Page 101 of Tea & Alchemy

The edges of her smile reappeared.

I got up and arranged the remaining cushions behind her. While I was there, I began to work at the pearly buttons that ran along her spine, my heart heaving against my healed ribs. After an eternity of slipping fingers and under-my-breath oaths, the top of the dress at last fell away.

I moved around her and took hold of her hands, raising and extracting her from both the dress and the engineering works that supported it. I stepped back, knees almost buckling as I took her in—chest and shoulders bare, corset hugging her waist and framing her breasts.

How many times over these last weeks had I dreamed of this moment?

Her soft smile was beckoning as she kicked free of her shoes and pushed her gown to one side with a stockinged foot.

I moved close again, removing the pins and mother-of-pearl combs from her hair, letting out a long breath as it finally cascaded around her shoulders. Burying both my hands in it—a thing I had longed to do since the first day we met—I bent to her ear and murmured, “Sit down.”

We sank onto the cushions together, and I eased her back, lowering over her. I kissed her, a gentle caress that grew harder and more insistent as desire took us both. Her back arched, her chest pressing against me as a hungry sound came from her throat.

Her hands began working, tugging my coat down my shoulders until I cast it off. Then unbuttoning my waistcoat, her eyes never leaving mine. When that, too, was dispensed with, she untied my cravat and worked at my shirt buttons, finally peeling down my braces and slipping her hands inside the white lawn.

“Mina,” I breathed, shuddering as I ran a hand up over her corset, tugging at the edge so I might feel one berry-red nipple harden against my tongue.

She gasped and wriggled against me, and I reached down and loosened her corset strings so I could plant a kiss in the valley between her breasts. Then another above it, and another, until I’d left a trail of them up to her chin.

“Will you kiss me, Harker?” she pleaded, echoing a moment I well remembered.

“I intend to spend the rest of my life making it up to you for ever having to refuse such a request.”

Our lips came together, swollen with need, bodies aching. I trailed my fingers down her waist, over her hip, and down to the hem of her shift, slowly raising it. She shivered as my fingers traced her thigh, and again she arched against me.

I felt her legs spread beneath me, and her hands worked free my trouser buttons.

“This is new to me,” she whispered, hands moving down my back, leaving trails of fire.

I smiled and cupped her cheek, using my thumb to smooth the anxiety from her face until finally she smiled, too.

Settling gently between her legs, I said, “We shall master it together, my love.”