you. The details can be dealt with later, when I can once again think about something other than bedding you.”
His fingers went to the buttons that secured the back of her gown and released them with laudable dexterity.
“Have I no say in the matter?” she asked.
He pressed his lips to the top of her bared shoulder. “If you intend to say you have no objections, speak away. Otherwise, I ask that you give me the next few hours before voicing anything that might make my task more difficult for me.”
Eliza looked straight ahead, which was a straight-line view into Jasper’s bedroom. The bed was directly in front of her, custom-made from the size of it. The back of her gown gaped open and he pushed it free of her shoulders, then down to the floor. “Step out,” he ordered.
She obeyed, too overwhelmed to do otherwise. “You are giving me too much time to think,” she groused, averting her gaze from the bed.
Jasper laughed softly, the moment of levity sufficient to lighten some of the incertitude preying on her. “Would you prefer to be ravished?”
“I would prefer not to have these fits of nerves.”
“I should like to ravish you.” He loosened her stays. “Not tonight, when I need both of us to have no doubt that you came to my bed willingly, but soon.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she held her loosened corset to her breasts. Jasper rounded her and backed up, putting distance between them.
“I’m almost naked,” she bit out, wanting him to do something. Why was he standing so far away? Even if he extended his arms their full length, he wouldn’t be able to reach her.
“I am highly aware of that fact.” Reaching down, he stroked himself through his breeches, his long fingers rubbing along the length of the pronounced bulge.
“Have you no shame?” Her tone was curt, her emotions high. She was a virgin, for God’s sake, and he was giving her too much breathing room. She was achingly aware of everything around her, when what she wanted was to be lost to the barrage of sensations he could so easily overwhelm her with.
“None at all. And I would like for you to have none either. Eliza…” His tone softened. “Did I not explain myself clearly? Don’t you understand that you are uniquely appealing to me? You worry that exposing your body will make you vulnerable, but I’m the one who will be left raw by the experience.”
She stood there for a long moment, lip quivering. He was forcing her to reason everything out during the one occasion when she didn’t want to think at all.
Jasper watched her with those intense dark eyes, his body made golden by the flickering candlelight. How many times had he experienced this sequence of events to be so nonchalant? Dozens? More…?
She would not be surprised. What woman could resist him?
She was resisting him….
Her jaw clenched. He was right to avoid responsibility for her choice to be here. It was her decision, and she needed to claim it. Why should she tell herself that she was acting on instinct when that was a lie?
She was not like her mother. She was not driven to rashness by passion. She knew damn well what she was doing.
Eliza launched herself at him. Two running steps and a wild leap, and she was upon him. He caught her, laughing. Lifting her feet from the floor, he spun and strode into the bedroom.
“Not adventuresome?” he teased, setting her down at the foot of the bed. He looked at her with such an expression of proprietary pride that her throat tightened.
Pivoting on his bare feet, Jasper locked the bedroom door.
“I thought we were the only ones here?” she queried, her heart still racing from her leap off the proverbial cliff.
“You are assuming I’m locking others out, instead of locking you in…”
The thought of capture excited her. She had run willingly into the lion’s den, and now there was no turning back.
He leaned back against the door, his palms pressed flat to the panels and one ankle crossed over the other. The perfect appearance of insouciant leisure. But he’d never been able to hide his predaceous nature from her. She had seen it from the first and she saw it now: the high color on his throat and cheekbones, the fine sheen of sweat on his chest, the flaring of his nostrils, and the narrowed, concentrated gaze.
One wrong move and he would pounce…
Reaching up, she began to pull the pins from her hair. She dropped them on the floor, one by one, as he’d done with his cravat. There was something oddly freeing in that carelessness. The act of tossing aside the trappings that restrained. Here in this room with Jasper, she could finally cast off the confusing strictures of society and be what she had always wanted to be—liberated and independent.
After the last pin dropped, she shook out her hair, relishing the tingling of her scalp. She was clad in only her loosened stays and pantalettes, but she was not embarrassed or cold. There was no way she could be, when warmed by a stare as heated as Jasper’s.
He didn’t move, barely blinked. As the silence lengthened, she lost courage and clasped her hands in front of her.
“You are so beautiful, Eliza.” His hand lifted to his chest and rubbed, as if to soothe a pain there. “I adore your freckles. Do you have them everywhere?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded. “It is the bane of red hair, I’m afraid.”
“I will kiss every one of them,” he vowed. “They are delightful.”
“Fustian,” she scoffed. “No one likes freckles.”
Jasper’s eyes twinkled in the light of the bedside tapers. “Isn’t there anything about me you adore? Any part of me you want to kiss?”
“I am mad for every inch of you,” she pronounced with heartfelt fervency. “The way you smell. The cut of your hair. The line of your jaw. I’m especially taken with your hands. I can feel the strength in them when you touch me. You could crush my bones in your grip, but instead you are so gentle.”
He held both hands out, offering them to her. She rushed forward, knowing his touch would calm and distract her. “Sometimes I fear crushing you,” he confessed with a hitch in his voice.
Catching his hands with hers, Eliza pressed a kiss into each palm. “Is that why you stand so still?”
“Yes.”
“What would you do, if you had no need for restraint?”
As before, he brought her hand to rest over his heart, allowing her to feel its racing. “I would pin you to this door behind me and take you, swift and hard. Then I would lay you on the floor, spread you wide, and have you again. Slowly. Deeply. Eventually, we might make it to the bed, but I couldn’t guarantee it.”
“It sounds…savage.”
“You make me feel that way. If I could curb the need I have for you, I would. Perhaps, after tonight, it will be more manageable. I pray that’s the case.”
The roughness in his voice was a caress of its own. Freed from the pressure of her stays, the tips of her breasts throbbed and puckered tight. She was eye level with his chest, which made her wonder if his nipples were as sensitive as hers. The flat disks were surrounded by gooseflesh. Giving in to the urge, Eliza leaned forward and warmed one with a lick of her tongue.
“Bloody hell,” he bit out, jerking violently.
Jasper spun her away from him in a dizzying pivot. The ripping of her stays was like a crack of thunder in the room, followed by the rush of cool air across her back and the soft tickle of her hair beneath her shoulder blades. Her pantalettes were next, the tie at her waist digging briefly into her flesh before breaking in half. The flesh-colored stockinette was rent into two halves that clung to her ankles by the fastenings there.
She’d barely registered that she was excited by his loss of control when a hand at her lower back steered her forward, straight up the short steps at the foot of the bed and onto the mattress.
On her hands and knees, she crawled across the burgundy counterpane, highly conscious of everything she was exposing to him in the process. His hand caught her ankle when she reached the middle of the massive bed, halting her. She dropped to her stomach in a bid for modesty. The remnants of her pantaloons were stripped from her legs and discarded.
Eliza didn’t move, barely breathed.
“Are you frightened?” he asked gruffly.
She had to force herself to think about her feelings. “I d-don’t know.”
Jasper stretched out beside her, his arm extended above their heads. With his other hand, he urged her to roll to her side, so that her back was against his sweat-dampened chest. He leaned forward and rested his cheek against her shoulder, his silky hair brushing softly against her skin. His arm came around her waist and held her tightly to him. He didn’t move. Eventually, she relaxed into his warmth, inhaling the scent of him, which was made stronger by the tremendous heat of his body. He felt fevered against her flesh.
It took long moments, but over time his temperature cooled and his breathing slowed.
“Jasper…?”
His hand at her waist moved higher, cupping a breast. She tensed again at the unfamiliar touch.
