The lamplight flowed over her, highlighting planes and curves, casting others in shadow. His gaze didn’t race, but perused her bared flesh in an intense yet leisurely appraisal; under that blatantly assessing, flagrantly male gaze, her nipples furled into painfully tight buds.

He straightened, lifting his head. Still close behind her, he raised his hands-caught her gaze as he closed the fingers of each about the rucked shoulders of her nightgown, and eased it off, and down.

Glancing down, he ran his hands down her arms, freeing them from the gown’s sleeves. “Put your hands on the edge of the table.”

He looked up, met her eyes as, wondering, she slowly obeyed, leaning forward to place her hands on the wooden tabletop, lightly gripping the edge.

“Don’t shift your hands until I give you leave.”

Give her leave…She was suddenly very certain he was choosing his words deliberately; he was uttering them evenly, as orders, not mere directions. Instructions he expected her to obey…as if she were…his utterly.

His to do with as he pleased.

A shudder racked her, yet she felt no trepidation, not the lightest lick of fear. What she felt was excitement, the dark thrill of wanton desire.

And he was feeding that, scripting the moment-as he wished, perhaps, but why did he wish it? She glanced at his face, the planes austere in the lamplight, his expression stark, not so much impassive as set.

His gaze had left her face to wander down over her breasts, then lower. Her nightgown had gathered in loose folds about her hips. His hands returned, palms sliding bare across her naked skin, warm yet hard, long-fingered, strong as they lightly gripped her waist, then swept, slowly, down.

Over her hips, taking her nightgown with them until it slipped over her thighs and slid to the floor, a soft puddle at her feet.

Leaving her naked, bathed in lamplight.

Her breath caught, her lungs seized. Her nerves coiled tight, every thought, all reaction, frozen as she drank in the sight. Of herself, a golden nymph poised in the lamplight, a faerie being trapped in this world-unreal, ephemeral. Magical.

She recognized her face, her hair, her form. This was her, yet not; what was reflected in the mirror was a truth she’d never seen, a woman she’d never before known.

A siren unveiled.

She felt his gaze, hot as a flame, rove her skin, following her own as, stunned, she examined. Then he looked at her face, studied it; she realized and raised her gaze, met his dark eyes.

He raised his hands, again spanned her waist, then slowly slid them up, palms to her heating skin. Spreading his fingers over her midriff, he gripped and eased her back against him; bending his head, he set his lips to the tip of her shoulder, then traced lightly inward, nudging her head aside so he could lave the pulse thundering at the base of her throat. “Don’t speak, or move. Just look. Watch. And feel.”

She had no choice; fascination held her spellbound, trapped in the fantasy he’d created. A fantasy in which every inhibition had flown, and there was just her, him, and need.

His need to possess her utterly, hers to fulfill that need.

Desire.

It welled as his hands rose beneath the curtain of her hair and closed about her breasts. Her head fell back against his shoulder as his fingers flexed, kneaded; her breath shivered, then suspended on a gasp as he found her nipples, and squeezed. Played.

He knew how to make her frantic, how to call to her desire and send it rushing through her, sweeping all reservations away. It thrummed through her veins, heated her skin until her body glowed with its flame.

From beneath lids suddenly heavy, through the tracery of her lashes she watched as he aroused her, then, as if satisfied with some private assessment, he brushed aside the screening veil of her hair to fully expose her breasts, filling his hands.

Possessed. His to savor as he pleased.

He lifted his head, joined her in her rapt contemplation. His hands moved, pandering to her senses, to his desire. The lamplight touched his face, hard and unyielding; it washed over the flushed curves of her body, painting them soft, giving-vulnerable in their nakedness.

One tanned hand left her breast, splayed across her midriff, then moved down, stroking heavily as if savoring the texture of her skin, then angling over her taut stomach and tensing, pressing in.

Pressing her hips, her bottom, against his hard thighs, tilting them so his rigid erection rode against her, an insistent pressure in the small of her back.

Her senses swelled, her breaths were short, shallow; her head was whirling. The promise of pleasure was so potent she could taste it. Briefly she studied his face, wondered again why he wanted her like this. She could sense the control he was exerting, the grim determination that held him back from simply having her, that allowed him to take her along this road, into an illicit paradise.

It was a type of bondage, one with no physical chains, yet the chains were there-Gerrard knew it. He sensed her gaze on his face, sensed the question forming in her mind. He lowered his gaze, lowered his hand, felt her attention shift, leaving his face to lock on his questing fingers.

He speared them through the tawny curls, caught a few between his fingertips and rubbed, as if gauging their texture. Then he fluffed the curls, and noted she’d stopped breathing. He paused, fingertips poised over the shadowed hollow at the apex of her thighs, to knead her breast, to again squeeze her nipple, tight, then tighter, until her concentration fractured. Until she gasped. Writhed.

All but begged. Her hips angled forward, lifted, her curls brushing his fingers in open entreaty.

He accepted the invitation. Slid two fingers into the heated hollow, stroked, found the sensitive pearl throbbing beneath its hood and swirled, then pressed deeper and probed.

She started to shift, to part her thighs to give him better access.

“No. Don’t move. Remain exactly as you are.”

Panting lightly, eyes wide, pupils distended, she obeyed. With her thighs together, he couldn’t penetrate more than an inch past the slick, swollen lips of her sheath.

Far enough for his purpose, far enough to reduce her to desperation. Ruthlessly he wound her tight, gave her just so much and no more…

Abruptly, she dragged in a breath and caught his eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“More.”

“More how?”

Suddenly, he knew. It was as if her question had opened a door in his mind; he’d intended to show her her own sensual nature-it seemed that in doing so, she would teach him of his own. The vision that formed in his mind stole his breath; her lips were parted, her skin already flushed, yet she waited…for his answer.

To learn what he truly wished of her.

“I want to watch you reach ecstasy. Here, with the lamplight pouring over you. I want you to let me view you as I push you over the peak.”

Three heartbeats passed; her eyes locked on his, she knew exactly what he asked. Even, perhaps, why he asked.

She nodded. “All right.”

Again she shifted to part her thighs.

“No. Not like that.”

She looked up at him, her question in her eyes.

He released her breast, spread that hand over her stomach and drew her hips back; still gripping the table’s edge, she had to lean further forward. Releasing her, he gripped her hip, anchoring her before him, then withdrew his fingers from the hot haven beneath her curls, shifted back, reached beneath the sweet swell of her bottom, into the dark hollow between the backs of her thighs, and slid his fingers deep into her sheath.

She gasped, spine tensing, head arching back; his hand clamped about her hip, he held her in place as he worked his fingers deep. Her slickness scorched; the musky scent of her rose to tease him.

He ignored it. Gave all his attention to pleasuring her, to watching her while he did. He found the right rhythm, the perfect angle, the correct length of penetration; stroking in and back, blatantly intent, he set about driving her on.

She responded, skin suffused, muscles fluidly shifting as she rode his fingers. She’d understood what he desired, and was unstinting in yielding all he’d wished for, bringing his wild, illicit vision to life.

He couldn’t tear his gaze from her, had to fight to dissociate his mind from the firm and giving softness of her body, from the hot slickness of her sheath, from the scent of passion that wreathed about them and tried to draw him in. He found desire fracturing as like a man parched he drank in the beauty of her shifting form, of the naked desire she so freely let show.

Despite giving herself up so completely to passion, despite the physical absorption, she still watched him; he caught the glint of her bright eyes under her lowered lids, and realized she wasn’t the only one exposed.

She seemed steady on her feet. He released her hip, then stepped back and to the side-so she lost any contact with him beyond his hand buried between her thighs, so he could with greater detachment better view her body as she responded.

Without reserve.

She raised her head and shook back her hair. Her eyes met his, her breasts thrust forward, nipples proudly erect. With his free hand he reached out, slid his fingers around one pert peak, and played.

Pushed her further.

For long moments he pandered to her need, and watched her scale the peak. Her eyes closed, her knuckles tightened on the table; inexorably he drove her on.

Until she was almost there. She gasped, opened eyes dark and wild and found his. “Come with me. Now.”

An unbelievably evocative plea-half sob, half command. He hadn’t intended it, yet the lure of the visual, of all she’d allowed him to see, the allure of her body, so female and flushed with desire, the evocative lines and even more evocative scent of passion, coalesced like a net and dragged him in. Detachment was beyond him.