He lifted one hand from her hip to swipe at his mouth. “You are a work of art. So damned beautiful.” His fingers stroked lightly over the gentle curve of her belly, explored the indent of her navel. “You feel like silk.” His voice rumbled in his chest, which rose and fell with a few harried breaths.
Grace’s back arched as his hands cupped the weight of her breasts, exploring the texture of her skin with surprising delicacy. “Henry,” she murmured as his thumbs swept across her nipples, drawing them to immediate peaks. She could feel the burn of a passion-flush spreading across her skin, watched Henry follows its progression with his hot gaze.
The ache of emptiness bloomed in her belly, and her private flesh grew damp and dewy in response to the hunger in his eyes, the undisguised desire evident in the changed pitch of his breath, in the minute trembling of those fingers which stroked her with such obvious adoration.
Her back wanted to arch into the gentle strokes of his fingers, but the ache between her thighs only grew deeper, more urgent. She laid her hand over one of his. “Please,” she said in a plaintive whisper as she eased his hand down from her breast to the wet heat between her thighs. “I need you to touch me here.”
“God,yes.” His fingers slid through the cluster of curls, parting slick feminine flesh to find where she was open and wanting. “You are so soft here, so hot and wet.” His fingers entered her in a silky plunge, teasing past swollen tissues. “I wish you could know what it feels like when I’m inside you, and you hold me so sweetly within you.”
Her back arched at the sensation of fullness within her, one hand flying to her mouth to smother the sharp cry that threatened to emerge. Gasping, she whispered through the cage of her fingers, “What does it feel like?”
“Heaven,” he said, his chest heaving with the force of each frenzied pant. “Utter perfection. Bliss.” Another deep plunge of his fingers, and Grace twitched with impending ecstasy. “When I’m inside you…there is nothing else in the world. Nothing exists but you.”
Her hips canted into the thrust of his fingers. “I need—”
“More?”
“You,” she gasped, her head tossing on the pillow. “I needyou.” It was almost a relief when he withdrew his fingers; the sharp edge of a pleasure that had yanked her toward the heights too quickly muting to a lambent glow.
His hands slid beneath her thighs, widening the vee of her legs and draping them about his hips. “I want you to watch,” he said in a raw, guttural voice as he positioned himself. “I want you to watch me take you. I want you to watch yourself take me.”
Obligingly, Grace managed to lever herself up onto her elbows. There was that first tantalizing stretch as he eased the broad head within her, delicate tissues somehow accommodating the breadth of him. In the light of day, it hardly seemed possible that they could fit like this. But she watched nonetheless, breathless and fascinated, as he sheathed himself within her. An inch at a time, deliberately slow, as if he wanted to savor every moment.
“Oh, God,” she breathed as he seated himself at last, as his large hands bracketed her hips.
“Too much?”
Grace gave a slow shake of her head, dizzy with the satisfaction of him inside her once more. “Heaven,” she whispered, and a little gasp climbed out of her throat as his hips jerked reflexively, pressing deeper. “Yes,” she said as her elbows gave way beneath her. She collapsed back upon the mattress, managed to touch her toes to the bed and arch her hips into his.
“Grace.” Her name was rendered on a groan as he cast his head back, a shudder slipping down his spine. She could feel the tension pulling his muscles taut, see the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he struggled to gain control of himself. “My God, Grace.”
He never quite managed it. Instead he surrendered to the inevitable, breaching the distance between them in a careful descent as he lowered himself to her. The heat of his skin seared hers, but this—this was what she wanted most. This incredible feeling of connection, the weight of his body over hers, the sweet brush of his lips to her cheek, her chin.
Her hands slipped upon his sweat-slickened shoulders, slid into his hair. “I love you, Henry,” she breathed against his lips, lifting her hips to meet the slow plunge of his.
A sound of primal satisfaction rumbled in his chest. “I adore you,” he said. “And it’s entirely possible you’ll never leave my bed again.”
Her merry trill of a laugh melded into a moan as he shifted his hips and his cock stroked some place inside her that sang with pleasure. Every muscle quivered with the sensation as stars burst behind her closed lids. Her nails found purchase on his shoulders at last, needling his skin. “Yes,” she purred. “Just like that—oh, Henry.”
His sleek, measured thrusts lost their rhythm, and the wild punch of his hips only spurred her closer to the sun. “I can feelyou,” he bit out near her ear, his fractured breaths beating upon her neck. “Christ. You’re so damned tight around me.” A fierce, burning kiss to her throat. “Hold me, Grace.”
A final, searing plunge, and Grace buried her wail of completion into the hard, muscled skin of his shoulder. Henry held himself deep inside her, trembling with the last lingering shudders of his own climax. Delicious little pulses of pleasure slid through her for a long while after, emanating from the place where they were still joined.
Henry blanketed her still, as if he were loath to leave her, and he was wonderfully warm and comfortable, the heat of his body over hers staving off the chill of the air. He was so still, so quiet, she might have thought he’d given in to sleep, except for the fact that he’d turned his head just enough to leave tiny, ticklish kisses along the line of her shoulder.
“I have a half an hour at most,” she said softly, as she traced delicate patterns over the satiny plane of his back with the tips of her fingers. “And then I’m afraid I will have to go home.”
“No.” It was grumbly-surly whine of discontent, and he seemed to abruptly gain another stone in weight, as if he would keep her pinned there beneath him forever if it were his choice. With one hand he flailed in search of the discarded covers. They puffed up as he seized them in the iron grip of his fingers, and fell across them until they were cocooned within downy cotton sheets. The heavy counterpane blocked most of the light, and in the shadows he’d created, he whispered, “Stay just a little longer than that.” A brief hesitation. “No; stay forever.”
Grace snickered at the pleading tone. “I can’t,” she said. “The sun will be up in earnest soon.” She chewed her lower lip. “I’ll have to take Tansy with me,” she said. “I must have an excuse if I am caught wandering about in my wrapper.”
“You could stay past nightfall. Then no one will see you.”
She wriggled a bit, cupped his face in her hands, and kissedthe grumpy pout from his lips. “My sisters will worry,” she said. “I’m always on time for breakfast.” Though they would likely guess where she had gone. But even if they were unlikely to render judgment on it, still she didn’t want to worry them without cause.
Henry let a heartfelt sigh drift from his lungs. “When can we be married?”
“Surely by mid—”
