They wove toward the bed twined around each other, she licking his strong neck, he squeezing her tingling breast. He dragged back the covers, then picked her up and laid her on smooth sheets, sliding his arms away, watching her with hot, dark intensity.
She could imagine herself, mirror to her vision of him. Laughing, disordered, half naked, and crazed with desire. Slowly, loving every stormy look from those heavy-lidded eyes, she unhooked the front of her stays bottom to top, until her full breasts sprang free, now covered only by the delicate silk shift.
His eyes were fixed there, so she cradled her breasts in her hands and offered them. He fell, catching himself on his arms over her, then lowered his head to mouth first one nipple, then the other.
Heat shot through her thighs to burst in exquisite pain deep inside her, so she thrust up against him, seeking.
A flicker of caution stirred. Too late, too late, because she would not give this up now, not even at threat of the hangman’s rope.
He switched to kneeling over her, pushing up her shift to reveal her nakedness. No man had ever seen her there, but it felt right in the passionate admiration of his gaze. She helped him lift her shift over her head, then lay back down, his, as he should desire.
Please.
He knelt before her, magnificent in candlelight and firelight, and unfastened his already bulging velvet breeches. Slowly, he opened them, watching, smiling, as she inhaled, exhaled, and licked her dry lips.
He rolled off the bed and stripped.
She turned to watch. “You put Rothgar’s statues to shame.”
He laughed. “I might be hard as stone, but I promise I’m anything but cold.”
As he came back toward her, Genova realized she wasn’t naked. She was still wearing her stockings. She reached for one black garter, but he said thickly, “Keep them on.”
He crawled up onto the bed and over her pinning her hands on the pillow as he lowered his head to suck at first one, then the other nipple.
Her body surged again, even more powerfully for being restrained. Still suckling, driving her wild, he put a knee between her legs, nudging her open. She spread herself willingly, wondering through fever if her virginity was going to spoil this.
Nothing must spoil this.
Surely she could hide the pain.
Could a man tell?
She heard her own deep-throated cry of need and then the hard pressure of him, there, against her burning hunger.
She was saying, “Yes, yes…,” and then She cried it—“Yes!”—as he thrust hard and deep.
Had there been a sting? It had been nothing, and she was tight and full. They were locked together now as she’d longed to be.
Then he pulled back and thrust even deeper, then again, and again. Startled by the force, Genova faltered for a moment, but then she matched it, loving it, exulting in the fast, slick pounding that allowed not a breathless moment for anything but pure, blinding sensation.
When she thought she’d reached her limit, he drove her on and fire exploded in her brain, searing awayall reality except his body surging with hers, and then his shattering release.
Her head was still full of fireworks, and she had her teeth sunk in his shoulder. She released him as they tumbled slowly down, him heavy over her, her boneless, liquid, sated.
She stroked him, inhaling and exhaling as if breathing was a novelty. That had been insane. That had been wonderful. Having thrown herself into the ruinous flames, she wanted to do it again. She knew men needed time to recover. How much time?
They didn’t have a night. Thalia would miss her, and Fitzroger would return here at some point.
She tensed. Had they locked the door?
As if he picked up her thought, he rolled to one side trailing kisses over her, then left the bed. As lordly naked as when in velvet and jewels, he strolled over to turn the key. Then he looked back at her as if she were the most beautiful object in the universe, and promised wordlessly that there would indeed be more.
He went to a small table and poured brandy into a glass. One glass? He brought it back to the bed with a look in his eyes that made her feel that she might swoon down through the bed into the room below.
“What?” she asked, and some instinct made her pull the sheet up over herself a bit.
Smiling, he sat on the edge of the bed, facing her, so at ease with his naked virility that she wanted to eat him. Her whole life seemed to have shrunk down to the present. To this.
