As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(77)

He grinned and flipped closed the stove door. “I was easing into it.”

When he stood and turned around to rejoin her in bed, she gasped. Her eyes flared wide with surprise, and her red lips pulled into a round O.

He stopped. And frowned. What on earth…?

Then her gaze slowly sank down his front, and the realization hit him that she was seeing him clearly for the first time. All of him. From her surprised reaction, she was taking her first-ever glimpses of a naked man. And if she kept staring at him like that, with her gaze fixed on his cock and her curiosity filling him with immense pleasure, she’d also have her first glimpse of a fully aroused naked man.

When she nervously licked her lips, he groaned and lost the battle to stay flaccid beneath her gaze. He stalked toward her, then crawled onto the mattress and up the length of her on hands and knees, until she lay completely on her back beneath him. Her hands still clutched the blanket shyly to her chest.

But she persisted with their conversation, as if it were perfectly normal to have a naked man poised over her on all fours. “But Diana is so lovely and you—”

He silenced her with a kiss. “I came to realize that Diana isn’t the type of woman I want in a wife,” he concluded with finality. The last thing he wanted to think about tonight was a past courtship, not when he had Mariah naked in bed and the rest of the night ahead of them. He hooked a finger beneath the edge of the blanket and tugged it down until he’d exposed a single full breast.

She closed her eyes, and her breath came ragged as he circled his fingertip around her dusky nipple. It drew up taut. Like magic.

She arched her back and panted out, “Then what…do you want…in a wife?”

He grinned. “I want—”

You.

He froze, stunned at the slip he’d almost made.

Good God, where had that come from? True, if she were anyone other than Winslow’s daughter, he would offer marriage to her without hesitation. Because he wanted to protect her reputation and his honor. Because she challenged him intellectually while also stirring his passions. Because he’d come to care about her, more than any other woman.

But to want her for a wife implied a lasting devotion he couldn’t yet bring himself to acknowledge. No matter his growing affections for her.

“An Italian opera singer,” he replied instead, forcing a teasing tone as he placed a kiss to her breast.

She slapped lightly at his shoulder. “Be serious.”

“I am.” He tongued her nipple and drew a shiver from her that made his heart skip. “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.”

“An Italian opera singer?” she challenged and ran her fingers appreciatively through his hair as he took her nipple fully into his mouth and suckled at her.

“Nothing puts more fire into a man’s blood than hearing all those high notes fall from a woman’s lips.” As he laved her left nipple, his other hand moved up to caress her right one. His thumb strummed across the taut bud as he teased, “You can’t expect to ask a man to give that up for something as inconsequential as marriage.”

“Of course not,” she agreed with mock solemnity. “That would be like asking the tide not to rise or the sun not to set.”

He grinned against her breast. “An act of futility?”

“An act against nature.” When he shifted to worship the other breast, she sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck to keep him close, then whispered sincerely, “I wouldn’t change a single thing about you.”

Stunned by that, he stilled as the simple compliment warmed his insides. Perhaps she held an affection for him after all. And at that, his heart skipped for an altogether new reason.

He buried his face in her shoulder. He felt satiated and relaxed. No. So much more than that—he felt happier than he’d been in a very long time. The fact that Mariah, of all women, was responsible for it made his head spin.

She drew a deep breath, then admitted softly, “I think Diana was in love with you.”

At the somber tone of her voice, he raised his head and gazed down at her. Then frowned. Because it wasn’t insecure jealousy that he saw in her now, but something else…something warm and affectionate that made him tremble. “What makes you so certain?”

She stared into his eyes, so intensely that she stole his breath away. “Because I—” She cut herself off. Whatever she was about to say was lost as she amended with a smile, “Because I’ve heard all your mother’s stories about you and—”

He kissed her to silence her, then lingered with his mouth against hers, drinking in the spicy-sweetness of her kiss until he went light-headed with arousal. “Please don’t mention my mother when you’re naked with me.”

She laughed, then wiggled wantonly and elicited a groan from him. “You expect this to happen again, then?”

He grinned down at her. “Sweet Lucifer, I hope so.”

She inhaled sharply as he tenderly traced his fingertips across her nipples, then closed her eyes and whispered, “So we’ve become lovers, then.”

“We have.” He lowered his head to dance kisses across her bared breasts, unable to get enough of her. Lovers…his lover. A satisfying sense of masculine possession flamed inside him.

“Good,” she whispered, and he thrilled at that single word, reveling in her uninhibited boldness with him.