Page 53 of The Marriage Wager

Her mind was crowded with images of pulling off her clothes in front of Dominic, and, bizarrely, the heat that washed through her at the thought was less from shame than anticipation. She thought of Dominic’s fingers on the buttons of her bodice, peeling back the material, and the tremors that raced across her skin were no longer caused by cold.

He turned away abruptly and glanced around, then walked across the room, his moves a trifle jerky. A small trunk lay at the foot of the bed, and he opened it. Reaching in, he pulled out a blanket. He shook it out.

“Here, this should be a good bit cleaner than what’s on the bed. Take off your dress and wrap this around you. We shall spread your things out on the chair to dry.”

He slid off his jacket as he spoke, as though demonstrating, and hung it on the back of the rocker. His fingers went to the buttons of his waistcoat, and Constance found her eyes following their movements. She watched his long, supple fingers undo the buttons; it seemed as though she could not look away.

“Come,” he said, his voice husky. “You must. You will catch cold. I—I will go outside while you undress.”

“No, you’ll get wet. It is raining even harder,” Constance protested.

“I am already wet through,” he pointed out.

He was right, of course. Her gaze went to his white shirt, which clung to his chest, the thin lawn almost transparent. She could see the dark circles of his nipples, the lines of his musculature, the faint shading of hair in a V across the center of his chest. His riding breeches were molded just as wetly to his legs, suggestively outlining every taut muscle of his thighs and buttocks. It was almost worse, she thought, than if he had actually been naked, since she could think of nothing else but what her imagination was picturing beneath the clothes.

She realized that she was staring, and a hot flush spread up her neck and stained her cheeks. She had to say something, she thought, but her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. “I-If you will turn your back…”

He nodded and swung around, going back to the chest at the foot of the bed and digging in it for another cover. Constance turned back to the fire and began to unbutton the bodice of her riding habit with unsteady fingers. Then she unbuttoned the skirt; it was heavy with water and slid swiftly downward, landing on the floor with a wet plop. She grasped the sides of her bodice and started to pull it off.

She thought of Dominic behind her and wondered if he had in fact turned away or if he were watching her undress. The heat that blossomed in her loins at the thought of him watching her made her wonder which she would actually prefer. She slid the jacketlike bodice off, then stopped. Unable to resist, she peeked over her shoulder.

She should not have looked, she thought. It was quite wrong, for Dominic was behaving just as a gentleman should, his back resolutely toward her. He had pulled off his boots, then taken off his shirt. His back was bare, his wide shoulders tapering down to the long slender line of his waist. She watched the muscles ripple across his back as he hooked his hands in the sides of his breeches and pulled them down his legs. It was not an easy task—they were thoroughly wet, and he had to peel them from his skin.

Constance knew she had been wrong. Seeing him naked was worse, much worse, than seeing him in his soaked clothes. She could not take her eyes away from the smooth taut curve of his buttocks as they flowed down into the firm muscles of his thighs. His legs were long, and his muscles, though hard, were lean. She had never seen a man naked; she would have blushed even to have thought of what a man looked like without clothes. But she knew that she would not have expected him to look so compelling. She would not have thought his naked form could have drawn her eyes this way, could have made her loins melt or turned her mouth dry as dust.

She must have made some small noise, because just then he turned his head, glancing over his shoulder, and his eyes met hers.

Constance knew that she should whirl back around and face the fire. She should be humiliated at being caught watching him. She should wait until he looked away again, and then she should shrug off her bodice and wrap the blanket around herself.

Instead, she found herself turning to face him. Slowly, deliberately, her eyes on his face, she pulled her bodice the rest of the way off her arms and let it fall to the floor. She stood in front of him clad only in her chemise and petticoat.

He pivoted slowly to face her. His face was sharp and drawn, the skin stretched tautly across his bones. He watched her, his eyes dark, his hands curling into fists against his legs.

Her eyes took him in slowly. He was hard and powerful and masculine. She could see the lines of his ribs, the curve of muscle beneath the smooth skin of his arms and chest, the flat plain of his stomach. Blond, curling hairs lightly furred his legs and arms and formed a narrow V on his chest, running in a line down from his navel to explode in a glinting riot of curls around his burgeoning manhood. It was the sight of that smooth-skinned shaft, lengthening and swelling, that drew her eyes downward. She had had no idea what to expect, had never dreamed that the sight of his awakened desire would stir her own need so much.

Constance’s breath came shallow and fast. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She was scared and excited and a hundred other pounding emotions. Anyone would have told her, she knew, that she should not be doing this. She should stop. She should pull her clothes back on and run from this house.

But she had no intention of doing that. She was, perhaps, acting impulsively, but she was not thoughtless. This was what she wanted. Dominic was whom she wanted. She knew that he would not, could not, marry her. She knew that others would label what she was about to do a mistake. But she did not care.

She wanted Dominic. She wanted this moment. Whatever else happened in her life, she wanted to make love with him. She wanted to open herself to him, to let him take her in his arms and teach her everything that could be between a man and a woman. The rest of her life might stretch out in bleak emptiness, but she would, for this moment, know passion. She would, for this moment, lose herself in Dominic’s arms.

Constance pulled the end of the blue bow at the neckline of her chemise, and the bow fell apart. Slowly, one by one, she unfastened each tie until the two sides were separated all the way up and down, exposing a narrow ribbon of skin down the center of her chest. She reached up to grasp the sides.

“Constance…” Dominic grated out. “No. You should not.”

“I want to.”

He swallowed, gazing at her for a long moment, and when her name came again on his lips, there was no warning in it, only a low sigh of hunger. “Constance…”

He started toward her with the slow, smooth stride of an animal on the hunt. Watching him, she pulled her chemise off and dropped it to the floor. He drew nearer, and she untied the side of her white muslin petticoat and let it slide down to the floor. He stopped only inches from her. She moved to the tie of her pantalets, but Dominic reached out and touched her hands, stopping her.

A faint smile playing at his lips, he took the narrow bands in his fingers and undid them. He laid his hands flat against her sides, fingers splayed out over her skin, and slid them down, his hands moving under the cloth of her pantalets and shoving the cloth downward. His palms glided down her flesh, searing her with their heat and exposing her skin inch by inch.

Constance sucked in her breath at the feel of his skin upon hers. His fingertips and palms, roughened by years of riding, were light on her soft skin, awakening the sensitive flesh to a tingling awareness. Her skin tightened all over, and an ache bloomed between her legs, low and pulsing.

Dominic’s eyes fell to her breasts, where her nipples had hardened in response to his touch. His smile deepened with masculine satisfaction, and he pushed her undergarment the rest of the way down, letting it pool around her feet. He stood still for a moment, his hands resting on her hips, his eyes exploring her body.

Then his gaze came back up and caught hers. He continued to hold her attention, his eyes hot and intense, as his hands moved up her sides, slow and soft, coaxing every tiny bit of sensation from her flesh. He caressed her breasts, fingers and thumbs teasing at the tight buds of her nipples and sliding across the pillowy softness of her breasts. His hands roamed her back, sliding down and curving over her hips, squeezing and separating her buttocks before gliding onto the tops of her thighs.