“I was thinking about you when you saw me in the window pleasuring myself. I had a dream about you that night. We were lying together in a field of daisies. Damned daisies. That’s what you do to me, Mina. You make me dream about daisies. Whole fields of them. Clean and sweet and sun soaked. But the things I did to you were depraved.”
“I thought about you that night after I returned home and I touched myself as well. Dukes don’t have a monopoly on self-pleasuring. There’s nothing saintly or even ladylike about me, Drew. You’ve awakened something in me. You make me long for something I had no idea that I wanted. When I look at you I want to rip your shirt off with my teeth.”
“Jesus, Mina.” He closed his eyes. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She stood on unsteady feet. “What do you want to do to me?” she asked.
“I want you to touch yourself for me.”
Touch yourself for me.
His ragged, husky voice made her want to do bad, bad things. It vibrated along her spine like a bow dragged across the bass strings of a cello.
Was she brave enough to do anything about it?
She held his gaze and walked to Lord Rafe’s bed. She climbed on top of the covers, lay back against the pillows, and closed her eyes.
Be brave, Mina.
Fingers trailing from her throat, down the center of her chest, over her belly. She glanced at Drew and her heart nearly stopped. The ravenous look in his eyes was back.
She wanted to force him to lose control, leap to his feet and kiss her again with that same rough, reckless abandon.
Reach down and lift the hem of your skirts now, slide them over ankles, calves, knees... thighs.
His sharp intake of breath gratified her, gave her the courage to keep going.
Her fingers hovered over the apex of her thighs.
“Lower your drawers,” he ordered.
Did she dare?
She undid the tie of her drawers. She wriggled her way out of the undergarments and allowed them to fall beside the bed.
“Lie back on the bed,” he said, his breathing harsh and quick. “Spread your legs.”
The most daring act of all. She parted her thighs slowly, savoring the low sounds he made, the desire in his gaze. The thin fabric of her shift still partially covered her most intimate place.
He was giving the orders, but she held all the power. A new kind of power.
She could get used to it.
“Touch yourself for me, Mina.”
“I suppose it’s only fair,” she whispered. “I saw you in the window. A pleasuring for a pleasuring.”
“That’s right,” he growled with a roguish smile.
She loved his smile, how it quirked one of his lips higher than the other and crinkled the edges of his eyelids. His smile ignited something inside her. A round hollow in the center of her chest, glowing through her skin.
She was a heat source, a light source, and it was because of him.
One soft, exploratory swipe of her finger over that most sensitive place. She arched her back off of the bed. She was already at a fever pitch of arousal.
She’d been there since she’d met him.
It was exquisite to touch herself but she would die soon if she couldn’t have his hands on her instead. A dangerous precipice to dance upon. She knew that she could fall.