“You are the sun, Sophie. You’re everything that’s good and true in my life.” He stared at her like he was tattooing her picture on his heart. Then, he slowly slid a hand up her side, over her nightgown, grazing the side of her breast. She held her breath, waiting as his palm drifted over her shoulder and down her back. Inch by inch, he skimmed his large, warm hand up her rib cage, tenderly caressing the underside of her breast and circling the nipple till it pebbled beneath the silk of her nightgown.

With a smug smile, he lowered his head and drew the tip into his mouth. A little cry escaped her throat as he suckled her through the thin fabric. When he paused to blow on her taut nipple, she arched her back, demanding his mouth once more.

He’d touched her breasts before with the peony, but this … this was a million times more intense. Exponentially better. The pleasure he wrought swept through her body like a summer storm—powerful, wet, and wild.

But even the thin barrier of her nightgown proved ridiculously vexing. Wanting nothing between them, she tugged on the drawstring at her neckline. Reese murmured his approval, but when the knot stuck, he growled and proceeded to tear the gown down the front, all the way through the hem.

Deliberately, with something akin to awe, he parted the ripped fabric and let his eyes rake over her body, lingering on her breasts, hips, and legs. Deliciously cool air kissed her skin as she sat and shrugged her arms out of the nightgown’s remnants.

“You’re so beautiful, Sophie,” he said, his voice balancing on the edge of ecstasy and anguish.

She felt her skin flush as she basked in the glow of his hungry, appreciative gaze.

But there was plenty for her to appreciate too. His hair hung low across his forehead, giving him a wicked, dangerous air. His tanned chest glistened in the flickering light of the candle, and his muscular arms rivaled any blacksmith’s. The bedsheets were slung low across his narrow hips, and the ridges of his abdomen made her mouth go dry.

Shamelessly, she stared at him, admiring everything from his stubbled jaw to his muscled chest, to the fuzz beneath his navel.

And that was when she noticed the very obvious, very large bulge beneath the sheets that covered his lower half. Thanks to The Debutante’s Revenge, she knew something of a man’s anatomy … but this wasn’t some hypothetical man she was reading about in the pages of the London Hearsay.

This was Reese. And she thrilled in the knowledge—the irrefutable evidence—that he desired her as much as she desired him.

“You’re beautiful too,” she breathed. “And I want to see all of you.”

Chapter 21