Those men were carved of stone, though. This one was very real. She reached out and touched his chest. He was warm, his muscles rippled beneath her fingertips, and he sucked in a ragged breath that made her jerk her hand away.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Do it again,” he ordered, the smoky darkness of his tone enough to make that empty place between her legs tingle and throb.
She met his gaze and slowly followed his order, rising up to press a hand to his chest once more.
“Goddamn, but you test me,” he growled. “And make me want to do things to you…”
Her eyes widened. “Do things?” she repeated.
“Oh yes,” he said as he leaned down, placing one hand on either side of her head. “Tonight I will be tender with you, gentle, because you deserve that. But one day you will crave all the wicked things that race through my mind when I touch you.”
She found herself smiling even though she didn’t fully understand what he meant. Already she craved him. Already she would have given anything he asked, just to belong to him.
Tonight, for just a little while, shewouldbelong to him.
He leaned into the edge of the mattress, his upper body pushing her back against the pillows as he ducked his head to kiss her once more. Her grip tightened against his shoulders and her breath grew ragged as he drove his tongue between her lips and tasted her with increasing urgency.
Finally he pulled away, panting as he stared down at her. Without breaking the stare, he straightened, unfastened his trousers and let them fall.
She sat up slightly, staring at the naked body of this man she loved and desired.
She’d never seen a naked man before, except in a few paintings. Certainly a lady like herself wasn’t supposed to see a naked man until her wedding night. And not even then, if some rumors were to be believed.
But James stood before her, every inch of him muscled and toned. That thing between his legs looked impossibly hard and big and curved and…terrifying. And yet enticing. She wanted to push him away, but also trace her finger along his length.
“Your eyes are big as saucers,” he said softly.
Those words made her jerk her attention away from his body and up to his face. “I just haven’t…I never…I don’t know what to do.”
“I already told you,” he said with a half-smile. “Nothing.Iknow what to do.”
She swallowed. “Then tell me. Tell me what that is, because right now I am frankly…petrified.”
He laughed softly. “That won’t do. Petrified won’t do at all. What I’m going to do, Emma, is open your legs, like I have when I’ve touched you, tasted you, and I’m going to ready you for me by doing those same things you’ve liked before.”
She shivered with desire at that news, but it couldn’t erase her anxiety about the unknown that would follow. “And then?”
“And then,” he said, leaning over her, covering her body as he climbed onto the bed. “When you are slick and hot and needy, I will place my cock inside of you.”
“Cock,” she repeated on the barest of breath.
“Yes,” he said, reaching up to take her hand and lowering it so she could touch him intimately. “This is my cock. And it was made to fill you, Emma.”
“It seems rather big for that purpose,” she argued as she slid her fingers over him. He was so hard and yet the skin was so soft.
He laughed again, but his tone was strangled as he gasped out, “You flatter. But I assure you it isn’t. You were made to take it. Made to stretch to accommodate it. I won’t lie and tell you that the first time there won’t be pain. But I will make sure there is also pleasure. This time and every time afterward. Because when your body shakes and trembles, when you feel needy and hot when I touch you, it isthisthat you crave.” He pushed himself up into her hand and she gasped. “This joining of our bodies will make us one more than any vow we ever take in the future.”
She stared at him as he said all those words, said them with passion, said them without breaking his gaze from hers. And her fear faded, replaced by a pulsing desire to surrender to him. Fully.
She found herself nodding and he ducked his head. This time he didn’t kiss her mouth, though, but her throat, tracing the column of it with delicate nips and strokes. She released his cock and placed her hands on his shoulders, her fingers tightening against the muscles there as he trailed lower, gliding his lips across her collarbone, her chest, and ultimately he covered one nipple with his mouth.
She arched with a gasp of pleasure as he began to tug the nipple with his lips, lick and lave it with his rough tongue. She slid her fingers through his hair, holding him there as she turned her head into the pillow and grunted out pleasure and desire.
He lifted his eyes as he continued to torment her, the dark intensity there forcing her to stay with him, to watch him as he touched her in ways she had never imagined were possible and yet sang to her in some ancient language she understood perfectly.
Her body responded to him of its own accord. Her legs went limp and opened slightly beneath him, her nipples pebbled and throbbed, her back arched and tiny cries escaped her lips as she surrendered inch by inch, moment by moment.
