Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match(85)

“Is my hair soft?” she asked. “Am I sweet-smelling, and pretty?”

He huffed a laugh. “Adam tells the truth.”

She tipped her face up to kiss his throat. “Am I completely naked in your bed?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’d have to use your hands to find out.” She felt him go still. “Forget what we have ahead of us. Forget the morning. We have tonight, and we still have your fingertips, don’t we?” Her own hands were beginning to stroke him: the satin of his shoulders, the line of stitches at his neck. His hair felt like owl feathers. “Can you feel me tonight?”

“I feel you,” he said with a tremor in his tone, sliding his finger along her collarbone. “Do you feel me?”

“Since the moment we met.”

“Say my name,” he said in the dark, and he began using his hands in earnest. “I want to see how it fits.”

It took the brave, bold Angelika Frankenstein a few moments to muster the courage.

“Arlo.”

The spell was not broken. His hands continued to move, cataloguing her shape and smoothness under his bedsheets. The way he touched her was like a reverent savoring, like he was committing every rib and curve as memories he would hold sacred.

“I’m not sure,” he said, and put his mouth on hers in a kiss. “I’m not sure it suits me.”

This was the kiss that had hung between them in the air for every taut moment, retort, admiring glance, and endless night. Being trusted had imbued Angelika with power and pride; being loved like this did the same. There was no doubt for her. There was no one else. In a world full of options, where she could dip into her purse for anything and enchant any unwed military man, this was her only choice.

She would bring him back to life. “You say I’m more than beauty.”

“You’re energy,” he said, reading her mind, understanding her in a way no one ever had. “And you’re all I will ever need, for the rest of my life. I promise you.”

Kissing was a wonderful way of sharing this close, connected sense of destiny that was enfolding them now, but touching was just as nice. “Oh,” Angelika said when he swirled a palm across her nipple. “Arlo. Will. There’s a lot of things I want to try.”

“Really?” he said in the dark, pressing his lips onto her, dragging his tongue, finding her tight twisted part below her heart. “Really? Tell me.” He tugged, and teased, and nipped words out of her.

She told him everything.

“Behind, I crave it from behind, bend me over things and step in between my feet and just—” She flexed forward, and now her thighs were curled against his arousal. He wasn’t finished, and she gave him more. “Outside, I’ve always wanted to be licked between my legs under the stars—” She only caught her breath for as long as it took for him to kiss across to her other nipple. “I want to stay naked. In your bed, just like this, every night.”

“What about Larkspur?”

“I know big houses make you jumpy and depressed. I’ll live here with you, ah—” Now he was stroking her thighs. Now he was asking her to part them. “I’ll be happy here in this little white house as long as you keep sliding your fingers up higher, until you find me right—”

As she gasped and groaned, he said, “Oh, dear. Now I’m never getting you out of my bed.”

He began a maddening, off-kilter pattern that she couldn’t get enough of, but also could not build on her pleasure. It was his way of asking her to relax into it, to enjoy for touch’s own sake.

“Now, if you could do this under the dinner table while I eat my dessert, I would be inspired to treat you in return.” Her hand found him, and twisted him, and pulled up until his hips followed.

Now down, pressing down, until he melted into the bed.

“This life you have planned for us sounds rather exhausting,” he said with amusement, even as his breathing was increasing. “Even though you’d have me in bed constantly, I might be too tired to function.”

“Functioning is not going to be high on our list of priorities.” She felt ready. Was he? Did he want this? “What do you want me to call you?”

“Will. Arlo. I really don’t know.” Pause. “You could call me sir, when you’re on your knees. That might be a new dynamic we explore, once we’ve worked out our hundred favorite types of regular lovemaking.” He was starting to not cope with her rhythmic pull-press-pull. “What I’ll really enjoy with you is the nuances, the mindset, outsmarting that quick brain of yours, making your body bloom only for me . . .”

He shivered, but did not go over.

“Start immediately,” she suggested, but he had gone still in the dark. “My love?” Her heartbeat was tapping insistently in her chest. She needed a release, and she needed to know him in these new ways. “Please, if you want to, put yourself into me.”

“I never have before.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I found a letter from myself.” He did not let her passion wane, but rolled her onto her side, and lifted her knee up onto his. As he began to explore her, gently, competently, using his fingers to test her softness in deep new places, he said, “I lied to you.”