Or maybe she was more courageous than she knew.
Carefully, Fiona brought her legs apart. She had only a few moments in which to feel dreadfully vulnerable, exposed, nervous, before Alasdair slid his hands around her hips, brought his mouth to the white, soft skin of her thigh, and—
He licked it, in a long, warm, wet stroke of his tongue.
Did it in a way that seemed to her he liked it.
Fiona made a choked sound deep in her throat. Reached down and gripped his forearms, hard.
“Should I stop?” he asked. His face was calm, serene, but there was a kind of eager intentness in his expression also, as if she had interrupted him from doing something he very much wanted to do.
“N-no.”
“All right.”
Starting from the inside of her knee, all the way to the juncture where her leg ended and the soft intricate folds of tender flesh began, his warm tongue traced a path, slowly, lazily, without any hurry at all, then went—there. Oh my God, Fiona thought, oh my God, as he licked at her very center, found concealed like a sweet pearl amidst the soft skin, soft hair, an exquisitely sensitive nubbin of flesh, and with an appetite, an assurance, that she thought might stop her hard-beating heart, with wet, sure strokes of his tongue he made pleasure begin, and build, and heighten, like a grace note that went on and on, as an angel might sing, once and forever.
She hadn’t known.
Hadn’t known her body, her spirit, was capable of this.
This joy made incarnate, flowing from the sweet primal core of her, out and down her legs, up through her torso, blazing along her arms, her neck, and for all she knew creating an ecstatic halo around her head. Joy and bliss and pure sensation.
Vaguely Fiona realized that from her throat issued soft noises, somewhere between a hum and a gasp. They were moans, really, but quiet ones, because she had to hold back a little, had to hang onto her restraint, her dignity.
Didn’t she?
Did self-control have a place in all this, when she now was having a hard time figuring out where she ended, and where Alasdair began? When he knelt before her, was without haste worshipping her with his clever, kind, knowing tongue, his hands still holding her as if he would never let her go?
Her eyes closed, her head tipped back, and it seemed to Fiona that she was in danger—danger of the best and wildest kind —of flying off a high cliff, soaring without shackles into the ether.
She didn’t know why she stopped him.
All at once she wanted, needed, with a curious ferocity, to be yet closer to him, face to face. So—panting, sweating—she pulled away, sat up a little straighter, sharply aware that much of her was draped, imprisoned, in her prim white nightgown even as the rest of her body was free.
Deliciously free.
Alasdair sat back on his heels. Studied her face. Lifted his dark brows. “Everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like that?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like me to keep doing it?”
“No.”
“All right.” He said this with easy casualness. He didn’t get up, or yawn, or frown, or look impatient, or grab at her hand to make it do something for him. No, he sat on the soft, dove-gray carpet of her dressing-room like someone who had all the time in the world. For her.
Fiona wanted to laugh out loud, to clap her hands with glee. But that would have been childish. She didn’t feel like a child right now. She felt quite adult. More to the point, she felt very, very womanly. And, she realized, she felt—
Beautiful.
Strong.
Powerful.
Much like, she imagined, a butterfly, transformed, emerging from its cocoon.
So when Alasdair said, casually, “What would you like to do now?” she answered:
“I’ll show you.”
And rapidly she undid the long row of little white buttons at the neck of her nightgown, which she then ripped up and over her head, tossing it aside without a second glance. And she slid off her dainty velvet chair onto his lap, grabbed his face between her two hands, and said, “Kiss me again.”
Chapter 11
A week ago Alasdair had had a vivid dream in which he was making love to Fiona, who sat astride him with her shining hair freed from its braid. In his dream, her pale slim body had glowed as if on fire, set alight by the touch of his hands upon her.
Now, here in her dressing-room of all places, as he received her upon him, felt her hands upon his face, saw the glow in long-lashed eyes gone blue, he wondered for a stunned moment if he was, in fact, dreaming. She seemed real, there was something very reassuring about the weight of her, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the scent of her lemony soap and her rose perfume and her sweat mingling in a rather intoxicating way, but still—