gasped as he encircled her waist and pulled her in between his parted legs, her thighs now pressed against him, as her breasts were crushed against the firm muscles of his chest. She placed her hands upon his shoulders with the intention of pushing him away.
‘I think not,’ Dominic murmured as he realised her intention, his arms moving about her waist to hold her more tightly against him, quelling her struggles as he looked to where her hair was secured in that unbecoming nunlike bun. ‘Remove the pins from your hair for me, Caro.’
She stilled abruptly. ‘No!’
‘Would you rather that I did it?’ He quirked dark brows.
‘I would rather my hair remain exactly—oh!’ She gave another of those breathless gasps as Dominic reached up and removed the pins himself. It was a breathless gasp that he found he was becoming extremely fond of hearing.
‘Better.’ He nodded his approval as he reached up to uncoil her hair and allow it to cascade in a wealth of golden curls over her shoulders and down the length of her spine. ‘Now for the buttons on this awful gown—’
‘I cannot possibly allow you to unbutton the front of my gown!’ Caro’s fingers clamped down over his, even as she glared up at him.
Dominic found himself smiling in the face of this display of female outrage. ‘It has all the allure of a nun’s habit,’ he said drily.
‘That is exactly what it is supposed to—’ Caro broke off the protest as she saw the way those silver eyes had narrowed to shrewdness.
‘Do…?’ Dominic finished softly for her. ‘As no doubt the wearing of that unbecoming bonnet was designed to hide every delicious golden curl upon your head?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
He shook his head as he resumed unfastening the buttons on the front of her gown. ‘It is a sacrilege, Caro, and one I am not inclined to indulge.’ He folded back the two sides of her gown to reveal the thrust of her breasts covered only by the thinness of her shift above her corset.
Caro had no more will to protest as she saw the way those silver eyes glittered with admiration as Dominic gazed his fill of her. Indeed, she found she could barely breathe as she watched him slowly raise one of his hands to pull aside that gauzy piece of material and bare her breast completely. Her cheeks suffused with colour as, even as she watched, the tiny rose-coloured nub on the crest of her breast began to rise and stiffen.
‘You are so very beautiful here,’ he said huskily, the warmth of his breath now a tortuous caress against that burgeoning flesh. He looked up at her enquiringly. ‘I wish to taste you, Caro.’
She found herself mesmerised by the slow flick of Dominic’s tongue across his lips. Mesmerised and aching, the tip of her breast deepened in colour as it became firmer still. In anticipation. In longing, she knew, to feel that hot tongue curling moistly over it.
Where had these thoughts come from? Caro wondered wildly. How was it that she even knew the touch of Dominic’s lips and mouth against her breast would give her more pleasure than she had ever dreamt possible? Woman’s intuition? A legacy of Eve? However Caro knew these things, she surely could not allow Dominic to—
All thought ceased, any hope of protest dying along with it, as he gave up waiting for her answer and instead lowered his head to gently draw the now pulsing tip of Caro’s breast into the heat of his mouth. His hand curved beneath it at the same time as he laved that aching bud with the moist heat of his tongue, and sending rivulets of pleasure into her other breast and down the soft curve of her abdomen to pool between her thighs.
Caro was filled with the strangest sensations, her breasts feeling full and heavy under the intimacy of Dominic’s ministrations, the muscles in her abdomen clenching, that heat between her thighs making her swell and moisten there. She discovered she wanted to both squeeze her thighs together and part them at the same time. To have