And gasped.
The image before her was not at all what she expected. A woman stared out at her from the canvas, her wide eyes meeting Mira’s with an honest gaze. The woman on the canvas was neither plump, nor pale, nor graceless. Indeed, the woman on the canvas was defined by the most graceful arcs of charcoal, sensuous in their gentle curves. The woman on the canvas reclined lightly against an indistinct background, her head thrown up and back in a look of amused challenge. The woman on the canvas was beautiful.
“Oh, my lord,” Mira began. “Nicholas…” She could find no other words.
Her attention was so fixed upon the canvas, that she did not notice Nicholas’s heat, just behind her, until he rested one hand lightly on her shoulder.
“It is only a sketch,” he whispered, the words little more than a breath which stirred the curls against her cheek and sent a shiver throughout her body. “It does not do you justice.”
“It is…lovely,” she finally managed, her voice tight with an ill-defined emotion. “Is this how you see me?” she asked.
“This is how you are, Mira-mine.”
“Oh.”
Of its own accord, her body sought the heat of his, leaning into the shelter of his form. Slowly, cautiously, his arms surrounded her, pulling her back to mold her softness to his hardness.
With one hand he tucked her wayward curls behind her ear, his lips finding the tender skin he had exposed. His mouth against her throat, just beneath her ear, was so soft, so warm, the tiniest flutter of movement. Yet her skin was so sensitized that her every nerve tingled at the touch.
Nicholas’s hand, braced against her chest and holding her to him, moved, and Mira felt her tucker sliding free of the edges of her gown. She did not protest as he plucked the wisp of muslin away, and his hand returned to rest against the naked swell of her breast.
His fingers brushed across the chain on which the jonquil pendant hung, and he traced the line of the delicate links down to where they disappeared into the neck of her gown. His touch slid downward, pressing through the soft muslin of her dress to follow the path of the chain, until his hand came to rest over the pendant itself. He paused for just a moment, his palm flat against her chest. The heat of his hand seeped into her skin, radiating around the cooler smoothness of his gift to her.
And then he bit her, gently grazing her skin beneath her ear with the minute ridges that scored the edges of his teeth, marking her as his even as he insinuated the tips of his fingers into the neckline of her dress. She gasped again, in delicious wonder.
Nicholas retraced the path of his tender bite with his tongue, laving the mild abrasion with liquid warmth. In the wake of his sinful ministrations, the rain-soaked air chilled her skin, and she was acutely aware of the contrast between his heat and the cold breath of the breeze on the dampness of her skin. The sensation sent a wild shiver through Mira’s body. From head to toe she vibrated.
Her mind was awhirl with awareness and yearning, a yearning so powerful yet so elusive she could not make out exactly what it was she wanted. But she knew she wanted his hands on her, wanted his mouth on her, wanted…him.
Her limbs were heavy, molten, and she was opening, unfurling beneath his touch, expanding from the inside out to embrace this new world of physical sensation.
Nicholas continued to hold her steady against him, continued to kiss and lick and nip at her neck and ear, continued to stroke the soft white arc of her breast. And all the while she held the gaze of the woman on the canvas…herself, Mira Fitzhenry, reflected through the eyes of this strange and wonderful man.
When he ran the tip of his tongue lightly along the curve of her ear, she nearly collapsed. She let out a soft, quavering moan, and her hands came up, seeking and grasping for something to hold, some way to respond.
He turned her then, pulled her around in his arms until she faced him, yet he never let her lose contact with the hard length of him.
Her head dropped back, in an attitude of abandon, supplication, surrender.
She waited for Nicholas to continue kissing her, but he did not. Bereft and confused, she opened her eyes to find him staring down at her, the ferocity of his gaze unnerving. His skin was flushed and his breathing hard, and his body seemed to thrum with some barely contained energy.