He didn’t kiss her, but still she could feel his lips as he spoke so near her own, and she was suddenly remembering the way he touched her mouth at the abbey, imprinting himself on her memory like a brand.
She felt the strangest urge to be touched again. “Shh, love,” he said as if reading her thoughts.
The pads of his thumbs stroked her lower lip, his touch feathering across her face. “Bòidheach.” His head lowered and his lips brushed hers. “You are beautiful, Rose.”
She held her hands to his chest as if to push him away. Muscles constricted. A pulse beat against the heart of her hand. Hers. His. Did it matter?
His pause was infinitesimal but she could feel every sinuous detail of his conflict. She denied the urge to venture beyond, and yet ...
He hadn’t moved from her. His hand tightened in the thick fall of her damp hair. His breath touched her lips. And as the silence lengthened between them, she resisted the impulse to turn away from him. She didn’t understand what was happening to her.
Something seemed to burn the air between them. She tried to be bold in the wake of this sensual incursion against her soul. But she found she could not, and lost herself in the swirling contradiction of her emotions.
In a measure to catch the race of her confusion and desire that suddenly spun about her like a child’s top, she raised her palms to cup his face as if to slow it instead. Understand it by its shape. His face was rough, his lips warm and his breath moist against her thumbs.
He dipped his dark head, taking her mouth in a slow kiss that melted the final remnants of her dream world and became reality. His muscles were tense, rippling as he trailed his mouth down the column of her neck. She lay absorbing the sensation. Her head tilted back and his lips suckled the pulse beating wildly at her throat. With an oath, he touched his forehead to hers, pulling air into his lungs as if he’d been in a brawl. She pulled back only to have him close his palm around her nape. He cupped her face and lifted it to his, his breath a sultry caress on her lips.
A subtle change in his touch where his tongue had quested. “Open your mouth for me, Rose. Let me inside, love.”
The words were like drinking a heady glass of wine but his kiss was like the burn of scotch whisky as he joined his mouth seamlessly to hers. His tongue now invading as he dragged her into a long deep kiss, no longer gentle as raw, hot sensations washed over her.
And she kissed him because suddenly she could not help herself and wanting him was like wanting to breathe. And as he lowered his weight and pressed her to the soft ground beneath her, she inhaled against the shock of his body against hers, restless as he cupped her breast and awakened her passion, as if she drew some portion of him up into herself with every breath they shared.
As if the darkness had conjured him from the shadows and given him wings to glide.
The kiss went on and on. He tasted alive. Life-giving. Like the rain that drummed in a restless cadence on the canopy of branches above their heads.
It was too late to reconcile the woman she was with what she was doing now.Too late ...
Not even the ache on her thigh could vanquish thesweet fire of sensations. She had never felt anything so sweet touch all of her senses at once. Her palm grazed his upper arm and shoulder and discovered where braided muscles tightened beneath flesh. His hand traced the curve of her waist and he pulled her against him so that her breasts flattened against his chest. The quiver that vibrated through her body sent a corresponding response through his. She could feel the beat of his pulse as if it were her own. His fingers splayed the round curve of her bottom and brought her more fully against his arousal. Little separated them from full contact but the leather of his breeches. Her fingers tangled in his thick course hair. He smelled of earth and rain and sweat, an utterly male essence foreign to her.
’Twas not at all unpleasant. Her breathing had slowed as she followed his lead. Where his hands and mouth went on her body, hers followed on his.
In the darkness, nothing mattered but that he made her feel alive and free.
She was safe in the darkness.
His presence surrounded her.
Sliding her palms over his shoulders and down the slope of his back, she melted against him and met the plunder of his tongue. His clothes were damp, the linen of his shirt rasping against her more tender flesh, but she did not care.
He lowered his mouth to her breasts. The graze of his teeth brushed her nipples and she murmured incoherently. His hand moved between her thighs and with the gentlest of pressure nudged her legs apart. She was hot and damp. His fingers played upon her intimately, teased her until she was anxious, doing things that made her forget everything but the moment at hand. His finger pushed into her, then pulled out, in and out, pushing upward in the most exquisiteway. He knew just where to touch her. How much to give before she asked for more. The pressure in her womb became insistent, spreading up through her body from his fingertips. He was fire, touching her.
It did not matter that she could not see him working his fingers and mouth over her. She had closed her eyes.
He did not seduce. He conquered with an expertise she would never have.
And she let him.
From somewhere a voice cried out ... her own.
His mouth was still on her breast, laving her with liquid heat, but he had moved over her body. Then his hand was gone, and he was replacing his fingers with something much, much larger, to probe the edges of her softness. Throbbing recognition pulsed through her body. She felt discomfort as he entered her ... and something strange and burning.
He softly swore on a suffocated breath.
And despite her want not to, she also gasped.
She grasped his head, and pulled him into a kiss that asked for nothing, but would demand everything. She would not allow this moment to be more than what it was.
