“Do you like that?”
“Yes.” She arched toward him.
His hand seared a path down her abdomen and onto her thigh. He stroked there, and she groaned pushing her hips into his hand. His palm sought the warmth of her woman’s mound, circling her wet cleft. She writhed.
Urging her thighs farther apart, he slid his fingers deep into her. Again and again, came the probing of his fingers, the pleasure coming pure and explosive. She breathed in deep soul-drenching drafts.
He kissed her, parting her lips, and setting her nerves ablaze with a slow search for her tongue. Elizabeth’s hands crept around his neck, her breath labored, her body turning light and hot. When he dragged his mouth from hers, she kept her arms around him, her head spinning.
He nudged her legs apart, continued his stroking until she cried out for that intangible, elusive sensation to give her release. He withdrew his hand, pushing her thighs apart. “Look at me,” he said fiercely, staring into her face.
She lifted her lashes, held his intense gaze. He thrust slowly into her with incredible control and then stopped.
“Please–”
She didn’t want him to stop the lush, exquisite feelings flowing uncontrolled. She moved beneath him then, adjusting her body to his, welcoming him into hers, melting against him, and the world frilled with him. To have more of him. She gasped with pleasure. She wriggled. He fit well. Very well.
He began anew. Each time, he penetrated a little further, stretching her, moving with insistent rhythm. Elizabeth stroked the smooth surface of his back, and her pleasure mounted. Her fingers dug into the planes of his muscles. His breath faster now. Her fingers drifted from his shoulders, digging into his hips, her heart racing. She heard him whisper to her then, in broken phrases he couldn’t seem to hold back.
“You’re beautiful…I love you.”
Elizabeth responded with each demanding stroke of his body. Passion radiated from the core of her being until he freed her in a bursting of sensations, flooding her with hot pleasure. Confused, disbelieving, silken desire exploded within her, around her, mystically gathering her into his universe.
She wrapped her legs around him as Zachary made one final thrust, his body jerking convulsively again and again as his warmth spilled into her.
Zachary lay awake, thoroughly contented. A crack of foggy light pierced through the soot-misted window, and the lingeringincense of their physical intimacy created an aura that seemed to fill up the room and all his faculties.
He held her in his arms, her breath quiet, undisturbed by dreams. He was still enjoined to her, and that fulfillment gratified him. He shifted, pulling her closer and she awoke.
A look passed between them more eloquent than words. “I need you, Elizabeth.” He lowered his head in a slow demanding kiss. “I want you.”
She wriggled next to him. Already thick with blood, more heat rushed to his loins. His fully engorged member toyed against her triangle of springy curls.
She whimpered and moved her hips in response. “Are you able to do that again?”
Once again, they came together as the moon pulled the tides.
He woke her well past midnight. “Elizabeth, I need to get you home. I don’t want you to fall prey to gossip, and I want to make sure we can pull off our elopement without creating alarm bells.”
With a shy smile, she rose, and he watched her through his lashes, a pale nymph in the semi-darkness. In the ethereal light she seemed more lovely than he could have imagined, the luster of her unbound hair and the velvet curve of her face. All of his forbidden fantasies materialized into life.
He rued the waning of night. Dawn was breaking, flushing away the darkness. The sky, a translucent shade of gray as daybreak exhaled a breath of crimson, pink and amethyst. He sighed in the half-light, holding tight to the slumber-laden hours, and to fill his dreams with a lifetime of splendor such as the stars could not eclipse.
She had stolen his soul.
The cool air of morning passed over him. With it, a sudden chill crawled slowly over his body and lifted the hairs on the nape of his neck. The last remnants of the night stared him in the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without boundaries. Watching. Waiting. Something that sucked the space from his lungs. The very air was charged with doom. He’d these premonitions earlier, leaving him shaking and soaked with sweat. Before the Cheyenne attack and the cave-in.
She stirred, and he pushed the intrusive thoughts away, denying the fleeting premonitions, and discarding the warnings as vague and insubstantial.
He dressed, and then helped her with her gown, tightening her corset and closing the fine row of pearl buttons down her back. “I’ll welcome this husbandly pursuit.”
“I’d prefer you undressing me instead.”
He pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck, yet lingering forebodings held fast.
Elizabeth’s fingers dug into the leather squabs as Zachary pulled the check strap, and the carriage halted in front of her home.
A question appeared in Zachary’s expression. “You are afraid to come back here?” he said, breaking the silence that held them.
