He deepened the kiss on a groan, his tongue sliding against hers in sweet, velvet seduction. He tasted of the sherry they had shared in the library and wickedness. His mouth was firm and knowing.
He dragged it down her throat to the place where her neck and shoulder met. The gentle nip of his teeth had her clinging to him, a moan slipping from her lips.
“I want to kiss and lick you everywhere.”
She wanted that too, but words were beyond her. Instead, she kissed his ear, his cheek. She sank her nails into the rugged breadth of his shoulders, wrapped a leg around his hip. She wanted to twine herself around him like an ivy vine. To be as close as she could be. Nothing was enough, and she was ravenous for him.
“You are a dream.” He found the buttons of her dressing gown, plucked them free. “Mytehotikalá·luhe?.Sent for me, to save me.”
With his aid, she shed the garment, allowing it to drop unheeded to the floor.
“Beautiful,” he praised.
She felt as if she were the most desirable woman he had ever beheld as his obsidian gaze passed over her, lingering on her curves and lips. He looked at her as if seeking to memorize every inch, as if he never wanted to forget this moment. And she knew that look; she was certain his expression must mirror her own.
“May I?” Roland asked, fingering the closures on her night rail.
One line of buttons from her throat to her belly.
“Yes. Oh yes.” She arched her back, presenting herself to him as if she were a gift.
And certainly, he made her feel as if she was. As if she were something rare and precious. Someone to be savored. Nothing could have prepared her, not even the intensity of their lovemaking beneath the stars.
She held still beneath his tender ministrations, a fresh frisson of desire passing through her when he kissed her throat, then proceeded to worship each new swath of bare skin he revealed. He reached the hollow between her breasts and paused, inhaling deeply as if to draw the very essence of her into his lungs. His hands were no longer on her waist now but on her breasts instead. Big, strong hands cupped her, his thumbs swirling over her aching nipples.
His tongue traced her breastbone. Never had she imagined it a place where she might burn for a man’s mouth, and yet, when Roland licked her there, she felt as if she would come out of her skin. Her knees trembled again. To steady herself, she gripped his upper arms, where the evidence of the weights she had seen him lifting was found in twin prominent bulges of muscle.
He was so strong, so broad, so powerful.
And hers. Yes, this man washers.
He parted her night rail, pulling one of the twain ends to the side to reveal her breast. In the glow of the lamps, she found herself suddenly shy. Her breasts had always been small, but after the recent stresses of grief and the discovery of George’s deceptions, she had lost more weight. Her ribcage rose in relief beneath. She knew because she had frowned over herself in the looking glass more than once, knowing she was not healthy as she had once been.
“So perfect,” he praised.
Somehow, the worries fell away, replaced by yearning. By a feverish fire.
His head lowered, and he sucked her nipple into his mouth.
A sound of approval fled her. The hot wetness of his mouth drawing on her, coupled with the steady whorl of his tongue over the peak, made her ache in the most inexplicably glorious fashion.
He released her nipple, then kissed the side of her breast, flicking a wicked glance toward her from beneath thick, black lashes. “Do you like this?”
“Yes. More please.”
His grin was beautiful. He kissed her stiff nipple. “With pleasure.”
He sucked again, harder this time. Long, steady pulls of that wonderful mouth. And the sight of him, his handsome face lowered to suckle her breast… Oh, it was more erotic than she could bear.
He lapped at the peak, and then he caught the engorged bud between his teeth and tugged.
The wet rush of desire to her core was as unexpected as it was uncontrollable.
On a groan, he released her once more, only to pull her other breast free and torture the left as well as he had the right. As he did so, his hand slipped between them to grab a fistful of her night rail and lift it higher. Air slipped across her knees, her thighs. And then his fingers glided through her folds. One swipe along her seam, from her core to her pearl. He slicked the wetness of her desire over that bundle of wild nerves with steady swirls, all as he sucked her nipple into the hot recesses of his mouth.
The sensations were too much. He applied more pressure to her clitoris as his tongue flicked over her breast. The pleasure was swelling, growing. Bright and hot and pulsing.
Her knees did give out then, and he caught her with an arm around her waist as the ripples of her release rocked through her. She shamelessly arched her back, driving her breast into his face, her sex into his hand. The sweet, potent languor of her spend washed over her then. There was a ringing in her ears, a slight sense of dizziness for a moment. Her orgasm had been so forceful, and from nothing more than his mouth and his fingers.
