you close to yielding?’ she asked over her shoulder.
He stepped towards her.
She skirted around the other side of the sofa so that they faced one another as opponents across that barricade.
‘When I catch you, Alice…’
‘If you catch me…’ She smiled and arched an eyebrow. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ she asked, as excited by the game she had instigated as he was.
‘I am going to pull up your skirts.’
‘Yes.’ she breathed.
‘And bend you over my knee.’
‘And then…?’ She felt breathless at the thought.
He stepped closer to the sofa, lowering his voice to little more than a husky whisper as he did so. ‘You know there is only one way this can end, Alice.’
‘Really? How might that be, my lord?’
He lunged over the sofa for her.
Alice dodged clear, making a run for the door of the drawing room. ‘You’ll have to be faster than that, Razeby!’
She made it to the first landing of the staircase before he caught her, his arm fastening around her waist and pulling her to him.
She gave a yelp and a giggle.
‘Minx,’ he whispered in her ear as he kissed the side of her neck, where the blood pulsed strong and wild.
He scooped her up as if she weighed nothing at all. Her breathing was loud and ragged while Razeby’s was barely changed at all. For all her squeals he threw her over his shoulder like some marauder from olden times abducting his woman and strode up the rest of the stairs.
‘Razeby!’ she protested and gave a wriggle, but all she got in return was a slap on the bottom before he kicked open the door to their bedchamber and threw her down upon the bed.
‘Now, woman of mine,’ he said. ‘We have a score to settle—a matter of some spanking, I believe.’
‘Oh, you think so?’ She laughed and, rolling on to her stomach, began to quickly crawl across the bed to evade him.
‘I will not let you escape me,’ he said in a strict voice as his fingers fastened around her ankle and hauled her back across the bed towards him, catching her skirts on the bedcovers and hitching them up her legs in the process. She was still lying on her stomach, her stockings revealed. He pushed her skirts higher to expose her naked thighs and bottom in full.
‘Now there is a sight to behold,’ he murmured and she caught her breath as his fingers traced down the curve of her hip.
The mattress dipped as he sat down upon it and she gasped as she felt herself hauled to lie across his thighs, her skirts twisted high around her hips, her buttocks bared for whatever he chose to inflict upon them.
‘Mercy, my lord Razeby, I beg of you,’ she pleaded, but she was smiling and the words were breathless with anticipation.
‘I swear, my love, that when it comes to you I have no mercy… or resistance.’ His hand stroked against the fullness of her buttocks, then he spanked her bare bottom, several small light slaps that were little more than cupped caresses.
She laughed again, as did he, as he turned her in his arms, cradling her to him and kissing her mouth. She wound her arms around his neck, kissing him with all the passion that was burning within her. He rolled her flat on to the mattress and she pulled him down on top of her, stroking his face, threading her fingers through his hair.
‘Alice,’ he whispered, and caressed her cheek. His eyes were a dark liquid brown, so filled with both tenderness and desire as they stared into hers.
‘Razeby,’ she said softly.
Their eyes held as he plucked a single deep intimate kiss from her lips.
He rose, long enough to divest himself of his shirt over his head and unfasten his breeches and drawers. Her fingers were still working upon the buttons of her bodice when he returned.
‘Allow me to assist,’ he offered, and then in a move that would have done justice to any Viking warrior in the midst of some rape and pillage Razeby took hold of the neckline and tore the length of the bodice open.
‘Such impatience, my lord,’ she chided.
‘It is the state you push me to, wench.’
‘You’ll be tying me to the bed next.’
He glanced up at the lengths of black silken cord that dangled from the headboard of the bed. ‘Let us save that game for later.’
‘If you insist, Lord Razeby.’
‘I do, Miss Sweetly.’
She smiled at that and felt the place between her thighs grow hotter at the thought.
He gave a growl as he pushed the flimsy torn linen and sprig muslin aside, exposing her nakedness to the hunger of his gaze.
‘Do you know what you do to me?’ She could hear the strain in his voice, see it in his face. He touched her lightly, trailing his fingers across her breasts, making their tips harden and grow unbearably sensitive.
‘I could hazard a guess,’ she murmured as he lowered his face, all the while keeping his gaze locked with hers, and flicked his tongue to taste her.
The gasp escaped her, loud and needful, and in response his torture grew only more exquisite.
She groaned her need of him, arching her back to thrust her breasts all the more into his mouth so that he suckled her in earnest. Her fingers threaded through the dark feathers of his hair, clutching him to her, wanting him never to stop, wanting this, and more, so much more. He laved her, worked each rosy nipple in full until it was bullet hard and so sensitive that she was in danger of finding the fullness of her pleasure before he had even touched between her legs. She tried to hold back, tried to resist, but, seeing how close she was teetering to the edge, he smiled.
‘No mercy, Alice,’ he said in his low, sexy velvet voice and then did something so clever with his tongue that rendered all resistance futile. She let go and exploded in a bliss that was blinding and overwhelming, making her body ripple and shimmer as the pleasure, absolute and all consuming, filled her from head to toe and she was gasping aloud with the wonder of it.
She was still pulsing inside as his face came up to hers. ‘Razeby,’ she whispered.
‘Naughty girl,’ he said and he was smiling.
She let her hands glide over the pale honey-coloured contours of his shoulders, over the muscles at the top of his arms. He was strong and lean from all the fencing and horse riding and pugilism, his body so different from hers, so much bigger, so masculine.
‘It’s all your fault,’ she said.
‘Guilty as charged,’ he admitted, and his eyes smouldered all the darker. He kissed all the way up the column of her neck, kissed the line of her jaw, kissed her chin.
Already she could feel the desire stoke again within her. Her woman’s place between her legs ached for him.
She scraped her teeth against the naked skin of his shoulder, licked him there, sucked him there while one hand slipped lower to caress the long hard length of him.
She felt the involuntary contraction of his muscles, heard the sharp intake of his breath as she stroked him.
‘Alice.’
She smiled and bit his shoulder.
Razeby took her mouth with masterful possession, plunging his tongue into its depths as she wrapped her legs around him and welcomed him home.
They moved in a dance as old as time itself. A man and his woman, mating, bonding, sharing all that was possible to share on this journey that could have only one destination