He paused in the act of clearing up a stack of plates, glancing back up at her. “Dangerous to whom?”
“To me, of course.” Once more, she was solemn. “To my ability to resist you.”
His already frayed restraint snapped, like a rope that had been sawed through, leaving only a single strand to hold it in place. Gone.
He swept everything remaining between them on the blanket out of his way with one fluid motion. “Then don’t.”
Miranda wasn’tcertain which of them moved first. All she did know was that one moment, Rhys was unbearably handsome across the blanket, daring her to be bold, and the next, she was clutching a fistful of his neckcloth, holding him to her as he kissed her passionately. Their lips clung voraciously, tongues tangling, teeth nipping, desperation and desire prodding them both beyond their breaking points. Her other hand was somehow in his hair, fingers grasping silky, golden strands.
He growled, the low rumble setting off an answering reaction in her nipples and between her legs. The ceaseless ache that punctuated his presence grew stronger, fiercer. Oh God, she wanted this man. Wanted to take his cock deep inside her. Wanted to claim him, to take her pleasure from him, to make him hers.
Miranda was a creature of need only, reborn in the sunlight with the verdant grass springy and soft beneath the picnic blanket. With the scent of earth and amber, of musk, of forest and man and helpless desire. A wildness overtook her, caution becoming dim and murky, like a language she had learned years ago and no longer used.
She wanted more from him than mere kisses.
Miranda took his lower lip in her teeth, biting him enough to make it sting, driven by some instinctive urge to make him come undone. He growled again, his fingers sinking into her tightly coiled chignon. Hairpins were plucked free by the handful, raining on the blanket. She didn’t care.
From his mouth, she moved across his jaw, exploring, needing. Beneath her lips, the stern angle of bone was covered with short, golden whiskers that lightly prickled as she peppered kisses everywhere her mouth traveled. The knot of his neckcloth loosened and opened, and she tore at it frantically before laying her lips over the hot male flesh she found there, the pulse of his frantically thudding heart, the protrusion of his Adam’s apple.
This was still somehow insufficient. She tore at his shirt, feeling the satisfying pop of buttons. He shrugged out of his coat, and then his waistcoat was gone too as her hair fully unraveled down her back in heavy skeins. He preoccupied himself with the line of fastenings on her bodice as she pulled at his shirt, until the twain ends hung apart, revealing the muscled expanse of his chest. Inhaling deeply of his scent, she kissed along his clavicle, kissed his flat nipple, flicked her tongue over it.
“Miranda,” he ground out, her name part warning, part plea.
She felt infinitely powerful and deliriously powerless all at once. She had this beautiful rakehell at her mercy, and yet he also had her helplessly in his thrall, captive to her own desire. Her bodice sagged. He rent the top of her chemise in two and gave her corset a swift, sudden tug that made her bare breastsspill over the top. Cool, gilded air greeted her hot, aching skin. And then his hands were on her. Big hands, knowing hands, cupping and stroking, his long fingers plucking at her nipples until she cried out against him and lifted her face to receive his kiss.
This time, it was a long and plundering meeting of mouths. His thumbs rolled over the peaks of her breasts, and then he pinched, sending arcs of pure, wonderful sensation shooting through her. She kissed him, giving him her tongue, suckling his. He tasted like meringue and cerise pudding from their luncheon and sweet, heady desire.
Oh heavens, this was wondrous and foolish. Her breasts were bared to the light of day, and they had pawed each other’s clothing apart. They were feeding each other kisses so carnal she thought she might spend just from his hands on her breasts and his tongue in her mouth. Anyone could come upon them. Someone could find them at any moment. But somehow, wicked sinner that she was, the knowledge of this danger only served to heighten her own need. Only made her want him more. As if sensing her eagerness, he squeezed her nipples harder.
“I need you inside me,” she murmured into his kiss.
Another low rumble emerged from him, and she felt the frantic fumbling of his hand on his trousers, releasing buttons and opening the fall. He caught her lip in his teeth and tugged.
“Ride me, kitten.”
She ought to have been irritated by his insistence upon calling her by the silly sobriquet. And yet, it only made her want him more. Still kissing him, she reached between them, wrapping her fingers around the rigid thickness of his erect cock. With a moan, she stroked him up and down, loving the way he felt, so smooth and yet so firm, hot and insistent. Slicking the pad of her thumb over the head, she found his mettle leaking and swirled it over him, making him groan.
He was as ready for her as she was for him.
But she had never made love out of doors. She didn’t begin to understand the mechanics of how she was meant to ride him, as he had urged.
“How?” she asked hesitantly, wanting to please him more than she wanted, even, to please herself.
What a strange, unfamiliar feeling this was. Not just to revel in her own desire. But to revel in another’s too. To experience such carnal yearning, the likes of which she hadn’t imagined were even possible.
“I’ll show you.”
Gently, he disengaged himself from her, sliding his cock free of her grip. Then he shifted his positioning, moving away from her and seating himself on the blanket, his long legs stretched before him. For a moment, she was transfixed by the sight of him, his golden hair in disarray, his shirt hanging apart to display a delicious wedge of chest, his trousers undone to reveal his cock, stiff and ruddy, a pearlescent bead on the tip. His gaze hot on her, he grasped himself at the base, stroking.
An answering ache throbbed deep. She wanted him to slide inside her. To fill her. How sinful it was, the sight of him basking in the afternoon’s glow, surrounded by green grass and blue sky, so thoroughly male and beautiful, half dressed and watching her with a heavy-lidded stare as he fondled his cock.
It was too much. She thought she might explode from the pent-up yearning.
Rhys held out his other hand to her. “Hold up your skirts and come here.”
Following his instructions, she grasped handfuls of her gown, grateful that it was not nearly as voluminous and cumbersome as fashion would decree, but instead made for ease of movement.
“On your knees,” he added.
