Candice Hern Read Online Free

her closer. Beatrice boldly explored him with equally inquisitive hands and fingers. It was still too dark to see him properly, but she needed no moonlight to discover the shapes and planes of his face and body. As her fingers traced the cleft in his chin, his strong jaw, and up the straight ridge of his nose, she realized he'd removed his mask. With a start, she became aware that her own mask was gone as well, hanging down past her throat from its gold laces. Had she removed it? Had he? She could not recall.
    Did it matter? It was too dark to see in any case, but why did it give her a twinge of apprehension that they might actually see each other?
    Anxiety dissolved when his mouth found hers again and plundered its depths, ripping her senses from her. When she thought she might go mad, his lips trailed lower, along her jaw, beneath her chin, and down the length of her throat.
    "Your dress is quite ... unusual. Not at all English."
    She felt the breath of his words against her ear as he flicked his tongue on the sensitive skin along its outer edge. "It is supposed to be Greek," she said, somehow managing the words, though her brain seemed to have lost its mooring and sloshed drunkenly in her head.
    "The ancients had a much better notion of dress than we do, did they not?" he whispered. "Whereas we modern English are not always comfortable in our bodies and go to great length to hide and bind them, Greek and Roman dress allowed freedom of movement. It did not confine the body, but allowed natural expression. You should always wear such a tunic, Artemis, which is so very un-English in its freedom."
    He ran a finger under the shoulder where the yellow silk was gathered in pleats, and coaxed it over her arm. His warm hand stroked the exposed shoulder and traveled down over her chest. He reached inside the silk for her breast, and gave a soft groan when his hand met only whalebone and stiffening.
    "Not so free and natural, after all," he said. "Very properly confined. Very British."
    Though he could not know it, Beatrice's nipples had grown puckered and taut beneath the stays. How she wished she were not so tightly laced. She wanted to feel his hands on her breasts.
    His hand gave up the quest and returned to stroke her arm, tracing the outline of her serpent bracelet. It was almost as good. Almost.
    "And what of Indian dress?" she said, nodding toward his own elaborate costume. "It looks as confining as any English gentleman's."
    "On the contrary," he said. "Eastern dress is quite unrestrained."
    And suddenly she felt a length of soft fabric tickle her face. She laughed as more and more fell about her. "What is it?"
    "My turban. You see how easily it is unbound?"
    "I cannot see it, but I feel it." Boldly, she reached up and found the turban was entirely gone, and her hands met soft, thick hair instead. "Oh." She threaded her fingers through it and he gave a gruff moan of pleasure.
    He captured her hands and pulled them above her head. With the fabric of the turban, he tied them loosely and held them there while he kissed the undersides of her upper arms and the bend of her elbows. Ticklish, she giggled and fidgeted against the sweet torture of his tongue. With one twist of the fabric, her hands were free again and she wrapped them around his neck.
    "And not only the turban," he said, "is easily removed."
    She felt him reach inside the skirted coat, and with a flick of the wrist, his trousers fell loose and, with a soft whoosh, pooled at his feet. One more quick adjustment, and the weight against her belly was real and hot and thoroughly unconfined. He was naked below the waist.
    If there was ever a time to call matters to a halt, it was now. Reason told her to retreat, to show some restraint before it was too late, but she did not. God help her, she did not want to. She wanted this. She wanted him.
    He began to kiss her shoulder and neck, and her head fell back against the wall to allow him access. Her bones had turned to liquid.