Her hands running over the corded muscles of his shoulders and back served to urge him on. His name released on a sigh caused his stomach to tighten, his cock to harden when he’d thought it could get no stiffer. This woman had power over him that no other had ever possessed. She could so easily bring him to his knees, and he’d not object. He’d go willingly.

Shifting his attention to her other breast, when he clamped his mouth around her nipple, he lifted his gaze to find her studying him, her brown eyes sultry and smoldering with desire. Good Lord, he nearly spilled his seed then and there. No other woman had ever looked at him as though she were contemplating devouring him and would thoroughly enjoy doing so.

He trailed his mouth down her stomach, surprised when she shifted, sitting up slightly, leaning back on her elbows. Raising his head, he quirked a brow at her. “Is there something in particular you would like me to do?”

“I like to watch you.” She skimmed her foot along his leg. “Are you going where I think you’re going?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Very much so. I want you licking every inch.”

“You say the naughtiest things.”

“Only with you.”

She bent forward until she was able to capture his mouth with hers. He poured all that he was, all that he felt into the kiss. She undid him, every facet of him. So much for his plans of never again allowing his heart to become involved when it came to women. She had conquered it, mastered it. It was hers, completely and absolutely.

She almost told him that she loved him. Because she did. She’d begun to suspect she held these frightening and wonderful feelings toward him, but now she knew it with absolute certainty. But it wouldn’t be fair to give him the words when she no longer had the freedom to bind herself to him for longer than this night.

Although she realized with startling clarity that she’d never had the freedom. Not in the rookeries, not to a lad who raced barefoot through alleyways. Not in the posher area that her brother had built, not to a commoner who enjoyed penny dreadfuls, who accompanied her on adventures, who tore his mouth from hers, pressed a kiss to each breast, and pushed himself farther down so his breath stirred the curls between her thighs.

She’d set her own dream aside in favor of her family’s. And yet here she was, where she shouldn’t be, taking the night and him for herself one last time. She couldn’t leave him with the memory of only one night together, a night when he’d given her everything. She didn’t want him doubting that to her he had been special. That the joys he brought her, she wanted to return in kind.