When he felt the bodice of her gown drop from between them, he pulled away to look down upon her. Gemma held still, letting him see her, letting him decide if he wanted the real woman, without the fancy, uplifting architecture of the dress.

His hot palms slid down, smoothing over her neck and shoulders, tugging the loose, open chemise neckline aside to reveal her breasts. She was not terribly curvaceous, she knew. Hard work kept her too thin for that sort of luxurious plenty.

One large hand slipped around her back, pressing her upward, while the other bent her back with gentle pressure on her shoulder, arching her body, jutting her breasts forward brazenly while he gazed at her.

Gemma was abruptly sure that despite his reticent social manner, Mr. Lysander Worthington knew his way around a woman's body. And right now he wanted to discover hers. His tinge of dominance excited her. She'd not seen this side of him since he'd played Saint George to the ram's dragon.

The gleam of masculine lust in his gaze melted her knees and made her belly quiver. She'd been cherished and she'd been abandoned. What she'd never been was driven senseless with passion. She was on the brink of something like it, if he could match her step. Was there more such virile authority within him?

Oh, I certainly hope so.

He bent to devour her, kissing her breasts open-mouthed and hungry. He moved from one to the other and back again, sucking, nibbling, licking and torturing her nipples with pleasure until she writhed in his hold, willingly helpless under the delicious assault.

His mouth moved back up from her breasts to bite gently down her neck to her shoulder. She shivered at the sting of those small nips. The tiny darts of pain excited her. She was no hothouse flower, fragile and sensitive. What she wanted more than anything at that moment was to feel.

He wrapped his big hand around the back of her neck, arching her throat up to his consuming lips while his other hand slid her loosened gown down over her hip. He grasped her bottom through the thin, delicate chemise that she'd been given, the one that she suspected she could quite easily read a printed page though. His hard grasp pulled her lower body into tight connection with his own.

He was hard. She ground her own softness restlessly into him. Yes, I want you. I want you too.

He rolled them both to the floor, he onto his back and her above him. He even managed to lose her gown at last in the process. Gemma found herself astride his hard erection, still trapped in his breeches, but her shameless lack of drawers, which Mr. Button has insisted would ruin the line of the gown, was enough to send her keening at the texture of his doeskin breeches against her clitoris.