His lips touched her shoulder, just at the edge of her sleeve, and she shivered convulsively.
She had closed her eyes between the first touch of his lips and the last, and she hadn’t even realized it, because the darkness overwhelmed her just as he did. Smothered in its depths, their sins would be hidden from the prying eyes of the world. The prying eyes—and ears—of the people just feet away.
Her eyes popped open, for all the good that did her. “There—there could be people just next door.” She seized on the thought, mortified by the idea that their neighbors in the box beside theirs would know what had transpired within the duke’s box.
“There could be,” he acknowledged as his fingers slipped beneath the sleeves of her gown, which had somehow grown loose. “You shall have to be quiet. That is, if you don’t wish to be caught.”
Of course she didn’t want to be caught! She opened her mouth to tell him so, but her sleeves slipped off of her shoulders, and her gown gaped in front, and she realized by the draft that swept across her bare back that he had been unfastening the buttons of her gown. She hadn’t even felt it.
With one hand she pressed the velvet cloth to her chest, grateful at last for the cover of darkness that spared her his gaze. “Are you undressing me?” Her voice came out a scandalized squeak, and she shrank away from him, whirling until her back—her bare back—touched the wood-paneled wall beside the door.
“Just a bit,” he said, as blithely as if she had made an innocuous comment on the weather. “No corset, Jilly?” He had stepped closer. The dark had heightened her other senses, and she felt the warmth of his body, smelled the spicy scent of his shaving soap. She could swear she heard him smile. She felt a change in the air, heard his palm land against the wall on the right side of her head.
“I don’t like them,” she whispered, almost defensively, though why she should be defending herself to him she didn’t know.
“You don’t need them, more like,” he said, and his free hand cupped her side, traveled down her ribcage to her hip, hugging the indent of her waist as he did.
She opened her mouth to upbraid him, lifting her chin toward where she imagined his face to be. A mistake—the second he heard her draw in a lungful of air, his head descended, and his mouth blanketed hers. She made a sound, a startled little whimper. She told herself she didn’t pull away because her back was to the wall, and there was nowhere for her to move. But his hand came to her chin to nudge her face to a better angle, and she let him do it. She let him.
He tasted like champagne, and she grew as lightheaded as if she’d swilled a whole bottle of it. If she hadn’t felt the sturdiness of the wall at her back she might well have swayed on her feet.