“But I must,” she said. “If you might be gone tomorrow, then I must say it tonight. I have to ask for it tonight or I’ll never have another chance.”
She moved forward then, as if magnetized by his presence. “Morgan,” she whispered as she sank onto the edge of his bed, cupped his cheeks as gently as she could muster, and brought her lips to his.
“Lizzie,” he said, slipping into her nickname as he turned his face slightly away from hers. “My past.”
She turned him back to her. “You told me earlier tonight that I had to move beyond my past. Are you sorry for what you did?”
He held her gaze. “Infinitely.”
She nodded. “Then you need to let it go, just as you say I do. Now please.”
She kissed him again, and this time he didn’t pull away. This time his arms came around her, dragging her partly across him on the bed. His mouth opened and their tongues tangled in desperate desire, and she knew with all her heart that tonight she would be his.
And despite all her fears associated with this act, all her questions about prudence, she wanted this more than she’d ever wanted anything.
Chapter 16
Lizzie shivered as Morgan expertly reversed their positions on the narrow bed, sliding her beneath him. The sheets were trapped between them, but she could still feel the hard length of him pressed against her thigh. He wanted her. She wanted him.
And this was a dance as old as time itself.
His weight pushed her deep within the soft mattress, and she wound her arms around his neck with a sigh. He captured that sound with his mouth, slowing his tongue as he stroked along hers, savoring, just as she savored this moment.
His hands glided along her sides, fingers bunching against her nightrail and robe, pressing into her flesh beneath until she turned her face against his neck with a garbled sound of pleasure.
His breath was short, hot against her skin as he stopping moving, stopped kissing. “I shouldn’t do this,” he whispered.
She looked up at him outlined in the firelight, and memorized every taut line of his face, his lips, his jaw. “I want you to,” she said, and meant it. “Until earlier tonight, I thought that I would never feel pleasure when it came to a man’s touch. I thought that was something for everyone else. But what you gave me in the parlor, with your hands and your mouth…it thrilled me. And I know what was supposed to come after. It’s all I can think about.”
“Elizabeth,” he murmured. “You do test me and all my resolve not to be the kind of man everyone thinks me to be.”
“If you were the kind of man everyone thinks you to be, you would have claimed me earlier and not given a damn about my pleasure,” she retorted. “And you didn’t. I know who you are, Morgan. I know what you are and how much you are capable of. And I want that. I want you. I’m asking you for tonight. Won’t you please give that to me?”
He stared at her, seeming to ponder that. “Your innocence was already taken, so I won’t ruin you.”
“You can’t,” she agreed.
“And if I’m careful, there don’t have to be…consequences.”
She shut her eyes, trying not to picture a child she could make with this man. She had always loved children and reveled in the babies of her brother’s friends. But he was right that creating a child from a liaison was a mistake. It would trap him, and she didn’t want him that way.
“The only consequence of this night should be pleasure,” she said, to herself as much as him. “I’m not asking for anything else.”
His lips thinned, almost as if he didn’t like that answer, but then his dark head came down and he claimed her mouth again. Words were forgotten, thoughts forgotten, fears forgotten. All that was left was him and the heated sensation of his mouth molding to hers, exploring hers, his whiskers brushing her skin. His hands began their movement again, his body grinding against hers as she shivered with pleasure.
He kicked at the covers that separated them and she looked down at him as he did so. Her eyes widened. She’d seen a man’s cock before. That was the word Aaron had used to describe it that long-ago night. She had remembered it very differently, for it had become, in her mind, an instrument of destruction.
Morgan’s cock was not as fearful as those memories. It was hard, of course, curled toward his stomach because he wanted to claim her. But the head wasn’t so cruelly red, the length didn’t seem punishing or mocking.
“You look afraid,” he whispered. “Are you sure you want this?”
“I do,” she said. “But last time it wasn’t very…nice. I can’t help but be nervous.”
“Did he force you?” he asked.
She flinched. “No.”
“You said you gave yourself to him,” he whispered. “Did you do it willingly?”
