She smiled despite herself. “Apparently.”
Phoebe resumed fingering her husband’s trappings. She removed his jacket, waistcoat, shirtsleeves and sporran. And even though his hands never moved except to help her, it occurred to her that he could be refraining from touchingher because of her request to be in control. This pleased her immensely. It also confused her that she’d liked it when he’d sucked her thumb and wished he’d done more, but she’d requested to be in control, hadn’t she?
His body was a masterpiece, well-defined striations of sculpted muscle and sinew on his arms, chest and lean stomach like Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s incomparableDavidwhich she’d seen in an art book at Ayr’s library.
Her eyes snagged on the dark ink on his bicep in the form of a coiling viper. She stared, utterly mesmerized, and curious, her heart pounding frantically, assailed by an overwhelming urge to touch the inked skin. Phoebe stepped closer, between his spread knees to get a better look. A sudden flush of heat erupted from within her, yet she was incapable of stopping.
Slade’s hard muscles tightened on contact, as her fingertips glided over the smooth, darkened skin. She traced her finger up the viper’s long tail, over the coil of its body, into the oval of its opened mouth and protruding fangs, ending at the single line of its sharp tongue,
Slade’s breath had become more ragged than earlier. It mingled with her own. The air between them sizzled and vibrated with sultry energy.
“Phoebe …?” Slade’s low hard voice brushed softly against her neck, sensitizing her skin. A bolt of heat shot through her body as the dark viper swam in her vision.
“Did a sailor do this?” Her own voice sounded uncommonly breathless.
“No. An artist did it, in a little ink house near Aschaffenburg, in Germany, during the war.” His voice was low and gravelly.
She cleared her thickening throat, struggling for coherent thoughts amidst a sea of hot conflicting emotions and icy fears.
“Wh … what should I do next?” she whispered, staring at his mouth and recalling she was supposed to be in control yet feeling anything but.
When she eyed him, his gaze had dropped to her lips. “Kiss me,” he whispered.
Phoebe touched her lips to his. Sensations exploded inside her body like a hundred barrels of gunpowder detonating. Lust pushed her to give in to wanton desires, but fear pulled her back. Eagerness for skin-to-skin contact warred with the dread of impending pain. The sweetness of their lips and teeth grazing each other collided with the burning dread in her stomach. Yet she fell further into him, picking up the pace when the hard strength and warmth of his embrace engulfed her.
He tasted of whisky and sin, and she drank him in, as if she’d been starved and thirsting all her life. While anxiety and lust battled for superiority in her mind, body and soul, she battled for control of the coming together. But Phoebe feared that in giving in to the lust and carnal desires, she was giving up control. Pleasure for control. She allowed it to consume her and pull her under.
When his tongue licked her lips, Phoebe gasped at the wicked contact but wine had already flooded her veins instead of blood, dizzying her head and pushing her to reciprocate.
In the back of her mind she was aware of Slade standing and shrugging out of his kilt. But she was too caught up in the kiss to care. She became aware of his thick erection pressing into her lower belly, as hard as steel. Fear struck her like iron spikes spearing her entire body from every direction. A shiver shot through her as if it was the dead of a bitter winter and she was outside and unclothed. But she swallowed down, pushing with all her might, through the paralyzing recollection of the ungodly pain from seven years ago. This was her husband, not her attacker.
Husband, not attacker. Husband, not attacker.She repeated over and over in her head, ignoring her sweating palms. The tremor returned to her hands as she traversed Slade’s toned back and chest, but she ignored that too, throwing herself harder into his lips and caresses.
Slade’s mouth became hungry, impatient, and hard against hers.
She had to have something. She needed to maintain something, something important. But she couldn’t remember what it was, because her mind had abandoned itself. The thumping in her heart became so loud she gasped for air just as he lifted her and sat with her on his lap without breaking the kiss. Slade’s steely erection pressed hard and thick into the back of her thigh, and she found herself rolling her hips against his legs wanting more and more friction. Somewhere in the back of her mind the movement of his thigh against her exposed core seemed deliberate and calculated but she didn’t care. Her own hunger was like the sparks from a sledgehammer’s strike hitting black powder.
The tips of her breasts pebbled against his calloused palms, and she pressed further into him wanting more heat, more skin to skin, more of him.
Phoebe pushed against Slade’s chest. Her world turned weightless as his body gave way, going horizontal on the bed, she on top of him.
His fingers were annoyingly slow as they kneaded her hips and derriere. And she wanted to laugh, because in her drunkenness his fingers seemed methodical in their slowness, as if he was restraining himself.
What was happening to her?
His hands traveled up to cup her breasts. He molded the delicate skin and flicked her nipples. The motion was soft and tortuously inadequate.
“More … more …” Her voice was desperate. Needy. Starved.
It was then she realized her mistake. She’d been goading a beast, and he’d been holding back. In the blink of an eye, her husband flipped her entire body onto her back. His weight pinned her into the bed, his eyes wild with carnal lust. His breathing hard.
She froze. All the heat drained from her body. Cold terror gripped her. She scrambled like a frantic prey snared by a predator.
“No. No. No.” She shook her head.
Slade stilled and blinked. The black haze in his eyes turned confused.
“What’s—” he started.
