Griffin wasn’t at all certain that it did. “You will have to convince me.” He saw the edges of her mouth turn down and knew that she didn’t understand. “Never mind. I’ll know the truth of it soon enough.”
Lowering his mouth to hers, he teased her lips open with the edge of his tongue. He nibbled, feasted, sucked. He angled his mouth differently, tasted her again. He drew a sound from the back of her throat and savored it as he did the kiss. He set his teeth against the cord in her neck and sipped on her flesh. Come full light, there would be a mark upon her skin here to match those at her wrist and breast. The difference, though, would be in the intent with which they were made. He’d held her wrists to restrain her, but he suckled at her neck to restrain himself.
His mouth was hot across her skin, but it had nothing in common with the other mouths she had known, the other heat that had scalded her. What Griffin was doing to her was drawing her out, not forcing her inside. Olivia was not certain she wanted to be so exposed. She could have stripped away her shift earlier and stood before him and not have been as naked as she felt now.
She’d thought if she came to his bed she might seize the moment and have ownership of what would happen between them.In a manner of my choosing.Those should have been the words she’d spoken. Instead, he had said them and she had agreed.
Olivia surrendered another sound, almost unrecognizable as something that could have come from her, and she was frightened by it. She bit into her lower lip as his mouth closed over her breast. The flick of his tongue across her nipple was unexpected. Her flesh beaded as if she were inviting him to roll it between his lips. It required only a hint of pressure before her skin flushed with heat.
She thrust her fingers into his thick hair. She meant to tug on it, pull him away, yet what she did was lace her hands at the back of his head and cradle him so he would not move too quickly.
She needn’t have worried. His tongue laved her aureole, licking, darting, treating himself and her to the hot suck of his mouth. She didn’t recognize pleasure for what it was at first. The intensity was so sweetly sharp that what she felt was akin to pain. Pain was familiar. She could have embraced pain and kept her silence. What Griffin was doing to her made unbecoming sounds whistle through her teeth and rasp noisily from the back of her throat.
He never once urged her to be quiet.
His mouth gave attention to her other breast, and she held him there for a time, arching once to present more of herself to him and wondering with that small part of her that still had presence of mind if she might be struck down for it.
The covers shifted across his back as he slipped lower. Her hands unthreaded and fell to his shoulders. She plucked at the linen fabric of his nightshirt, wanting nothing so much as to feel his skin against her palms.
He reared up, shook off the covers, and yanked his nightshirt over his head. It tangled in his arms and he swore, fighting with it, and that was when he heard the most surprising sound from Olivia.
Her laughter.
It was small. And strangled. It was also unmistakable.
Griffin came out from under the nightshirt and stared at her. She smiled a bit unevenly, clearly embarrassed, then lifted her hands and helped him remove the shirt. She was the one who flung it away. It sailed over the side of the bed, and before it touched the floor, she’d flung her arms around his neck and held on.
His kiss was hard with need. He was impatient. Hungry. She was glad of it because it matched something inside of her—a need, an impatience, a hunger that was wholly unfamiliar to her. She was depending upon him to show her the way, and if she became afraid, to make her feel less so.
She met his kiss, reveled in it. Her arms circled his back as he moved over her. His fingers had tunneled into her hair. She felt the press of them against her scalp. He was devouring her mouth with his own. Their tongues circled, retreated, circled again. They separated to gulp air and when they came together a second time, he was planting kisses on her cheeks, her jaw, and over her closed eyes.
She fought him a little, but only so that she might lay claim to some part of his countenance. She kissed the corners of his mouth, rubbed her lips against the stubble of his beard, and traced the thin line of his scar with the tip of her tongue. She liked hearing his breath come unevenly and the sensation of his heart stuttering.
His skin was smooth, his shoulders taut. The muscles of his back shifted and bunched under her fingertips. She had never held a man in such a way before, never as a partner, an equal. The curling of desire was uncomfortable. Foreign. For a moment she felt a little sick with it, then it passed as he cupped her bottom and lifted her. Just then she could think of nothing save the heaviness of him pressing against her.
He split her thighs. She raised her knees and dug her heels into the mattress. She sucked in a breath, waiting for him to pull back just enough to make his first thrust. She closed her eyes. She could bear this, she thought. With this man, she could make herself bear it.
“Olivia.” He said her name softly, drawing her out of her self-imposed darkness. “Look at me. It’s Griffin. Do you know that?”
She nodded. “Griffin.”
He was absurdly pleased she’d said his name. Not Breckenridge. Not my lord. He kissed her lightly on the lips, surprising them both with the gentleness of it, then he lifted his hips and slowly pushed into her.
She was better able to accommodate his entry this time. She was damp, if not wet. He measured his thrust carefully, feeling his way by watching her eyes. The centers of them darkened, widened, then remained that way, a perfect onyx stone set within an emerald. Once he was seated, he held himself still. Her lower lip was faintly swollen. His kisses were not entirely responsible for that. She was pressing her teeth into it now, chewing on it. He stared at her, shaking his head slightly, and waited for her to release it before he began to move.
He willed himself to go slowly, take infinite care with her. Whatever she had known before him, it wasn’t care. Her lashes fluttered but never entirely lay still. She watched him from beneath her shaded eyes, her head tilted back. The exposed, slender stem of her neck beckoned him. He kissed the hollow of her throat, tasted her skin along her bladed shoulder.
Her fingers tripped lightly down his back, riding the ridge of his spine. When he rocked, she held on.
“Lift for me,” he whispered. When she did, he thrust more deeply, and then she was working with him, rising to meet his stroke, not merely holding, but participating. He knew the moment she felt the first twinge of pleasure, saw it when the twin creases of concentration disappeared between her eyebrows, heard it when her breath caught.
He wanted more for her than a hint of what might be, but his own crisis was nearing. He held back as long as he was able, feeling the strain of denial across the taut muscles in his back. His skin no longer fit him but seemed to have shrunk against his bones. When she raised a hand and touched his face, he imagined he might cut her with the sharpness of his cheek.
Her fingertips grazed his jaw, a faltering siren’s smile edged her swollen mouth, and it was then that his body betrayed him. He ground against her one more time before his strokes came quick and shallow and a shudder took possession of his whipcord-lean frame.
Olivia skimmed the surface of pleasure; Griffin knew the depths of it.
He arched, stretching his coiled muscles as she seemed to contract around him. Her arms. Her legs. Even her mouth closed over him. There, where she held him most intimately, she was especially tight, and he was helpless to withdraw even if he had wanted to. He emptied himself into her.
