He kissed her then in a way that made her forget she had ever spoken at all. His mouth dropped to her throat and stayed there, sucking gently at the skin beneath her jaw, and her hips buckedinvoluntarily against his. The friction was maddening.Exquisite. She whimpered against his temple and felt him smile.
“You taste,” he said against the hollow of her throat, his breath hot and deliberate, “like summer peaches and something I have been chasing for a very long time.”
The words went through her like a lit fuse.
His hands found the bow at the front of her nightdress and pulled. The fabric parted with a quiet tearing sound, buttons giving way one after another, and the nightdress slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her waist, and the cool air kissed her bare breasts and she did not feel it, because his eyes were on her, and the way he looked at her made the cool air irrelevant.
He stared. Openly. Shamelessly. His gaze dropped to her breasts and stayed there, and the raw hunger on his face, the way his nostrils flared slightly, the way his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip without any apparent awareness that he was doing it, made heat flood through her in a single, scalding rush.
“Well…” she whispered. “Are you going to look at them all evening, or—”
His mouth closed over her nipple, and she forgot how to enunciate words.
The wet, hot drag of his tongue across the tight bud made her cry out, sharp and startled, and her back arched off the floor,pressing her breast harder into his mouth. He sucked, gently at first, then harder, and the sensation was a direct, devastating line from the crest of her nipple straight down to the ache between her thighs. She writhed beneath him, her hips seeking something, anything, grinding against the hard thigh he had slid between hers.
“Oh God,” she breathed, fingers tangling in his hair, pulling his mouth tighter against her. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop!”
He hummed against her skin in response, the vibration sending another bolt of pleasure shuddering through her, and moved to her other breast. He took his time there too, laving and sucking and flicking his tongue across the nipple until it was hard and swollen and aching, until Catherine was panting and squirming beneath him with a desperation that would have embarrassed her if she were capable of embarrassment, which she was not. Not anymore.
His hand slid beneath the hem of her nightdress. She felt his fingers trail up the inside of her calf, cool and calloused, and then her knee, and then higher, higher, tracing the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thigh with agonizing slowness. Her legs fell open without her permission, her body offering itself up with a desperation that surprised even her.
His fingers found her, and she gasped.
She was wet. Soaked, in fact, and she felt no shame in it, because his sharp intake of breath told her exactly what it did to him to discover that. His fingers slid through the slick heat of her,one long, slow stroke from the entrance of her up to the swollen bundle of nerves at the top, and the sound she made was not dignified in the slightest.
“Oh,” she moaned, hips jerking. “Oh, that is—”
“Mm.” He did it again. Slower this time. Deliberately. The pad of his middle finger pressed against the sensitive nub and circled, once, and her thighs clenched around his hand as her vision went white at the edges.
“Generous…” he murmured, low and wicked. The word, delivered with such dry, devastating understatement, made her laugh, breathless and wild, even as his fingers began to move in earnest.
He found a rhythm that made her hips buck and her breath come in ragged, broken pulls. Two fingers, curling and pressing inside her while his thumb worked the swollen flesh above, and the stretch of him, the fullness, the relentless, expert pressure, was so good it was almost painful.
Catherine grabbed at his shoulder, his hair,anythingsolid, because the pleasure was enormous and building and she felt as though she were being taken apart, piece by piece, and rebuilt into something entirely new.
“Like that?”
“Yes…” she gasped. “God, yes! Exactly like that. Don’t stop.”
His mouth found her breast again, sucking and licking while his fingers pressed into her with a steady, devastating rhythm, and the combination of sensation was so much, so layered and consuming, that she felt her climax building like a tide pulling back from shore before it crashed…
Then he withdrew his hand.
She made a sound of protest, sharp and bereft, her hips chasing the absence. Her body was aching, wound so tight she felt ready to shatter, and the sudden, devastating loss of pressure made her want to scream.
“Patience…” he grinned, and the rogue had the audacity to sound amused!
He shifted down the length of her body. His shoulders settled between her thighs, pushing them wider, and Catherine propped herself up on her elbows just in time to watch him lower his head. His breath ghosted across the wet, swollen flesh of her, hot and deliberate, and her stomach clenched so hard it was almost a cramp.
“What are you…” she breathed, and did not know if it was a warning or a plea.
He pressed his mouth to her.
The first stroke of his tongue was broad and flat and devastatingly thorough, dragging from the entrance of her up tothe aching bud at the top, and her arms gave out. She collapsed back against the blanket with a cry that she felt in every nerve ending she possessed. Her hands flew to his hair, gripping, holding, because she needed to hold onto something, needed an anchor, because the sensation of his mouth on her was so intensely, overwhelmingly good that it bordered on unbearable!
He licked into her again, slower this time, savoring, and the wet, obscene sound of it filled the lodge and made heat flood through her in a fresh, scalding wave. His tongue circled the swollen nub, teasing, then pressed flat against it and held, and her hips bucked so hard against his mouth that he had to grip her thighs and pin her down.
“Oh God!” she panted, tugging at his hair. “I didn’t know… that it could feel like this—”
