“That’s my Kenna.”
“I’m not your anything,” she said with asperity.
“Aren’t you?” he asked, brushing her cheek with his mouth. “You should be.” He kissed the bridge of her nose. “Youwillbe.” He kissed her deeply and felt her obligatory resistance give way to surrender.
Kenna’s hands slid around Rhys’s waist as his body covered hers. Her palms stroked his tautly muscled back and her fingers trailed over the length of his spine as she welcomed the weight and security of his lean frame flush to her skin. His hands were everywhere, feather-light, curiously reverent, as he caressed her arms, her waist, the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. His mouth moved over her face, then the gentle suck of it on her breast drew a sigh from deep inside Kenna. The sheet was pushed aside as his lips traveled lower over the flat plane of her stomach and the arc of her hip. His mouth touched her once on the red-gold triangle between her legs but the contact was so brief she forced herself to believe she had imagined it. Surely he had not meant to kiss her there.
Kenna’s fingers explored Rhys’s hard chest when his mouth returned to hers. His flat male nipples hardened beneath her curious hands and she felt his abdomen tauten as her hands slipped lower. Something warned her that she could stop Rhys now and know very well that she was not as Victorine had said, yet she had no desire to heed the warning. She wanted to know everything that happened between a man and a woman; she wanted to be released from her schoolgirl ignorance at last.
When Rhys nudged her thighs with his knee Kenna opened to him. His hand slipped between her legs and the intimacy of his caress was as startling as it was pleasurable. Liquid sparks shot through her as his insistent fingers stroked her, fanning her desire. One hand fell to her side while the other reached down to tug at his wrist, intending to pull him away. Instead it rested there while her eyes sought his, naked save for the wonderment of what he was making her feel.
A gasp rose in her throat as the sensations spiraled and she turned her head into her shoulder to keep from crying out.
“No,” he said, lifting the pressure of his hand slightly. “Look at me. I want to see your face…your eyes.” When she still did not look at him he drew his hand away. “Give me your mouth, Kenna.”
She turned her face to him and though her longing was clear she needed to say it aloud. “Don’t stop,” she said on a thread of sound. “I couldn’t bear it.” She thought she must be shameless.
Rhys did not think so as his mouth ground into her with an intensity that left them both breathless. His tongue stroked her in an intimate prelude to the loving he desired. When his hand returned to her thighs he felt Kenna arch her hips against him, searching for release from the web of sensation he had caught her in. Her hands lifted, fingers digging into the flesh of his shoulders as he touched the moist, velvet center of her pleasure. His mouth caught her incoherent murmurs as if they were nectar and his own need grew with hers until he realized he could not put off his own hunger another moment.
“Are you certain, Kenna?” he asked roughly.
She had only a vague sense of what he was asking. He had moved, leaving her mouth, her thighs, and was kneeling between her legs, tilting her hips toward him. Her eyes dropped from his face and his strangely ascetic features outlined in the firelight, to the more shadowy outline of his thrusting manhood poised to enter her.
Certain? she thought, panicking at the sight of him. She wasn’t certain of anything, least of all how her body was going to accept his. It seemed quite impossible that she could accommodate him and she almost blurted her astonishment aloud, but when she found her voice she also found she wanted him. “Yes,” she said simply. “Yes.”
“There will be some pain this first time.”
Since it would be the only time with him Kenna didn’t care and told him so.
The sharp edge of self-denial vanished from Rhys’s features as he eased himself into Kenna’s warmth. He withdrew a little at her first distressed whimper as he encountered her maidenhead then thrust quickly forward, jerking her hips toward him and tearing the barrier to his entry. He was still for a moment, letting her become accustomed to the feel of him inside her and then he moved slowly, acquainting her with the rhythm of his loving.
As Rhys filled her Kenna admitted her imagination had failed her miserably on this occasion. She had never dreamed her body could give her such delight, nor that a man’s body could offer so much pleasure. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to give as she took and she caught the urgency of his motion as his thrusts deepened. Her hands caressed his chest and shoulders when he leaned over her and the sparks he had ignited earlier flickered through her limbs without pause.
Their strained voices mingled as Kenna felt her body being stretched taut like a bow. Her neck arched and her fingers stiffened on Rhys’s arms as a cascade of bright light seemed to wash over her. She felt as if she were sparkling, brilliant with the fiery sensation that enfolded her. Her eyes closed and she bit her lip to hold back the sounds of her pleasure.
“I want to hear you, Kenna.”
Rhys’s voice tipped her over the edge and she cried out his name as his thrusts quickened. Her lashes fluttered open and she saw Rhys’s beautiful face grow rigid and still, as if he had suddenly been cast in bronze, then felt him flood her with his seed.
For a while there was no sound beyond their breathing. Rhys shifted his weight from Kenna but lay close to her, one leg flung over hers to keep her near. He pulled the comforter over them, keeping the chill which seemed to seep into their bodies at bay. They both became aware of the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantel at the same time and glanced at it together.
“It’s very late,” Kenna said, not knowing what else to say. Her head was filled with clumsy thoughts that she could not express.
“Yes, it is.”
“The servants will be up soon.”
“Not that soon,” Rhys disagreed. “We have a few hours before I have to go.” He turned her face toward him and searched her dark eyes. “Are you so anxious for me to go?”
She wished she knew the answer to that and her confusion registered clearly on her flushed features. “You must leave. You can’t be found here.”
“Where was that reasoning when you asked me to make love to you?” Rhys asked reasonably though he felt a surge of irritability that she was concerned with proprieties now. It had not taken reality long to set in.
“I didn’t ask you to make—”
“Don’t lie to yourself, Kenna. It does not become you.”
“But I am not lying,” she persisted, edging away from him only to find that some of her hair was trapped beneath his shoulder. It made her unaccountably angry that he was still holding onto her. “Release my hair, please,” she said in frosty accents. “And kindly remove your leg.”
