Then the mattress shifted and sank, and she felt his knees against her hip and heard his muffled moan of defeat. His hand fell upon her knee and slid upward, the silk whispering under his touch.
She lay still while he slowly stroked up over her hip, over her belly. The warmth of the caress stole under her skin and made her feverish.
He paused at her bodice, and traced the eyelet work over her breast. It tautened under his touch, her nipple hardening and thrusting up against the thin silk…yearning for more, as she did.
He pushed the fragile fabric down, and brushed his thumb over the hard, aching peak. Then he bent and took it in his mouth, and she had to clench her hands to keep from holding him there, and clench her jaw as well, to keep from crying out as she had done the night before:Yes…please…anything…don’t stop.
He had made her beg last night, yet he had not made her his. And today he thought he could turn his back and walk away, and do as he pleased. He thought he could desert her, leave her wretched and humiliated, a bride, but not a wife.
He didn’t want to want her, but he did. He wanted her to beg for his lovemaking, so that he could pretend he was in control.
But he wasn’t. His mouth was hot on her breast, her shoulder, her neck. His hand was shaking, his touch roughening, because he was feverish, too.
“Oh, Jess.” His voice was an anguished whisper as he sank down beside her. He pulled her to him, and dragged hot kisses over her face. “Baciami. Kiss me.Abbracciami. Hold me. Touch me. Please. I’m sorry.” Urgent, desperate, his voice, while he struggled with the narrow ribbon ties.
I’m sorry. He’d actually said it. But he didn’t know what he was saying, Jessica told herself. He was lost in simple animal hunger, as she had been, last night.
He wasn’t sorry, merely mindless with primitive male lust. His hand worked feverishly, pulling the gown down, moving over her back, her waist.
He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Don’t be angry. Touch me.” He pushed her hand under his shirt. “The way you did last night.”
His skin was on fire. Hot and smooth and hard…feathery masculine hair…muscles quivering under her fingers…his big body shuddering under her lightest touch.
She wanted to resist, to remain angry, but she wanted this more. She’d wanted to touch and kiss and hold him from the day she’d met him. She’d wanted him to burn for her, just as she’d wanted him to set her ablaze.
He was pulling the negligee down, over her hips.
She grasped the edges of his shirtfront and, with one fierce yank, tore it in half.
His hand fell from her hip. She tore the shirt cuff away, and rent the seam up to the shoulder. “I know you like to be undressed,” she said.
“Yes,” he gasped, and shifted back to give her access to the other, useless arm. She was no more gentle with that sleeve. She ripped it off.
He pulled her against him, pressing her bared breasts to the powerful chest she’d exposed. His heart beat next to hers, to the same frenetic rhythm. He grasped the back of her head and crushed her mouth to his, and drove out anger, pride, and thought in that long, devouring kiss.
The ragged remains of his shirt came away in her hands. He stripped away her negligee in the same frantic moment. Their hands became tangled, tearing at his trouser buttons. Wool ripped and buttons tore from the cloth.
He pushed her legs apart with his knee. She felt the hard shaft throbbing hotly against her thigh while her own heat pulsed against his questing hand. He found the place where he’d tormented her last night, and sweetly tormented her again, until she cried out and her body spilled its feminine tears of desire.
She clung to him, shaking and desperate, and “Please,” she begged. “Please.”
She heard his voice, ragged with longing…words she couldn’t understand…then a shaft of pain as he thrust into her.
Her mind went black andPlease, God, don’t let me faint, was all she could think. She dug her nails into his back, clinging to him for consciousness.
His damp cheek pressed against hers, and his breath was hot on her ear. “Sweet Jesus, I can’t—Oh, Jess.” He lashed his arm about her and rolled onto his side, taking her with him. He hooked his arm under her knee, and lifted her leg up and around his waist. The searing pressure eased, and her panic faded with it. She shifted upward and buried her face in the curve of his neck. She held on tightly, savoring the sweat-slickened heat of his skin, the musky scent of passion.
She was aware of him moving again, inside her, but her untutored body was yielding, and pain was a distant memory. He’d pleasured her already, and she expected no more, but gradually it came, pulsing through her with each slow, possessive stroke.
Pleasure bubbled up inside her, warm and tingling, and her body arched up to welcome it, and joy bolted through her, sharp and sweet.
It wasn’t the same joy he’d taught her before, but every instinct recognized it and hungered for more. She rocked against him, matching his rhythm, and more came, faster and harder, and faster still…a furious race to the peak…a lightning blast of rapture…and the sweet rain of release.
Chapter 14
“Hell and damnation,” Dain muttered as he gingerly withdrew from her. “I’ll never make it to Chudleigh in time for dinner now.”
He rolled onto his back and focused intently upon the embroidered gold dragons above, to keep himself from leaping up and subjecting his wife to a thorough physical examination. Fortunately, with his lust appeased, for the moment, his intellect had resumed normal operation. And with the return of reason, he could sort out the simple facts.
