Cheryl Holt by Love Lessons

the sight of her. There was just something about the woman that tickled his fancy as no other ever had. He fiercely desired her, and he wanted to jump ahead to their future carnal relationship. On a primitive level, he sensed that this bizarre need could only be pacified by possessing her completely.
    Across the room, she stood next to the window. Sunlight had poked through the clouds and flooded the area where she lingered, bathing her in a halo of amber light. She’d donned another dark green dress, but the fabric of this one was lighter and woven with an exotic thread that shimmered with silver highlights when she moved. The color intensified the emerald shade of her eyes, making her seem ethereal, mysterious, as though she could see more than she rightly should. Her skin was translucent, her cheeks and lips rosy red. And her hair . . .
    She’d worn it down! With unrestrained admiration, he gazed upon it. The golden mass flowed free and long, the curled ends just brushing her hips. In a compromise, she’d tied it loosely with a green ribbon.
    Furiously, he evaluated what the gesture meant. It was a capitulation of sorts, a signal, an indication of trust. As he contemplated how far he might be able to push her during their lesson, his loins tightened, his trousers promptly becoming uncomfortable. With a single snap of his wrist,the ribbon could be gone, the silky strands available for his unimpeded exploration. His nerves tingled at the idea of massaging through it.
    With a kind of crazy recklessness, he could picture her on the big bed in his own bedchamber—a private location he never let his paramours inhabit!—stretched out beneath him, her flaxen locks fanning across his pillows. What a spectacle she would be!
    As he entered the cozy salon, she was so well schooled in masking her emotions that, for a fleeting moment, she assessed him casually, ostensibly expecting him or someone else. However, her indifference lasted only a brief instant; then her eyes shadowed, her pretty brow creased with concern, her hands toiled over a kerchief she grasped between unsteady fingers.
    “Hello, Mr. Stevens,” she said in that husky voice that never failed to arouse him. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”
    “So am I.” Hesitantly, he took a few steps into the room. As he’d done formerly, he shut the door and secured it, sealing them in, not really worried about intruders or discovery, but liking the added bit of intimacy the barred door implied.
    Wanting to extend their initial greeting, he tarried, languidly placing his satchel on the table, yet even as he bent over to relinquish it, he kept his steady gaze fastened to hers. As had happened during the two preceding encounters they’d shared, it seemed as if he had known her for a thousand years, that he could cut through the walls of propriety that separated them and shoot directly to the heart of whatever was troubling her.
    “You’re distraught.”
    “I guess I am. I just . . .” She smiled tentatively. “Would it be terribly inappropriate of me to say that I am relieved you’re finally here?”
    So . . . she felt it, too, this powerful sense of connection and expectation. Perhaps he was not the only one who had passed the time daydreaming, tossing and turning on alonely mattress. He divulged, “I’ve been thinking about you. I couldn’t stop myself.”
    “Nor I, from thinking about you.”
    “Your hair . . .”
    Blushing, she patted her temple in a self-conscious attempt to straighten what didn’t need straightening. As though confessing a horrid sin, she disclosed, “I have never taken it down before . . . not for anyone. . . .”
    “But you did for me.” A great wave of hope swelled to the surface, and he steeled himself against the tempest of excitement rising through every part of his being. “Your hair is very beautiful.
You
are very beautiful.” She was obviously flattered but also surprised, and he surmised that no man had bestowed such a