Page 118 of Frankly, My Dear

A low, mewling sound of assent escaped her parted lips.

Slowly, slowly, his brain whispered.

Hurry, hurry, his raging lust shouted.

Mon Dieu! Her open ardor and his careening passions would unman him before he even began. And he wanted this first time with Selene to last all night.

“Come here, chérie,” he coaxed, turning serious. “I have something important to tell you before my ravenous lust turns me into a wild beast of perversions.”

She moved toward him with downcast eyes, shuffling her feet nervously. When she stood so close that he could smell the lavender soap on her skin, he lifted her chin upward with a finger. Her womanly allure enveloped him with heat.

“Je t’aime, chérie,” he whispered fervently. Then he repeated, “I love you, darling.”

At first she just blinked at him in confusion. He saw the moment comprehension dawned.

“Oh, James, I love you, too. I really do.” She threw herself into his arms, almost knocking him backward, and bestowed little kisses all over his face and neck. “I love you…I love you…I love you…,” she declared between her nibbling kisses.

Tunneling his fingers into her hair to hold her still, he leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips, hoping to convey with just the tenderest brush of his mouth how strong his feelings were for her. “I love you,” he said against her mouth, and then pulled back a hairbreadth. “I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, Selene, or how many tomorrows we will have together—”

“I hope forever,” she interrupted, her eyes filling with tears.

He nodded, fearing there might be tears in his own eyes, as well. “We can talk about the future later, but for now I just wanted you to know…I just wanted you to know…” His voice broke with emotion, and he shrugged, unable to find the words to tell her what was in his heart.

But she knew.

Selene looked up at James and smiled with the sheer joy of the moment. He loves me! He really loves me! Thank you, God! “Rhett couldn’t have said it any better,” she told him.

“I thought I told you not to mention that rascal’s name,” he growled.

“I forgot.”

“Well, Crimson,” he teased, “don’t you think it’s about time you showed me what scandalous things a scarlet Southern belle can do?”

“You are a rat, Rhett,” she countered with a saucy laugh.

“I try to be.” Holding her eyes, he finished unbuttoning his shirt, pulled it from his waistband, and threw it carelessly to the floor. Then he proceeded to remove the rest of his clothing while she watched.

Already deeply excited by James’s loveplay in the parlor and his seductive words of a few moments ago, Selene felt a hot wetness pool between her legs at this first sight of his bare skin. Her breasts swelled and ached against the confines of her tight bodice, especially when James’s eyes lingered there knowingly.

James was a handsome, sexy man. His wide shoulders swept down in muscled planes and perfect symmetry to a chest of tight black curls, a tapering waist, and narrow hips. She intended to examine every suntanned inch as soon as possible.

One by one, with deliberate, sensual slowness, he undid the buttons of his trousers, finally freeing the evidence of how very much he wanted her. Then he dropped the pants to the floor and kicked them aside.

“You are beautiful, James.”

His eyes shot up with surprise. “Do you think so? What part of me do you find most beautiful?”

“You’re outrageous.”

“Oui.” He smiled, an open, dazzling expression of his joy.

“Your turn, Selene,” he announced, posing her in front of him before the long mirror. His eyes held hers captive as he began to undo the many buttons down the back of her gown. “How are the embers doing, my dear?” he asked when he finished, having seared a path of erogenous flames down her spine to the small of her back.

“Hot as blazes.”

He laughed, a low barbaric sound of satisfaction.

She leaned her head back on his right shoulder, closing her eyes, as he smoothed the shimmering gown off her arms, down over her hips and legs to the floor.