A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(73)

One tear rolled down her cheek. She reached up to wipe it away, but Daniel’s fingers found it first. “A happy tear, I hope,” he said.
She nodded.
His hand cupped her cheek, the pad of his thumb brushing lightly over the faint bruise near her temple. “He hurt you.”
Anne had seen the bruise when she had looked at her reflection in the bathroom looking glass. It didn’t hurt much, and she couldn’t even remember exactly how she’d got it. The fight with George was a blur, and she decided it was better that way.
Still, she smiled slyly, murmuring, “He looks worse.”
It took Daniel a moment, but then his eyes flared with quiet humor. “Does he?”
“Oh, yes.”
He kissed her softly behind her ear, his breath hot on her skin. “Well, that’s very important.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She arched her neck as his lips moved slowly toward her collarbone. “I was told once that the most important part of a fight is making sure your opponent looks worse than you do when you’re through.”
“You have very wise advisors.”
Anne sucked in her breath again. His hands had moved to the silken tie of the dressing gown, and she could feel the belt grow loose as he undid the knot. “Just one,” she whispered, trying not to lose herself completely when she felt his large hands slide along the tender skin of her belly and then around to her back.
“Just one?” he asked, cupping her bottom.
“One advisor, but he’s—oh, my!”
He squeezed again. “Was this the ‘oh my’?” Then he did something entirely different, something that involved just one very wicked finger. “Or this?”
“Oh, Daniel . . .”
His lips found her ear again, and his voice was hot and husky on her skin. “Before the night is through, I’m going to make you scream.”
She had just enough sense left to say, “No. You can’t.”
He lifted her against him, with just enough roughness that her feet left the ground and she had no choice but to wrap her legs around his. “I assure you, I can.”
“No, no . . . I’m not . . .”
His finger, which had been drawing lazy circles on her mound, dipped in a little further.
“No one knows that I am here,” Anne gasped, clutching desperately at his shoulders. He was moving within her now, languid and slow, but every touch seemed to send shivers of desire to the very center of her body. “If we wake someone up . . .”
“Oh, that’s right,” he murmured, but she could hear a wicked smile in his voice. “I suppose I shall have to be prudent and save a few things for when we’re married.”
Anne couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was talking about, but his words were having just as much effect on her as his hands, spinning her into a heated coil of passion.
“For tonight,” he said, carrying her to the edge of the bed, “I will have no choice but to make sure that you are a very good girl indeed.”
“A good girl?” she echoed. She was backed up against the edge of a sinfully large bed, wearing a man’s dressing gown that was hanging open to reveal the curve of her breasts, and there was a finger inside of her, making her pant with pleasure.
There was nothing good about her just then.
Nothing good, and everything wonderful.
“Do you think you can be quiet?” he teased, kissing her throat.
“I don’t know.”
He slid another finger inside of her. “What if I do this?”
She let out a little squeak, and he smiled diabolically.
“What about this?” he said huskily, nudging one side of the dressing gown with his nose. It fell over her shoulder, baring her breast, but only for a split second before his mouth closed over the tip.
“Oh!” She was a little louder that time, and she heard him chuckle against her skin. “You are wicked,” she told him.
He flicked against her with his tongue, then looked up wolfishly. “I never said I wasn’t.” He moved to her other breast, which was impossibly even more sensitive than the first, and Anne barely noticed when the dressing gown fell completely away from her body.
He looked up again. “Wait until you see what else I can do.”
“Oh, my God.” She couldn’t imagine what could be more wicked than this.
But then his mouth slid to the hollow between her breasts, and he moved down . . . down . . . over her belly, her navel, down to . . .
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “You can’t.”
“Can’t I?”
“Daniel?” She didn’t know what she was asking him, but before she knew it, he had lifted her up so that she was now sitting on the very edge of the bed, and his mouth was where his fingers had just been, and the things he was doing with his tongue, and his lips, and his breath . . .
Dear God, she was going to melt. Or explode. She clutched at his head so hard that he actually had to loosen her grasp, and then finally, unable to support herself any longer, she fell back, landing on the soft mattress, her legs still hanging over the side of the bed.
Daniel’s head poked up, and he looked very pleased with himself.
She watched as he stood, then gasped, “What are you doing to me?” Because he couldn’t possibly be finished. She ached for him, for something, for—
“When you reach it,” he said, yanking his shirt over his head, “it will be with me inside of you.”
“Reach it?” What in heaven did he mean, reach it?
His hands went to his breeches, and within seconds he was naked, and Anne could only stare at him in wonder as he stepped between her legs. He was magnificent, but surely, surely he didn’t think that was going to—