“Yes?” His voice was a tortured rasp, that of a captured man seeking to be free.

“Yes.”

With a low growl, he set himself to the task of revealing what he wanted to claim. When silk, lace, and more were dragged down and her breast was free of all restraints, he lowered his head and took her breast into his mouth. Not just the nipple, but as much as he could, his tongue gliding over and around. Then he was sucking as though she were a hard confection to be worked over with patience and determination, enjoyed and appreciated.

She dug her fingers into his scalp, holding him in place, even as her hips tilted up, her feminine core pressing up against him as her body sought surcease. If Dickens interfered now, she would kill him.

She became aware of Matthew gathering up her skirts and petticoats with one large hand, pushing them up until they were a mound at her waist. Cupping her intimately, he released her breast, peppering kisses around and over it before capturing her gaze, his own smoldering. Slowly, deliberately, he inserted a finger through the part in her undergarments and slid it along her feminine core. She gasped at the wondrous sensation, could feel herself throbbing for him.

“Yes?” he asked.

She gave a jerky nod. “Yes.”

He stroked her once, twice, three times, gave a dark, wicked chuckle when she released a tiny squeal. The entire time, he didn’t take his eyes from hers, knew he was driving her to distraction, relished doing so. She wondered if on the morrow, people would look at her and be able to determine she’d been touched so intimately. It seemed sensations so profound, so intoxicating should leave their mark for all the world to see.

Smoothly, swiftly, he practically climbed down her body until his head was at the juncture of her thighs. With both hands, he parted the opening in her drawers, widening the slit until she could feel the breeze of his breath. Filled with promise, his gaze held hers for all of a heartbeat before he disappeared behind the gathered mound of her skirts.

His tongue stroked what his fingers had only moments before, and she cried out from the pure ecstasy of it. “Oh God!”

She wanted to tell him to stop, feared she’d die if he did. He suckled and soothed, tormented her with light caresses, then delivered stronger ones. She’d never known it was possible to feel so many different things at once. She was flying, yet grounded, on the verge of laughing, close to tears. She was straining to reach the top of a mountain—

And then she was soaring through the heavens, among the stars, but like her kite, still tethered, tethered to him. She was vaguely aware of him moving up, even as he straightened her skirts, attempted to return to her a bit of modesty.