And then her kiss in the ballroom, bringing it all back into sharp focus.
His trousers pulled tight over his groin. Words, was it? Did she think that was all he had to prove himself? He scanned the room behind Mac, noted the position of the wide velvet settee with its mounds of pillows. Part of his mind was coolly planning even as his body was hot and hard with desire.
Very well. He’d teach Mac a lesson—the one he’d never completed in the jungle. And this was a lesson he’d enjoy to the fullest.
“You doubt my manhood?” he challenged.
“There’s little about you I don’t doubt, O’Shea.”
He moved toward her. She took a step back, paused, and retreated another step when he kept coming. Right toward the settee—right where he wanted her.
“Then you need proof, my thorny Rose,” he said. The proof he intended to give her throbbed and ached for release.
Her smile was a little shaky. “And what would that be?”
A few more steps. She wasn’t watching where she was going. “No mere words, Mac. Something you can touch. Something you can hold in your hands.”
Her gaze flickered down. His erection strained under her inspection like a restive stallion. “I’ve, uh, always been a skeptic,” she murmured.
“But not for much longer, I promise you.”
At that moment the backs of her legs bumped the settee. With a soft grunt of surprise she sat down on her bustle. Liam wasted no time. He sprang the remaining few feet and pinned her down among the pillows.
Her first instinct was to fight. He could feel the tension in her body—a tension that relaxed all at once, as if she had commanded her wayward muscles to obey. Her eyes were wide, but not with fear.
Her eyes. He’d forgotten what beautiful eyes she had. A man could drown in them, dark and fathomless as they were, and lose himself forever.
But he wasn’t here to lose himself. Carefully he began to unbutton her gloves, peeling them inch by inch away from her hands. When he had bared both of them, he kissed the undersides of her wrists.
“Proof, Mac,” he said. He clasped her hand and guided it down between their bodies. She stiffened again.
“Surely you’re not afraid?” he taunted.
Only her chin twitched as he helped her fingers find their mark. That hesitant contact was sweet agony. He felt her mold the cloth of his trousers to the shape of him, trace his length hesitantly and then with greater boldness.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m beginning to be convinced.”
“Of what?” He hissed as she touched him again, more boldly still. “Tell me, Mac.”
“That, uh… you’re not all talk.”
“What else?”
“You’re definitely of the masculine persuasion.”
She was teasing him, the minx. He pressed her hand down harder and held it there. “And?”
“You must not find me too unattractive.”
This time he had to stifle a laugh. She had turned the tables on him again. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Even I have to accept the proof of that.” He let his free hand slide down from her wrist to settle just below the swell of her bodice. “You might even find more ways to encourage me.”
“And what exactly… did you have in mind?”
He nuzzled the side of her neck. She smelled clean and brisk, like sea air. “You have an imagination, Mac.” His fingers negotiated the gentle slope of her breasts. “Use it.”
Her back arched beneath him. “You might not like some of the ways I’ve been using i—”
But she broke off on a gasp as he kissed the place where her breasts met the edge of her bodice. Her skin was tender and thoroughly feminine here, unmarked by sun or weather. She made a muted little sound—encouragement or protest, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care—as he unfastened the top button of her bodice, and then the next. She wore no corset, no bust improver, nothing but a chemise underneath. It was a simple matter for him to ease her breasts from their scanty confinement.
They were sweet and ripe for kissing, lifted and supported by the bodice that no longer protected them. The dark areolas of her nipples tightened as if in anticipation.