He steadied her body with one hand on her nape, intensifying the pleasure with his fingers. “Brace on the table. Lift higher,” he said between his teeth.
He used both hands on her waist to adjust her as he thrust. Slowly at first, his face fiercely beautiful in the firelight. His lashes, thick and dark, framed his eyes. “Open to me, Rose. Let me feel you.” Sliding the tip of his tongue from the pulse at her throat in a seductive path across her shoulder, he kissed her flesh. “Let me be deep inside. Deep.”
His mouth moved on down until it closed over the turgid hardness of her nipple. A shiver passed over her. When his hand parted her thighs and pushed her wider, she drew a sharp breath.
She savored the rasp of his flesh against hers. Where he led, she wanted to follow. In this, she trusted him.
Her hips moved with his. Against him. Like the melody and harmony that combined to make perfect music. “Come with me, Rose.”
He pulled back to look down on her, her hair spread against the table.
Their gazes touched and locked briefly, his dark and searing. The pads of his thumbs stroked her lower lip, his touch feathered across her face. He watched her frombehind a thick fringe of his lashes. Then his gaze was following the slide of his hands along the pale smooth curve of her waist to the place where his body was joined to her.
She was aware of the fullness of his sex within her as he thrust against her. Instinctively, she sought more of him.
Instinctively, she arched her back.
Her breaths became shorter. Then he was moving hard between her legs and she found herself absorbed with sensation. The friction of his movements. His scent as he leaned over her, slightly salty and definitely male. She could smell herself on him as well, the soap she’d used to bathe. All with every stroke as he rode between her thighs.
With a cry, she wrapped her legs around his hips, holding him close. Her head fell to the side. She felt liquid beneath him. Unbearable. Breathless. She cried out softly as he continued carrying her. Higher.
He pressed his lips against her throat. Yet each time his lips parted from hers, they returned for more, slanting across hers in an openmouthed kiss, swallowing the cry that rose at the back of her throat, and she drowned in his kiss. Drowned still clinging to him. Their breaths ragged as he found his release inside her. She refused to let him go until her heart’s tempo began to slow.
Then, moaning something earthy and profane, he buried his face in the moist curve of her neck, and they began to breathe with more measure. She lay flat on her back, staring at the timber crossbeams in the ceiling.
He brushed the dampened hair from her face and kissed her brow. He stared at her with an expression she couldn’t read. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the blankets in front of the hearth.
Rose roused to half sleep when she felt Ruark rise some time later. Turning her head, she caught a glimpse of his taut buttocks as he padded naked across the room to where he had set his canvas saddlebag. She thought him beautiful, bronzed by firelight.
He stopped at the breakfront and poured water from a skin into a blue pottery bowl. She heard splashing. He must have found a rag among his things for he returned with both. He had not spoken more than a few words since he had settled her against him, and she had been too absorbed by what had just transpired to worry that something may be wrong.
He knelt beside her. His eyes dipped to where the blanket had fallen to her waist, making her conscious of the intimacies they had shared. Suddenly shy, she wanted to pull the blanket up to her shoulders.
“Open your legs, Rose.”
She hesitated, then did as he told her.
“This will be cold.”
The waterwascold, but it was also cooling. His touch was gentle as he removed traces of semen on her thighs. “I was too rough,” he said.
“ ’Twas different this time,” she said. “Better even than before.”
He raised his eyes, amusement touching her. She wanted to ask if what had just happened between them was always so special between a man and a woman.
He lay down beside her and, settling her into the crook of his arm, pulled the blanket over them. She lay with her cheek against his shoulder.
Splaying her fingers across his chest muscles and dark springy hair, she considered the strength of him beneath her palm as she collected such random observations abouthim. She could not help admiring his dark nakedness against her pale skin. She traced a fingertip down the thin line of hair over his abdomen, pushing the blanket ever lower.
His fingers grazed her cheek, drawing her gaze upward. As if sensing her mood, he pushed his fingers farther into her hair. “You will find more to explore if you keep touching me like that.”
“I like touching you.”
She traced her fingertip across a round indented scar just above his hip. “You’ve been wounded ...”
“Grapeshot,” he answered.
Remembering what McBain had said about the measure of a man facing a broadside, she touched another jagged scar beneath his ribs. “Rapier,” he answered before she could ask.
