The Venetian's Midnight Mistress. Carole Mortimer

have reached up to undo the twenty or so hooks down the front of the corset. His gaze was intent on her masked face as he threw off his waistcoat and the black sash before moving to stand in front of her. ‘I have always wondered what it would be like to remove one of these,’ he admitted. ‘I am going to very much enjoy finding out.’ His accent had thickened in his deepening desire.

      Dani hoped that it felt as sensually arousing to him as it did to her as he slowly undid the hooks, one by one, as he savoured the moment her breasts were free and he could brush his fingers lightly over their pouting tips. Dani’s breath caught in her throat as he lightly caressed the taut and swollen nipples.

      She felt her knees go weak as he lowered his head and his lips claimed one temptingly pert bud, his tongue licking slowly, rhythmically, making her skin wet. Her nipple swelled in arousal inside his mouth as his teeth gently rasped against that sensitivity and he continued to taste and suckle.

      Her hands moved up instinctively to cradle the back of his head and she held him to her, her back arched, her breathing ragged as pleasure surged hotly between her thighs and dampened her until she was hot and aching.

      He moved the attentions of his lips and tongue to her other breast, licking, gently biting, while his hand captured its twin and caressed that hardened nub in the same pleasurable rhythm.

      God, she was so excited, so aroused, Dani realised in trembling wonder. She was going to explode into a million pieces right here and now while this man was still fully dressed and she was wearing only her panties!

      Her fingers clenched in the dark thickness of his hair as she held him against her. He increased the rhythm of his caressing tongue and his other hand moved from her breast to seek lower, cupping between her thighs. The pad of his palm pressed subtly, rhythmically, against the hardened nub nestling there. Pressing, caressing, until Dani felt an aching pleasure all centred there, before it spread out to every part of her body, hot and fierce, totally encompassing, and she arched against his caressing hand in a climax that seemed never ending.

      Her knees buckled slightly and her head dropped forward to rest against the broadness of his shoulder as those spasms of pleasure finally began to lessen, her breathing ragged and sporadic.

      ‘I don’t—I’ve never—That was so—’

      ‘You are beautiful!’ Niccolo assured her with husky force even as his arms moved about her and he lifted her up to carry her to the sofa. He laid her down on its length, his gaze once again holding hers captive as he straightened to begin unbuttoning his shirt.

      No woman had ever looked more beautiful to him, the glow of the moonlight giving her skin the appearance of alabaster against the cream silk underwear she wore, her eyes dark and satiated behind her mask. The posture of her body—turned slightly sideways on the sofa, with those small graceful hands resting on her thighs and the long silken legs bent slightly at the knees—was sensually enticing.

      Niccolo left his shirt unbuttoned, revealing the dark hair of his chest and the flatness of his stomach, as his fingers dealt deftly with the fastening of his trousers.

      ‘Let me.’ She held her hand out in invitation. ‘It’s my turn to undress you,’ she whispered, moving over on the sofa to make room for him to lie down beside her.

      No part of Niccolo found objection to that invitation—not the surge in his already hardened shaft, the increased beat of his heart, or the clamouring inside him to feel those delicate hands against his naked body.

      And God, those hands felt good as she pushed the sides of his shirt aside to lay them flat against his chest, light as butterfly wings as she moved up beside him, expression sultry, her bottom lip caught between tiny, even white teeth as she looked her fill of him and her hands touched and caressed him from shoulder to thigh.

      Niccolo breathed in sharply, his stomach tightening, as one hand moved lower, beneath the waistband of his trousers, and she touched him lightly before curling her fingers about his rigid hardness.

      He felt like steel encased in silk, Dani discovered as she pushed aside his clothing to slowly caress his arousal from tip to base and then back again. She revelled in the response of his long thickness as he moved slowly, sensuously, against her hand and fingers, in the increased raggedness of his breathing as her thumb caressed the sensitive tip and she felt the slight escape of moisture.

      But she wanted more. Wanted it all. To taste him, not just touch and caress him.

      She moved up on her knees beside him to slide his trousers and boxers down the long length of his legs and drop them down on the carpet beside them, holding his gaze as she parted his legs to move in between them and cup and hold him.

      Then she finally looked down at him. He was long, hard and beautiful, she acknowledged, even as she lowered her head to capture him in her mouth, feeling emboldened, empowered, as she heard his groan of acceptance and surrender.

      His hands came up to grasp her shoulders—not to push her away, as she had initially disappointedly thought, but to plead with her not to stop that rasping caress of her tongue or the rhythmic caress of her hands as she cupped and held him.

      His groans became deeper, more ragged, with each caress, and Dani wallowed in his pleasure as surely as if it were her own.

      It was her own!

      She had never known anything like this before, had never felt so uninhibited, so free to express her enjoyment in a man’s body. In this man’s body.

      It was a beautiful, perfect male body, muscled and yet silky, his shoulders wide, his stomach flat, his thighs—Oh, God, his thighs…

      ‘No more, little one!’ he suddenly rasped fiercely, his fingers tight on her shoulders as he sat up to gently hold her away from him. ‘I want to take off the rest of your clothes. Slowly. And then I want to kiss and caress you in the way you have just kissed me,’ he explained.

      Dani smiled as she knelt back to lift her own breasts to his dark, appreciative gaze before he lowered his head to draw one of those darkened nipples into his mouth as he slid the silk panties down her thighs.

      In seconds she knelt completely, unashamedly naked in front of him, knowing by the raggedness of his breathing and the intensity of that dark gaze that he liked what he saw.

      It was exhilarating, liberating, to be with a man like this, to just enjoy without doubt or responsibility…

      She was perfection in the moonlight, Niccolo acknowledged achingly as she slid the shirt from his shoulders and down his arms. Her breasts full and pert, her waist slender, hips curvaceous, a lush triangle of hair at their apex, and her smile enticing as she lay back against the cushions.