“No, marital congress. In the bedchamber.”
“Oh.” She dropped her eyes. “That. Yes I see.”
They fell silent for a moment. She stared at the mess of bruises on his chest and stroked the softened ointment carefully over and around them, long, delicate sweeps and soft butterfly touches. The sensations were both seductive and agonizing.
Gabe watched the emotions flitting across her face and realized she didn’t have a clue.
She didn’t know how seductive her touch was to him, that he was fighting for control, that the tension in the body under her fingertips was because he was fighting arousal, not pain.
It was obvious to him that she was a deeply sensual creature; the intensity with which she concentrated on massaging the pungent ointment into his flesh, her eyes dark and slumbrous, her lips full and pouting in concentration, the dark, silken brows knotted in thought—he’d wager of a place and time far from here.
She was becoming aroused, he was sure. Her soft breaths were coming shorter and faster, and she kept licking her lips, all unconscious. The moist dampness of her lips made him want to groan. If he just bent his head a few inches he could taste them, taste her. And she would taste him.
Deeply sensual.
He recalled the half-embarrassed, half-defiant relish with which she’d savored the bacon this morning, her way she’d fought against pleasure when he dried her feet, and then abandoned herself to it.
And yet she seemed ignorant of the sensual pleasures between a man and a woman.
Gabe stared at her luscious mouth in disbelief. Nine years of marriage and she couldn’t imagine how a good fight could give the same sort of release to pent-up feelings as…what did she call it?That.
Sensual but straitlaced. If she had any understanding of what her touch was doing to him, she’d be on the other side of the room.
“You have no idea, do you? Was your husband a monk?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I told you, he was a prince. And what do you mean, no idea? No idea of what?”
“Of this,” he said and pulled her into his arms.
Nine
He’d caught her off balance and unawares. She gasped and tried to pull back but his arms locked around her. Her hands pressed against his chest. She could feel the rhythm of his heart beating, faster than before.
One of his arms circled her waist, the other slid slowly up her spine, bringing slow shivers of heat with it. It stopped finally at the nape of her neck. He stroked the tender nape with one finger, lightly, rhythmically, causing prickles of sensation to flow up and down her spine.
“Wh—what are you doing?” she managed to say.
“Showing you.” His voice was deep and soft and sure.
“Showing me what?”
He didn’t respond, not in words, but she felt him shift his position and suddenly she could feel his hard, strong thighs bracketing hers. The warmth of his body seeped through her thin dress. The blended scents of the unguent on his skin intensified. It was bound to stain her dress, she thought, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to move.
This close she could see that his eyes were not simply blue, but blue with tiny gold flecks, and ringed with a darker blue. The flecks were what made them dance, she thought. They weren’t dancing now. His irises were dark and large, and seemed to draw her ever closer, like the eye of a whirlpool.
Under her fingertips his heart thudded in an insistent beat. It echoed in her mind, in her body. She could feel the rhythm of the beat through his thighs, his chest, in the muscles of the arms locked about her, in the heat of him pressed against her stomach.
She stared into his eyes, mesmerized. The way he was gazing at her made her nervous and oddly weak. She could hardly breathe. Her breath was coming in shallow gasps.
Her lips were dry. She moistened them with her tongue and his gaze dropped to her mouth.
And with agonizing, unbearable slowness he bent his head and lightly, shockingly, licked her on the mouth. Barely a touch, it shuddered right through her, coming to pool, achingly, somewhere deep inside her.
“Your lips are so soft, so silky,” he murmured and began to feather all around her mouth with tiny, tantalizing kisses. “Amazing, considering what you do to them.”
“I don’t do anything to them,” she managed, shivering deliciously as he planted kisses along her jawline.
“Oh, but you do,” he breathed, and she could feel the warm breath of him on her moist lips, like an echo of a kiss, moonlight after sunlight. “You’re always chewing or biting them.”
