“Woman, are you hungry?”
She shook her head, his low query the last thing she would have expected from him at that moment. He looked hungry, but not for food, a breathlessness seizing her as he stared at her.
“Good.”
He released her and left her so abruptly to bolt the door, and deposit the pistols he still bore atop the dresser, that Marguerite could but stand there trembling…knowing what was to come.
Corie had explained to her years ago about what transpired physically between a man and a woman when wedded, but nothing could have prepared her for Walker striding back to her so lithely as if intent upon claiming her. Like a panther she’d seen illustrated in a book and she was his mate, waiting expectantly for him.
Suddenly it seemed her senses had come alive and she smelled him, all masculine with the barest hint of sweat. Her breath caught when he took her hand and drew her toward the bed. Not quickly, but with a determined purpose that thrilled her, she couldn’t deny it. Did he smell her scent, too? Was his heart thundering like hers?
He stopped with her at the side of the bed and turned her slowly around so that her back was to him, and then he began to lift her gown from her body.
Not quickly, either, but with agonizing slowness as his hands slid the muslin up the length of her…her calves, her thighs, her waist, the sides of her breasts. She could hardly breathe, she was so conscious of his fingers skimming over her, grazing her skin here and there…
Heaven help her, did he think her less disconcerted to have her not looking at him as he undressed her? Nothing could be further from the truth!
She was dying inside, and closed her eyes as he slipped her gown over her head and tossed it onto a footstool beside the bed. She had nothing left upon her but her short corset and chemise, both of which could also be slipped over her head. Yet he paused to pull her close against him and nuzzled her neck, and then he lifted her hair and gently kissed her nape.
“Oh, Walker…” Marguerite leaned her head to one side as shivers plummeted to her toes.
The sensation of his breath warming her and his lips barely touching her was almost more than she could bear. As if realizing that her knees had begun to grow weak, it seemed that within a moment he had divested her of all clothing but her white silk stockings to her knees and her kid leather slippers.
Instinctively, she crossed her forearms over her bare breasts, and only then did he turn her around and hold her at arm’s length so he might look at her.
Stare at her. His dark midnight eyes drinking in the sight of her as his gaze swept her from head to toe and back again. She felt a slight trembling in his hands where he held her upper arms, but she was trembling, too! So much so that she dropped her arms to her sides and heard his sharp intake of breath when his gaze fell to her breasts.
She dropped her eyes, too, and flushed with such heat to find her nipples hard and rigid, the areolas a deep blushing pink. As if inviting Walker to touch her there…kiss her there, Marguerite glancing up when he suddenly sat down upon the bed and pulled her to him.
She gasped when his mouth covered a nipple, his large hands cupping both of her breasts…the stirring sensation of his lips teasing her, suckling her, unlike anything she could have ever imagined. She closed her eyes and moaned from deep in her throat, so primal a sound she had never heard herself make before.
Now she was certain her knees would buckle, her trembling become a quivering that seemed to come from deep between her inner thighs.
Dazed that his tongue flicking at her, his mouth hungrily nibbling at her could elicit such a response from her, she leaned into him even as he groaned and rose abruptly from the bed. She had no more opened her eyes in surprise when she found herself lying upon the bed and Walker pulling off his coat and near ripping the shirt from his body.
She could but stare at the magnificence of his chest and the midnight mat of hair that trailed down his powerfully defined abdomen to where he worked at his belt, flinging it to the floor, and then kicked off his boots. An instant more and his breeches were gone and he climbed onto the bed to straddle her.
His breathing hard now as if something animal had unleashed within him, he parted her legs with his knee. She could but stare into his eyes, mesmerized by the heat reflected there.
She knew what was to come…and yet she didn’t know, just as she hadn’t known how wondrous his tongue could feel licking at her nipples. Suspended above her on his arms bulging with muscle, he swept his burning gaze over her again as if claiming what he saw lying beneath him with her legs spread wide.
Her breathing quickened, too, when she saw the turgid shaft between his thighs plunging toward the very heart of her.
She arched her back at his first thrust, so deep that whatever pain she’d felt disappeared at once as he filled her, a roar bursting from his throat that made her cry aloud, too.
In pleasure. In wonder. In heat and fire as he thrust into her again…and then again, and without knowing it she wrapped her legs tightly around his hips to draw him closer, deeper.
He kissed her face, her neck with each powerful lunge until, his entire body shaking, he captured her mouth with his and groaned his release into her.
She shuddered, too, her legs around him gone rigid as something white and blinding burst before her eyes, her climax so intense that all conscious thought fled.
She could not have said how long she lay there limp and satiated beneath him, their jagged breathing gradually slowing…when finally Walker rose up on his elbows to look down at her.
A familiar wry smile upon his lips.
His fingers lazily swiping strands of hair from her face as he actually began to chuckle. Chuckle!
She smiled up at him, too, their bodies still joined so completely that she felt his laughter deep inside of her. She reached up to wipe a trickle of sweat from his brow, marveling at the muscular weight of him atop her though he bore much of it upon his arms.
