Improper Arrangements by Juliana Ross

expect.”
    “No, not at all. I like the silver in your hair. It matches your eyes.”
    “How poetic. How old are you?”
    “Twenty-six. And you’re a cad for asking. No lady cares to speak of her age. Particularly an aged spinster such as myself.”
    “Rubbish. You’re beautiful—far more so now, I’d wager, than when you were a girl.”
    He was wrong. I hadn’t been beautiful then, nor was I now. Before I could correct him, he undid the ribbon at the top of my chemise and I quite forgot what I’d been going to say. He drew its gathers wide and pulled it down over my shoulders, baring the swell of my bosom, then my nipples, then the entirety of my breasts.
    I’d expected him to make some sort of comment at that point, some glowing ode to their whiteness or plumpness or their pleasing size, for my sister Eleanor had once told me that her husband was forever rhapsodizing about her bosom. But Elijah, being a man of comparatively few words, instead bent his head and took my left nipple into his mouth, sucking on it lavishly before turning to nuzzle at my other breast.
    “When we met for tea, I felt like dragging you out of the conservatory and doing this to you. That damned dress you were wearing.”
    “I could have sworn you were furious with me.”
    “I was, at first. But I still wanted to fuck you.”
    He fell back onto the bed, carrying me with him so I lay sprawled atop his body. He abandoned my bosom, his hands descending to the span of my waist, the flare of my hips, and then the fullness of my bottom.
    Pulling me close, he molded my curves to the unyielding muscles of his thighs, his mouth pressing hot kisses against my temple. I clutched at him, heedless of the way my fingers bit into his arms, and pressed my bare breasts against his chest, which was still, maddeningly, hidden by his shirt.
    “Take it off. Your shirt. I want to see more of you,” I demanded.
    He said nothing, and I thought for a moment he was going to ignore me. But then he held me tight and rolled me on my back before rising to his knees. He shrugged free of his shirt and tossed it carelessly on the floor.
    I ran my hands over the lean, corded planes of his arms and chest. “All this muscle...it’s from climbing?”
    “I suppose. Though I’m not especially fit at the moment. Too much time spent at my desk.”
    I touched a finger to the dark blue band encircling his right forearm. The markings weren’t solid, as I’d thought, but rather a closely inscribed design of thin, fine lines, no more than a quarter of an inch long, running in parallel formation around his arm, each band interspersed with precise dotted lines. The overall effect was quite stunning.
    “Are these tattoos?”
    “Yes.”
    “When did you get them?”
    “Years ago. I was in Itanagar, in northern India. Got drunk with my friends one night and decided I wanted tattoos like our Singpho porter. He had them up and down his arms. His legs, too.”
    “Did it hurt?”
    “Good God, yes. Stayed drunk for nearly a week, until my head hurt worse than my arms.”
    “I like them. The tattoos. Can you feel them when I touch you there?”
    “No. They feel the same as the rest of me.”
    I let my fingertips linger on the bands, tracing the designs, thrilling at the hard muscle just beneath his exotically decorated skin. Then I moved my hands to the triangle of dark hair on his chest. It was finer than I would have supposed and surprisingly soft.
    I touched his nipples, one then the other, drawing the hair away so I might see them better. Like my own, they had pulled up on themselves, tight with excitement, and so I rose up on my elbows and took his right nipple into my mouth, my teeth grazing it gently.
    “Holy fuck,” he gasped.
    A heartbeat later I was flat on my back and the full weight and length of his body was again pressed against mine, though the only point of contact I noticed was the heat of his erection at the juncture of my thighs, a searing brand as alarming