He swallowed a groan and placed his hands around her waist. Hunger lit his eyes to silver. “Eleanor—”
“Kiss me.” Deliberately she pressed her hips forward until she met that impressive bulge in his breeches. Despite her instinctive hiss of shock, her heart swooped like a swallow learning to fly.
Another deep breath. More heady scent.
Courage, Nell.
“I want you.” Her voice was steadier than it had been all night. “I’m not afraid.”
She saw the moment he abandoned every consideration except desire. His hunger incinerated her fear to ash, making her declaration true as it hadn’t been when she’d spoken. His grip firmed. His chest brushed her breasts as he inhaled.
“My beautiful girl…” he whispered and took her lips in a kiss unlike any before. Perhaps because this kiss wasn’t an end in itself, but a doorway to more.
With unconcealed sexual intent, he nipped sharply at her lip. She shifted and moaned as heat pooled between her legs. Curiosity throbbed inside her. The curiosity to know the man she loved as her lover. Her craving built for ultimate connection.
Every inch of her hummed with need. Pleasure sang through her veins—pleasure tinted with frustration. She growled low in her throat as his hands drifted over her body. The devil merely laughed and nibbled at her neck as if savoring her impatience. He brought her to the brink then held her over the void in an agony of suspense.
“Leath…” she forced out. “I’m ready.”
“Not nearly, sweetheart.”
His rough tone offered some compensation. If this seduction threatened to shatter her, at least she wasn’t alone. She bit his chest, making him jump. “Stop tormenting me.”
“Enjoy the journey.”
“I want to arrive,” she protested, biting more fiercely.
“Little cat,” he muttered, burying his hand in her hair and pulling her head back until she met his blazing eyes. “If you bite me again, I’ll bite back.”
“I’d like that,” she gasped, even while in the far reaches of her mind she wondered where calm, sensible Nell Trim had gone.
“So would I.” He nipped her shoulder through cascading hair. She shivered under his teeth, even though he wasn’t nearly as ferocious as she’d been.
“I told you I want you,” she said helplessly, running her hands over his chest and digging her nails into his skin. At this rate, he’d be a bloody mess. Right now, she gloried in marking his body. If only she knew how to mark his heart.
“Not enough.” He sounded almost angry.
So did she. “You’re so smug.”
Leath grabbed her dancing hands and kissed her fists. “If I’m not careful, I’ll rip you to shreds.”
If she’d been in her right mind, that would make her take to her heels. In her het-up state, his warning tugged at her as inexorably as the moon tugged at the sea.
“Please…” she sobbed, rubbing against him. She loved the hair on his body, fascinatingly different from hers, coarser, warmer, so male.
“Stop trying to flay me and be patient.” He kissed her again and this time
his hands trailed down her back, making her wriggle.
“More,” she insisted.
He laughed breathlessly and cupped his hands beneath her bottom. When he hoisted her high, the angle of his kiss transformed to flashing pleasure. Instinctively she twined her legs around him, pressing her heels into his buttocks.
This new position placed the hot, needy part of her fiendishly close to that alluring hardness. His breeches became a major irritation. With a long moan, she slid against him and felt a spark of sensation, akin to those dazzling, astonishing reactions that had roared through her when he’d played with her breasts.
Intrigued, she tried it again and basked in his fractured groan. “Stop it, you witch.”
“I like it,” she said breathlessly. “Don’t you?”