Tempt the Devil by Anna Campbell

raised his head, his eyes still sparkling with laughter. “Are you always this cold-blooded with your lovers? Analyzing your actions, their actions, who has the upper hand?”
    No, she wasn’t. Usually her lovers were so dazzled at the prospect of bedding the legendary Olivia Raines that she merely expressed her slightest wish and it was done.
    Lord Erith undoubtedly wanted her. But he was nowhere near dazzled, curse him. He went on without waiting for an answer. “Kissing you becomes more appealing by the minute.”
    Beneath her appearance of indifference, she suppressed a shudder. Nothing he’d done to her tonight compared to suffering his mouth on hers yesterday. “You can kiss me. Just not on the lips.”
    â€œVery generous.” He rolled to the side and stood up. “Come here.”
    She sucked in her first full breath since he’d caught her up in his arms. “More orders?”
    â€œOf course.” He took her hand. She waited for him to haul her to her feet, but he drew her up very gently. When she reached for his neckcloth, he lifted a hand to still her busy fingers. “I want to undress you.”
    â€œWe’ve only got until July,” she said with asperity. “Perhaps you should begin.”
    â€œYour impatience is flattering.”
    His long narrow mouth curved in a full smile, carving deep grooves in his tanned cheeks. He was a handsome man when he was somber. Smiling, he was breathtaking. Her wayward heart abandoned its wild gallop for one lost moment and ceased beating altogether.
    He raised his hand. She waited, with a breathless tension she was ashamed to admit, for him to paw at her bodice. Instead, he carefully slid a pin from her hair. One long tendril of shiny brown uncoiled to snake across the top of her bosom, revealed under the low neckline of her gown.
    He lifted the lock and rubbed it between his fingers. “Pretty.”
    Fleetingly she was a child again, watching her father test wool shorn from his tenants’ sheep. Sad nostalgia stifled the barbed retort that rose in her throat.
    Slowly he pulled out another pin. Another tendril fell. And another. And another. Until the elaborate confection her maid had tortured her hair into was only a memory.
    Lord Erith stroked the thick brown mass, smoothing tangles, straightening kinks. His eyes shone with fascination. He brought a handful of hair to his face.
    â€œIt smells like flowers.” He dropped her hair and buried his face in the curve of her neck, where he’d bitten, then kissed her. “ You smell like flowers.”
    â€œIt’s the bouquets.”
    â€œNo, it’s not.”
    His hands dropped to the hooks that ran up the back of her gown. In spite of all her experience, the dedicated attention he paid to undressing her had its own allure. With practiced ease he undid her gown and slid it off her shoulders. The room was warm with the candles and the fire in the grate. Still she shivered as air glanced over the bare skin of arms and shoulders.
    Carefully, he drew her sleeves down over her hands so the bodice fell to her waist. She stood in her light corset and shift. Perhaps because tonight she didn’t control the encounter, her near nakedness before a stranger gave her a frisson of discomfort. She raised her chin and swallowed to moisten a throat dry with nerves.
    Her corset was delicately embroidered with ivy leaves and tulips. His attention fell to where her breasts mounded above the lace edging. His breathing wasn’t as steady as it had been. When he raised his eyes, the gray was soft and deep like endless sea fog. Brittle excitement glowed like banked embers behind that gaze. The slightest spark would ignite his desire into an inferno.
    â€œTurn around,” he said gruffly. Definitely, his restraint wore thin.
    Without a word, she presented her back and stretched to push aside her hair so he could unlace her corset. It sagged and she shrugged it