Page 78 of An Earl for the Archeress

His mouth split into a grin, allaying his concern. Once he was as naked as she was, she slid her hands up his legs, bracing them on either side of his shaft, and looked up once more with innocent eyes. Innocent indeed, as if he believed that. She knew what she was doing. His smile fell and he pulsed, his fists clenching and his fingers kneading his palms.

“Dammit, woman,” he ground out. “I’ll spill the moment you touch me. Our first…” She was drawing teasing circles around his inner thighs, brushing against his bollocks. He gave her no more time to tease and hauled her to her feet, pulling her to him, wrapping her in his embrace. “It has to be inside you,” he whispered in her ear.

Her arms tightened around him, her breasts pressed against his torso, and she nodded. Scooping her into a cradle, he laid her down on the fur, shoving their clothing aside, and shaking out the blanket. Whipping it over his back, he climbed on his hands and knees over her. He straddled her on all fours like a protector, like a wolf about to devour a feast, like a man who could think of no one else but her.

Gazing into her eyes, he waited for her to respond, and she complied with his silent request as if of one mind, opening her legs for him. She was exposed, vulnerable, and yet she seemed at complete ease with him, a sign of trust, he realized, and it made his ego swell to know of the things he wanted from her, trust was the most important. He moved his knees inside the gap she had created, lowered himself, and then spoke barely over a whisper, his eyes firm.

“Receive me woman, as I would like to be received.”

She nodded, their eyes still locked, and she folded her knees up as he took his manhood in hand and guided himself to her opening. He pushed as he nestled between her folds, groaning with sheer pleasure. She may have lain with other men before, but it had been a while, if his effort to seek entry was any indication, despite her readiness. He withdrew, easing out, and eased back in to the point of resistance once more, and urging himself farther, repeating the task again and again as he stretched her to accommodate him.

Looking down, he saw her eyes pinched closed, one arm clenching his neck.

“You’re supposed to be looking at me,” he said between pushes.

“I can’t help it, Rob—”

“Look at me,” he commanded. Her eyes opened. He smiled. “Good girl.”

She shook her head, then wrapped both arms tightly round his neck as she pulled him down in a silent plea to lower himself to her.

“Please. Rob. Do what you will, but I have to feel you against me. I have to…”

“You test my control,” he scolded, his eyes now pinching shut, too. “Mari, I’m trying to be careful. I don’t want to frighten you by being too rough.”

She grabbed the sides of his face, caressing her thumbs over the cut of his cheekbones. “Kiss me. If I were frightened, I wouldn’t be here. Please kiss me, I have to feel all of you—”

He snapped. He fell upon her with fervor, delving into her mouth with his tongue and plunging hard inside her, feeling her sheathe him to the hilt. She released a cry but remained open as he withdrew and drove again and again. They moaned in unison, her legs and arms instinctively cinching around him to brace herself. Their kissing became wild, his chest pressed to hers, his elbows resting beside her, his hands wrapped over her head, clenching her hair, feeling her breasts pressed to him, her hips rocking with his, cries falling from her lips that he swallowed with his own groans.

Her hands released him and raked down to his rear, clenching and releasing with each entrance and exit. “Woman…” He searched for words as his mind focused on the sensations racing through his loins, through his shaft, tightening his bollocks, skittering across his skin at her wanton gropes. “God, yes, woman. I’m dying…”

He listened to her breathing, her moans at each hard entry. His control was gone, shattered, vanished. He was ravaging her. He knew he should slow, but dammit, she kept encouraging him, clenching his rear, gripping his shoulders, scoring his back.

“I don’t want to hold back,” he begged, unable to find his self-control. Clenching his neck, she released a moan beside his ear as his pace increased, harder, faster, her hands holding on for dear life as if clinging to a runaway.

“Then don’t,” she whimpered. “Please, Rob…”

Please what? Please push her over the edge? Send her crashing into a sea of fervent euphoria? Please finish her? Finish himself? He was well on his way. No return. No annulment possible. He had tasted heaven, tasted summer and feasting, and indulging, and flowers, and velvet, and all things fine in life wrapped up into one single night with a woman who not only could handle him but was craving his very body, his very being.

He shoved upright, his knees splaying beneath her, and grabbed hold of her legs under her knees and around her thighs. He drove as hard and fast as he could, his skin slapping hers, her breasts bouncing with each force absorbed by her body.

“God, Mari,” he begged, his eyes clenched tightly. “I’m going to spill…I’m going to spill…come with me, love…”

She threw her hands above her head, her hair tangling around her in the most beautiful disarray he had ever seen, and gripped the edge of the fur, pulling on it, her cries no longer broken apart but in a drawn out moan.

And she shattered.

He felt the rush of warmth glide down his shaft with each thrust and let out a primal growl of release, satisfaction, and completion. Dropping his head back, his seed burst forth, shooting in spurts as he buried himself, each thrust still smacking her skin, until every drop was wrung from him and he collapsed upon her, sweating.

…

Mariel clung to him, her legs wrapped around his rear and her arms now holding his torso, hands resting on his back. She buried her face against his smooth chest, could feel his thin trail of hair rising up from below his waist, tickle her navel. She could feel his heartbeat in her ear, the rapid pace of it matching her own as it thumped in her neck, in her wrists, roared in her ears. She nuzzled him. This man was hers, and she belonged to him. She had just done the maddest thing by eloping.

Sakes, but she wanted to bask in this glow forever, lie tangled with the man she could never live without. By their first campfire, she had wanted this, in the tree in the forest, she had wanted this, in his solar, as he had begged her to be his wife, she had wanted this, but never had she thought she would feel such…completion.

Her father’s angry face flashed through her mind, his rage at her shooting him now taunting her as she imagined him discovering her elopement, and she squeezed Robert harder as if the realness of his body against hers might truly protect her.

“What’s wrong?” Robert asked, lifting his head from where he had been nuzzling her neck. “I can tell your mind wanders away.”