“These brothers of yours are an interesting lot.” Her hip was interesting too. A smooth, beautiful conjunction of leg, derriere, and woman that fit beneath his palm perfectly.

“Tell me of your uncle and aunt.”

Had she sighed a little with that question? He leaned over and kissed her cheek to investigate. When he resumed speaking, he kept his cheek against her hair.

“Uncle is a tough old boot. He was the spare, the oldest son having died before I was born. My father was an afterthought produced to secure the succession, but I’m told he was never very healthy. Grandfather was a force of nature, on his fourth wife when he died. He had every confidence he’d have more sons of that one too.”

“You come from fierce stock, then.”

Fierce. This was an apt description for the sensation pooling in his groin. He brought his attention to the conversation with effort.

“Uncle is fierce, in his way, so is my aunt. Proud, independent. They’ve let me wander half my life away rather than ask me for anything.”

His hand stilled on her flank as it occurred to him some of his feelings toward Sidling were explained by guilt. Not disgust for the events in his past, nor resentment, nor impatience… Guilt, for having turned his back on not just some bad memories—his worst memories, really—but on people who’d loved him since he was Kit’s age.

Sophie caught his hand in hers and brought it around her waist. “And you’re worried about them now, worried you’ve left them too long alone.”

“Yes.” She said it better than he could have. Vim wrapped her close and just held her for a long, thoughtful moment. He could visit and discuss and flirt the night away, or he could gather his courage in both hands and do the woman the courtesy of asking her a simple question.

“Shall I pleasure you, Sophie?”

Nine

There was a vocabulary between men and women, one Sophie had never needed to understand. It included glances, sly innuendo, subtle movements of the fan, and even particular flowers combined into bouquets and presented at certain angles. It was a different and darker vocabulary than she’d learned in the drawing rooms and ballrooms, one more fraught with meaning and emotion.

So the precise implication of a single, quiet question—“Shall I pleasure you, Sophie?”—was not entirely obvious to her mind, but her body was clear enough on its meaning.

That velvet baritone promised he would kiss her, hold her, and very likely join his body to hers.

“We shall pleasure each other,” she said, lying in the circle of his arm. She’d made her decision not in the heat of their passionate kisses but rather in quiet moments, watching him tickle the baby, listening to him read poetry, or watching him shovel a walkway to the privy in the freezing wind and snow.

“Then the nightgown will have to go.” He set his hand on her shoulder, and Sophie’s heart started hammering in her chest. It was dark behind the bed curtains, cozy, and warm, but she covered his hand with her own.

His fingers trailed down her arm. “Eventually,” he said. “It can go eventually. Let me hold you.”

Not a question this time, and yet Sophie was certain if she announced she’d changed her mind and decided to excuse Vim from the bed, he’d sigh, flop the covers back—likely kiss her nose—and leave for his own room.

In the morning, he’d be pleasant and considerate, affectionate even, and then he’d be gone.

Gone.

Sophie rearranged herself on her back. She couldn’t ask questions, lest he fathom the degree of her ignorance, so she kissed him. Leaned up and pressed her lips to his, cradling his jaw with her hand.

A man’s jaw at the end of the day was a rough, scratchy thing. She reveled in this realization, a little detail that was the stuff of adult intimacy. He’d used his tooth powder too, and probably washed off with bergamot-scented soap.

He turned his face into her palm. “You must tell me what pleases you, Sophie.”

“Such words are not always easy to say.” Particularly when the feel of him—his jaw, his lips, his nose, his hair, the exact shape of the back of his skull against her palm—was so absorbing.

“Then show me. Put my hands where you want them to go, touch me where it pleases you to touch me.”

“All over. I want to touch you all over.”

He might have chuckled a little, or growled with pleasure at her words, though she’d spoken only the simple truth. Vim was a healthy, naked male in his prime, and she wished she’d had the courage to leave a candle burning and the curtains drawn back.

But no matter, she’d see him with her hands. While he lay quietly beside her, she explored the terrain of his chest, a warm, smooth plane of bone, muscle, and beating heart. When she grazed her palm over one small male nipple, she heard him inhale.

“It’s the same for me as for you,” he said, moving his hand to cover one breast. “There’s sensitivity in certain places. Marvelous sensitivity.”

Marvelous, indeed. Through the fabric of her nightgown, the weight of his hand covering her breast spread a lovely warmth through her middle. Her back arched into the contact without Sophie’s volition, and when he closed his fingers gently over her nipple, her breath caught in her throat.

“The same, you see.” Vim stroked her breast through the fabric then lowered his head and used his teeth to apply the same gentle, arousing pressure.

She had to do something, lest his attentions destroy her reason, so she found his nipple and emulated his caress.

“Like that,” he said, barely lifting his mouth from her. He’d wet the fabric of her nightgown with his mouth, a maddening, frustrating, altogether pleasurable sensation that had heat coursing out through Sophie’s body.

Did he want her mouth on him in the same way?

“Stop trying to think, Sophie.” He lifted his head from her breast and shifted to fuse his mouth to hers.

Marvelous, lovely, spectacular… She winnowed her hand through his hair and gave herself up to the sheer glory of being kissed by a man who knew exactly what he was about. His onslaught was delicate and voracious at once, tasting her, enticing her tongue with his own, and inspiring Sophie to hike her leg over his hips in a bid to draw him closer.

Ah, God, she wanted this to go on forever. She wanted him to show her all there was to know and then forge new ground with her, ground unique to the two of them. And God bless the man, while he was storming her very reason with his kisses, his hand, his wonderful, warm hand, settled back over her breast.

“Vim…”

“Tell me if you like it.” He closed his hand around her breast, drawing a little on her nipple. “I like it. I like the feel of you in my arms, Sophie. I like the way you taste, I like how your hands feel on my naked body.”

“Naked.” Naked was wonderful too. She slid her hand down over his flank to grab him by his derriere and try to pull him closer. “I like that you’re naked. I like it a lot.”

He closed his mouth over hers, and Sophie just barely registered the sensation of her nightgown being slowly, slowly eased up her thigh.

Naked was wonderful, and she wanted to be naked too. This burning, searing closeness was another part of what she’d wished for, lighting bonfires in all the places her mind and body had been growing steadily colder for years. She put her hand over his where it was stealing up her leg.

“Let me take this off.” She said the words right against his mouth and was thus able to feel him smile. He shifted back just a few inches.

“Be quick about it, lest I aid you and shred the thing to bits.”

And that had her smiling too, to think of him literally tearing her clothes off. She wrestled the nightgown over her head and tossed it to the foot of the bed.

“I’m naked.” It didn’t seem like a foolish thing to say; it seemed like the most brave, delightful sentence ever uttered. She was naked, he was naked in the same bed, and her body was humming and tapping its figurative toe to the tune of some lovely new music.

“And now what shall I do with you in your naked state?” he mused. “What shall you do with me?”

He settled on his back, leaving Sophie momentarily puzzled.

“You were doing quite nicely a moment ago,” she said, drawing the covers up around her.

“And I could kiss and pet you forever, love, but we must indulge your desires if I’m to consider myself properly acquitted in this bed.”

“How can you sound so damnably composed?” The question came out all of its own, leaving Sophie to realize that parting with her clothes was creating other vulnerabilities and exposures completely beyond her experience.

His shifted so his hands could close on her shoulders. “Iron self-discipline alone keeps me from tossing the covers aside and rutting on you like a satyr.”

A thread of darkness in his declaration suggested he was telling the truth.

“Satyrs seem like such happy creatures.” Sophie made this observation as Vim shifted her over him, until she realized he wanted her to straddle him.

Good God, was this why ladies never rode astride? The very position, with him laid out beneath her like a banquet, her knees pressed to his hips, left her feeling naughty and bold.

“The satyrs likely expired from an excess of pleasure. Come here, Sophie, and kiss me.”

With the shift in position, Vim had changed the game. Sophie perceived this at the level of instinct, but it took gazing down at him for a moment before she understood the nature of the change.