Ruined by Moonlight by Emma Wildes Read Free Book Online Page A

seeing him formally dressed, and those nights when he did come to her, Benjamin usually shed his dressing gown after the lights were out. She knew him in a carnal way but it was only in tactile sensation, and the scent of his skin, and the exhale of his breath in the dark.
    He touched her but he didn’t
touch
her.
    How to explain the difference was beyond her at the moment. She knew her husband was keenly intelligent but she wasn’t at all positive he would understand how
she
saw it.
    Particularly since she was distracted anyway by that tantalizing V of bared skin. It was rather startling to realize just how little she really knew about his body. “By all means, do not let my presence stop you from your evening routine.”
    And she boldly selected a chair, settling into it, seemingly nonchalant, though her pulse was racing and the bravado entirely false.
    “You wish to watch me disrobe?” There was no mistaking the dangerous edge to his voice.
    “I am…curious.”
    Not for the first time he looked at her as if she’d gone mad, so in explanation she said, “It has always been dark.”
    “I thought women preferred it that way.” His eyes held a slight glitter. “And that I was expected to protect your delicate sensibilities.”
    “What you are really saying is that you thought a proper wife would prefer it that way,” she corrected, doing her best to relax her arms on the sides of the chair as if she lounged in her dressing gown in his bedroom often and was comfortable with it. Alicia casually crossed her ankles. “Maybe I am not all that proper. Please proceed. Take off your clothes.”
    “If you wish, but I warn you,” he said with an almost lethal softness, his fingers going to the buttons on his shirt, “if we are playing a game here, I don’t know the rules and therefore might not follow them to your liking.”
    “It isn’t a game,” she responded, her gaze fastened on his bared torso as he tugged the hem of his shirt free from his breeches. “I am quite serious.”
    “Yes, you appear to be.”
    She chose to ignore the dryness in his tone, fascinated by the masculine contours of skin and bone, the ripple of muscle impressive as he tossed his shirt aside. The term
beautiful
was not usually applied to men but she thought it appropriate for
this
man. A flush touched her skin as he began to unfasten his breeches, and the way his mouth quirked upward in one corner she rather thought he somehow knew it.
    It made her wonder once again about the women in his past, but that unsettling thought was banished as hestripped out of his breeches and, splendidly nude, stood there looking at her with inscrutable directness. “Be sure to let me know when your curiosity is satisfied, madam.”
    Never,
she almost said, because she had the feeling that Ben might take a lifetime to truly know. At the moment she knew he was referring to that part of him that made him male. Not currently the hard length she had experienced moving inside her, but still rather large, though she was hardly a judge. Less than brilliantly, she said, “Oh.”
    “Surely you’ve seen drawings and statues. We are all basically the same. Now, then. Shall I put on my dressing gown, or would you care to join me in the bed, where it would be my pleasure to give you a firsthand demonstration of the delightful differences in our anatomy?”
    The suggestion caused the telltale flush to deepen and a flutter in her stomach, but she hesitated to give in so easily and she doubted his claim all men were alike. Surely not all of them were so devastatingly attractive.
    “You came into my bedchamber.” Ben took a step toward her, his hazel eyes veiled. “And today I have walked a garden.”
    Alicia felt a flicker…of what? Panic or anticipation? He looked taller than usual and his nudity was a bit overwhelming, so perhaps a combination of both.
    But her intention was for him to realize that just because she was his wife and therefore available to him under