My Fair Mistress by Tracy Anne Warren Page B

from behind to unfasten the first of the buttons that ran along the back of her gown.
    Her eyelids fell to half-staff.
    “What color did you choose?” He popped another button loose from its mooring. “You know, for the thread?”
    Thread? Mercy, how can he think about thread?
    “Hmm, it’s blue,” she sighed. “Dark blue on white silk squares.”
    He caressed the skin at her nape, then dusted a line of kisses over her jaw to her ear. Taking the fleshy lobe between his teeth, he gave it a little nip.
    Fire shot along her nerve endings, flashing from her ear all the way down to her toes. She arched in his lap, his erection swelling thicker against her in response.
    “And what color do you prefer?” he asked. “What’s your favorite?”
    “My favorite color?” Her bodice sagged, full-length velveteen sleeves gathering around her elbows.
    “Mmm-hmm.”
    “I…oh…p-purple. It’s purple.”
    “A regal and passionate color. I approve. You’ll have to wear a purple frock for me one of these days. You would look radiant in that shade.”
    His fingers moved with an easy dexterity against the laces of her stays. “And your favorite food? What’s the one victual you simply cannot resist?”
    Her head buzzed, trying to keep hold of the conversation when her body was awash with urges of the most elemental kind.
    “Oh, I…I’m not sure. I like many things.”
    “Pick one.”
    Stay laces slid free, her corset growing looser by the instant. Desperately she searched her mind. “Chocolate. I love chocolate.”
    “In bonbons, or do you like it best grated into milk?”
    “Hmm, it’s lovely in milk. I often have h-hot…chocolate for breakfast.”
    He dotted her collarbone with a seductive line of kisses. “I should have known.”
    “Known what?”
    “That you’d like it hot. Hot and steamy and thick.”
    Something deep inside her convulsed.
    With the last of her laces undone, he eased off her corset, then cast the whalebone and linen to the floor. Her breasts pressed against her chemise, nipples taut and faintly visible beneath the sheer silk. She trembled, knowing that all that lay between her bare flesh and his bare hands was the pull of a single slender white ribbon.
    She waited, her breath shallow, her senses afire.
    “What about books?”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Books? What authors do you enjoy reading, or are you like most ladies and prefer paging through copies of La Belle Assemble ?”
    Her brows furrowed. I can barely think, and he wants to know about authors and books?
    Shifting against his muscled thighs in restless frustration, she fought to stay sane.
    “I…like books and the…um…fashion pages too. But why? Why do you want to know?”
    He paused and met her gaze, his green eyes blazing with intensity and a wild passion she realized he was forcing himself to hold at bay. “Because I want to know you.”
    “But why? Our arrangement is temporary. Why do you care who I am, when you can have me regardless?”
    And that was the plain truth. Given their agreement and her undeniable desire for him, he needn’t have spoken so much as a word to her. He had only to lay her down and have his way.
    “Because, temporary or not, we’re lovers,” he told her. “For right now you’re mine, and I want to know the woman in my bed. I want to know you. Who Julianna Hawthorne is. What she likes. What she thinks and desires and dreams.”
    Her heart squeezed out a quick double beat beneath her breasts, Rafe’s words touching her down to her soul. In a single moment, he’d shown more interest in her, and respect for her, than her husband had granted her in all the years of their marriage.
    The knowledge proved a powerful aphrodisiac, her core turning molten, her limbs pliable as warmed wax.
    “Jane Austen,” she blurted out.
    “Hmm?” he murmured, as if he’d forgotten his own query.
    “You…asked who I like to read. Jane Austen. I liked her book S-Sense and Sensibility .”
    He smiled, long,