Regency Collection 2013 Part 1. Louise AllenЧитать онлайн книгу.
her fingertips brush against the sensitive skin inside Max’s wrists. He drew in a hissing breath. As she pulled off the first glove she let her thumbnail score lightly down his palm, then repeated it with the second.
‘Witch.’ Max reached for her own hands. The buttons at the wrists were tight and he took his time, teasing the fine skin over the pulse with the pads of his fingers until she closed her eyes in mute supplication.
He changed to start working at each finger, easing back the thin kid. ‘I could have dragged Latymer out of his curricle and broken his jaw for him that day in the park,’ he remarked, startling her so that she opened her eyes and blinked at him. ‘I was trying not to become attached to you. I was trying, with very little success, to tell myself that you did not belong to me.’
‘Even then?’
‘From the first moment I saw you, that glimpse of your furious face as Nevill took the drag past your stage outside Hounslow. Mine. I knew it.’
Both gloves were crumpled in his hand. They stood, barely a foot apart, swaying together so their breath mingled. She saw his pupils widen.
‘My turn.’ Bree reached up and pushed Max’s coat off his shoulders.
Max growled deep in his throat and dropped to one knee beside her. ‘Shoes.’
Removing shoes, it seemed, was just as exciting as gloves. Bree balanced, one hand on his shoulder, looking down at Max’s dark, ruffled hair and wondering if he was simply very good at the preliminaries to lovemaking, or whether all men spent this much time reducing their wives to a mass of quivering anticipation.
And not just their wives, she realised, for under her hand she could feel the tension in his shoulder. She could see the pulse thudding in his neck and the warm colour of his nape.
Both shoes off, she stood in her stockinged feet, regarding her husband, making up her mind. ‘Your Hessians,’ she pronounced. Until those were off, his trousers could not be removed, although she was not at all sure she wished to go that far yet.
Obligingly, Max sat down and offered a foot. ‘You’ll need to turn round and straddle my leg,’ he offered helpfully with a straight face and the air of a man hugely enjoying himself.
Bree narrowed her eyes at him, but did as he said, gripping his knee between her thighs, her skirts tumbling on either side. It felt positively indecent. And exciting. She gritted her teeth, grabbed the heel again and hauled. The boot slid off smoothly. Bree stepped over his other leg and repeated the process.
She expected Max to attack her stockings next, but he walked around her and began to work on the row of tiny pearl buttons down the back of her gown. Was the man capable of doing anything fast? It seemed every button required infinitely detailed attention, and the necessity to caress the exposed line of her upper vertebrae with his thumb before moving on to the next one.
At last, just as Bree was on the point of spinning round, seizing him by the ears and kissing him until he suffocated, Max reached the bottom of the buttons and untied the sash.
‘Does this slip down or lift over?’ He was easing it off her as he spoke, his palms caressing down over each shoulder.
‘Li … lift off,’ Bree managed to whisper.
‘Sweetheart,’ he murmured in her ear, pulling her back until she was flat against him. ‘Aren’t you enjoying this?’
‘Yes, yes I am. Only I feel so …’
‘Tense?’
‘Yes.’ That was definitely the word. It was like the other times he had made love to her, but all they were doing now was undressing each other. How could it make her feel as if he was running his hands over her naked body, as though his mouth was … ‘Yes. Tense.’
‘Poor darling.’ His mouth was very close to her ear. ‘We will have to do something about that.’
‘Make me less tense?’
‘Oh, no, quite the contrary.’ He chuckled and bent to lift the hem of her gown. Enveloped in silk and satin in lush folds, Bree emerged to find Max regarding her wickedly over an overspilling armful of fabric. Somehow it managed to make him look even more outrageously masculine.
Right. ‘What of yours would you like me to take off next?’ she enquired sweetly.
‘Stockings,’ Max said instantly. ‘There are few things more ridiculous than a naked man in nothing but his stockings.’
‘I see.’ Bree nodded and reached for his neckcloth.
‘You baggage.’
‘I was only teasing,’ she said demurely. ‘Put your hand on my shoulder.’
It had never occurred to her that feet could be attractive, or that they might upset her equilibrium. But the sight of Max’s lean, bare feet, their long tendons flexing as his toes burrowed into the carpet, made her feel slightly breathless.
‘What next?’ he asked.
‘Garters?’
‘So you are counting garters and stockings as two items, are you?’ Max leaned forward and ran one finger under the thin strap holding up the petticoat. ‘I’ll leave those for the present. Just as a man wearing only stockings looks ridiculous, a woman wearing nothing else looks very, very exciting.’
Bree suppressed a squeak of alarm at the purr in his voice. Somehow she had imagined the last garment coming off being followed by a rapid retreat under the bedclothes. It did not sound as though Max had that in mind at all.
The thin lawn slid down to pool around her feet. Bree told herself that she was still very decently clad, although a corset over a shift that reached only to her knees felt precarious covering.
She reached up and untied his neckcloth, standing on tiptoe to unwrap it from around his neck. It brought her close against his chest and Max closed his arms around her. The corset pushed up her breasts and the points of her nipples, covered only in the fine fabric of her chemise, peaked, brushing against the firm fabric of his waistcoat. ‘Max!’
‘I am just steadying you,’ he said earnestly.
‘You are not, you are moving against my … against my chest.’
‘Heavy breathing.’
She pulled the last turn of muslin free and tossed the cloth to one side. ‘Then let me go. You will feel much better.’
‘I doubt it. Turn around so I can reach your corset strings.’
Bree turned, resting her hands on her hips and breathing in as she did when Lucy laced or unlaced her. ‘However do you breathe?’ Max asked. ‘I’m going to have to take the scissors to these.’
‘Cheating.’
‘Well, prepare for a long conversation, then! I have confessed to falling for you at first sight. Are you going to tell me when you first began to feel the same way?’
‘In the chaise, after the highwaymen, and you were wounded and we took off your shirt. I found I was becoming very flustered.’ She felt herself blush just talking about it. ‘That stud—it made me think about what you meant by saying they were considered erotic. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered.’
Max’s fingers tightened on the laces of their own accord, pulling Bree in so the warmth of his breath fanned the flushed skin of her nape. ‘I knew all that pain had to be worth it eventually,’ he murmured. It had not seemed that his body could be any tighter, the ache in his groin any more acute, but Bree’s flustered frankness was having a devastating effect.
‘I didn’t realise I was falling in love with you until you came with me to see Uncle,’ she confessed, hurrying on to slightly safer ground.
‘So your concern for my poor, wounded shoulder had nothing to do with you offering me a bed for the night?’
‘Yes,