Then she met Reade, who could make her thighs quiver and her mind spin with merely an arrogant glance. And when he removed his shirt and came to bed bare chested, so only the woolly fabric of his trews separated them from full intimacy, an unfamiliar pulsing throbbed low in her belly.
Was this what it was to crave someone? To feel desire?
Tonight, when he burst into the chambers, his eyes shadowed and full of hot passion so thick and permeating that it dripped off him in every drop of sweat on his damp skin, in the musky scent that emanated from him, and in the rawness of his voice, full of longing.
He was walking desire, and with that, her own desire, an impossible sensation she’d never had the opportunity to experience, rose in her.
She had said the words because he was her husband, because he had waited when he did not have to, but she was not lying when she spoke. She was not saying the words because he wanted to hear them.
Blair spoke the words because it was how she felt. She yearned for him, thirsted for him, and she would only be satisfied by drinking him in. It wasn’t her mind and mouth that spoke, it was her own lust for him that told him what he needed to hear.
And from the dampness between her legs and the tingling in her breasts, her body knew more about her own need than she did.
Reade buried his hands in her hair and pressed his body against hers. Blair sunk into the thick bedding under him and kissed him back, meeting his burning tongue as it thrust past her lips. Reade moaned into her mouth as her hands slipped around his backside and gripped his muscles that moved and shifted under his tunic.
One of his hands left her hair and reached down to the hem of her shift that had hiked up to her thighs. With a calloused fingertip, he slid the edge of her shift over her hips, adjusting himself to tug the shift up her body.
As he lifted her gown, his fingertip brushed along her skin, tracing a scorching line from her hip to her breast. His hand halted at the curve of her bosom, and his fingertip caressed that curve, then slid over to her hardened nipple. He caressed the bud in lazy circles, and she gasped against his lips as her back arched. She had no conscious thought. Her body was answering his animalistic call, whether she willed it or not.
In this moment, with his huge hands cupping her breasts and his lips biting and kissing her lips and jaw, Blair willed it. Oh, did she will it. Reade’s kisses, his hands, and his body created sensations in her that she didn’t know existed, and she longed to give in to those sensations. Give in to him.
Was this how it was supposed to be when a man and a woman coupled? This frenzy of emotion and pleasure and dizzying sensations?
Or was this what it was when she coupled with Reade, something shared between them and them alone?
He ripped his mouth from hers and sat up on his knees above her. His eyes were shadowed and swirling, the expression on his face unreadable and intensely focused on her. A cool breeze washed over her mid-section and breasts, and her eyes went wide when she looked down to see her entire body from her breasts and lower exposed to his view.
But it wasn’t enough for him. Reade grabbed at the bunched-up shift and tugged it off her shoulders, so she lay nude under his possessive gaze. Her breath caught in her throat.
His eyes narrowed as they roved over her naked skin, taking in every inch of her as one studied dazzling, stained glass or a finely woven tapestry, as if he were committing her image to his memory. Taking his calloused finger again to her skin, he trailed the tip between her breasts, then to a faint silver line at her waist, then to another at her hip. His visage darkened, but he didn’t stop. Reade leaned over her and kissed each scar with tender lips.
When he rose again, he put one leg on the floor and kept his other kneeling on the bed. His gaze never left her as he unbuckled his kilt and tossed the plaid off his shoulder. It fell in a heap at his foot, followed quickly by his sweat-stained tunic.
Blair’s eyes widened again once he stood nude before her, only this time his cockstand was swollen and straight, pulsing as it reached for her. She rose slightly, extended her hand and grasped his bulbous manhood, wrapping her fingers around it. He was both iron hard and velvety smooth, and he sucked in a breath at her intimate touch.
“Lass, ye should take care. If ye handle me too rough, I fear I might handle ye too rough to compensate.”
Her skin was already heated, but a blush burned her face and neck even hotter.
“I’m no’ . . . I mean ye dinna have to be . . .” She tried to explain, but his presence and her dizzy, heightened senses robbed her of her words. Robbed her of her very breath.
“Aye,” he said in a thick voice as he leaned forward into her grip. He moved so his thick thighs were between hers, spreading her wide for him. “Ye are no frightened virgin, just as I’m no green groom. Yet, I would have our first time together be one of slow pleasure, no’ rushed or coarse.”
Her heart hammered under her breast — his words driving pleasure to her core in the same way his touch did. ‘Twas like he caressed her with his voice as much as his fingers.
“If I’m going to torture ye,” he continued with a groan as her fingers slid over his cock, caressing the length of his shaft, “’twill be exquisite torture, to bring ye to the brink until ye call out my name and God’s in the same breath.”
The power of his words, the enormity of them, made the world fall away until there was only Reade with her, lying on her, giving rise to such sensations she thought her head and chest might explode.
Then, instead of kissing her lips again, he lowered his head to her creamy breast and lapped at the taut nipple. Her hand abandoned his cock and gripped his powerful shoulders, digging in as she panted under the attentions of his soft tongue.
Reade had control of her body and was able to make her moan on command with a touch of his mouth. He slipped one hand under her upper back and tilted himself to slide his other hand to the juncture of her thighs. She had a random thought that she should stop him, that he wasn’t supposed to touch her there, then his finger slipped into her womanly folds and brushed against a part of her she hadn’t known existed.
“Ahh!” she cried as she arched off the bed, writhing at the thrill under Reade’s vice-like embrace.
What was that? What was he doing?
Then he did it again, and she inhaled a high-pitched keen, arching again.
