Elizabeth Lowell

by Elizabeth Lowell

  When he came to the margin between the satin of her skin and the velvet of her nipple, he circled her with exquisite care, ignoring her startled cry and her broken breath and the fingers tightening reflexively in his hair.

  And then Ty could bear the temptation no longer. He took Janna’s offering into his mouth, sucking on a velvet nipple until it was tight and hard, and still he tugged on her with slow, sensual rhythms that made small cries ripple from her.

  When the nipple could be drawn out no more, he slowly released it, admiring the taut, glistening peak. He cupped the breast in his hand and made tight circles with his palm, rubbing the hard nipple as he bent and caressed her other breast with lips and tongue, drawing her out, shaping her, pulling sensuously until her breath was quick and broken with the lightning strokes of sensation streaking through her body.

  Dizzy, breathless, lost in a hushed, shimmering world she had never known existed, Janna felt pleasure expand and burst and radiate through her. Ty felt it too, the flush of sensual heat spreading beneath her skin, the small movements of her hips as she sought the pressure of his body, the tiny cries when his teeth and tongue brought new heat to her.

  Finally he lifted his head, releasing the nipple he had so lovingly shaped. She whimpered very softly, wanting more of the pleasure that had grown in her with each movement of his mouth. She opened her gray eyes and looked at him with silent pleading.

  “More?” he asked, smiling, his voice as heavy as the blood beating in his veins.

  Janna shivered helplessly as Ty’s hand closed over one of her breasts and slowly pleasured her.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He smiled, enjoying her open response and the growing flush of arousal beneath her skin. “Where else would you like to be kissed?”

  The shocked look that came to her face told him that she had never thought about such things.

  “Never mind, little one,” he said. He circled the erect tip of each breast with his tongue and whispered, “I’ll think of something.”

  With a speed and power that surprised her, he turned and lay on his back and in the same movement lifted her, puffing her over his body like a living blanket. When her hips pressed against the hard ridge of flesh that waited impatiently beneath the thick cloth of his pants, he made a low sound of pleasure-pain.

  Not understanding, Janna pulled away. Ty’s legs parted and her own legs sank between his. He moved quickly, lifting his legs just enough to trap hers beneath, twining his legs with hers at the ankles, forcing their bodies into an intimate match, hard against soft, consummation no more than a few layers of cloth away.

  “Unbutton my shirt,” he said in a thick voice. “You’ll like the feel of my bare skin against your breasts. And so will I.”

  The slight movement of her body when she reached for his collar button made her hips rock against the hot cradle he had made for her between his legs. He groaned in a kind of exquisite agony, for he had never needed a woman so much as he needed Janna at that instant.

  “Again,” he whispered. “Move against me just once more. Just once.”

  Hesitantly she moved her hips against him again, feeling the hard bulge of his erection like a brand against her abdomen. The sound he made deep in his throat could have come from agony or undiluted pleasure. His hand came between their bodies. Unerringly he found the most sensitive part of her and pressed, rocking his hips slowly beneath her. The sudden heat that radiated out from his hand made her gasp. His name came from her lips in a husky, urgent, questioning cry.

  “Yes,” Ty said, his voice low and thick. “You can feel it, too, can’t you?” Gently he released her ankles and lifted her into a sitting position astride his waist. Her breath caught and her hips moved helplessly as he teased her nipples again with his fingertips. “It’s going to be good. It’s going to be so damn good. Unbutton my shirt, sugar. I want to feel your hands on my bare skin.”

  With fingers that trembled, Janna undid the buttons on his shirt. She had seen him naked before, but it hadn’t affected her one-tenth as much as watching his powerful body emerge from the shirt. In the dusk, the curling pelt of black hair was very distinct, as was the dark center line of his body where the hair narrowed to pencil width and vanished behind his belt. The heat and resilience of him were as alluring as his dark smile. With catlike pleasure she kneaded the muscular flesh she had so often bathed or medicated but had never caressed.

  And she had wanted to.

  She realized that now. She understood that her hands had quivered to know every texture of him, the satin smoothness where skin stretched over muscle, the power inherent in him, the thick silk of his chest hair, the finer silk of the hair beneath his arms, the flat disk and hard nubbin of his nipples.

  Just as she had become lost in the discovery of her own body beneath his mouth, she became lost in the discovery of his body beneath her hands.

  Ty watched her through eyes narrowed with passion. Her transparent pleasure in exploring his body was violently exciting to him. It was unlike anything he had ever known. It put him on an exquisite rack and pulled him in two conflicting directions. Part of him wanted to grab her and thrust into her and end the pulsing ache of his body.

  And part of him wanted to keep his hands off her and learn more about himself and her and the sweet torment of being suspended between anticipation and ecstasy.

  Again and again Janna’s fingers combed through the hair covering Ty’s chest, tracing his nipples and then following the quickly narrowing pelt down to the cold of his belt buckle. She knew that slim line of hair would continue down his body for a hand span and then radiate out into a thick, curling thatch. She wanted to see that too, to run her hands over him without any boundaries on the touching. She wanted that so much she couldn’t breathe.

  Not stopping to think or to question, she reached for his belt buckle.

  “Not yet,” he said huskily, grabbing her hands and pulling them back up to the safer territory of his chest. “It will be too quick that way. I want to enjoy you first.”

  “I thought you had enjoyed me,” she whispered, bending to kiss his hands.

  His smile made her heart turn over. “Just part of you, sugar. There’s some very sweet territory I haven’t unwrapped yet, much less enjoyed.”

  He reversed their positions with one of the swift, powerful movements that always caught her off guard but no longer frightened her. Whatever came next, she was certain he would be careful with her. She lay quietly, watching him as he knelt at her feet and removed her knee-high moccasins and his own boots with quick motions. He tugged open his belt but left his pants untouched.

  When he unfastened Janna’s belt she trembled.

  “It’s all right,” he said, kissing her lips. “I won’t hurt you.”

  She took a shaky breath and nodded. “I know. It’s just...”

  Before she could explain that she had never been naked in front of anyone, it was too late. Her ability to speak deserted her as leather slipped from the buckle with an easy movement of his hand. Without the belt, her oversize men’s pants slid easily from her body, and with them her underpants.

  When Janna lay completely nude before Ty, his breath came out in a slow, unraveling groan.

  “It’s like seeing a satin butterfly emerge from a mud cocoon,” he whispered, running his fingertips over the pale curves and velvet shadows of her body.

  When he reached the dark delta at the base of her torso, she made a surprised sound and moved as though to evade his hand, pressing her legs together reflexively.

  “Easy, little one,” he murmured, kissing her lips. “I know you’ve been hurt there but I won’t hurt you. I know how delicate you are, how soft, how warm. Even you don’t know how soft you can be or how warm. Let me show you.”

  “What d-do you want me to do?” Her voice broke as she shivered in a combination of nervousness and surprise at the presence of Ty’s fingers searching gently through the dense triangle of hair that shielded her most sensitive
flesh.

  “Don’t be so stiff. I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. He kissed her coaxingly until her lips parted and he could love her with slow, deep strokes of his tongue. He lifted his mouth and whispered against her lips. “Open your legs just a little, sugar, just a little. I’ll be very gentle.”

  His voice became a husky sigh of triumph and discovery when she relaxed enough to allow his fingertip to skim over the soft, hot folds between her legs.

  “Just a little more,” he whispered, caressing her, seeking the heated well of her femininity, finding just its soft, burning edges. But it was enough. It told him that her blood was running as hotly and hungrily as his own. He probed lightly and was rewarded by a hint of the smooth, sultry sheath that awaited him. “My beautiful satin butterfly,” he said huskily. “So hot, so sleek. Open a little more for me, butterfly. I won’t force you. I just want to love all of you. Let me...”

  Janna tried to speak but her voice broke over Ty’s name. The gliding, skimming caress of his finger had changed into a gentle penetration that took her breath away. He bent to her mouth and his tongue echoed the tender movements of his hand between her legs. The heat and tension that had been gathering deep within her body flared suddenly, wildly, claiming her in a gentle convulsion that took her wholly by surprise.

  But not Ty. He had been coaxing her toward just such a minor peak of ecstasy since he had first discovered the sensuality hidden within her body. He repeated the twin, gentle assaults on her body, his tongue gliding over hers in a deep kiss as his finger slid between her legs in a slow, teasing dance of penetration and withdrawal that brought soft whimpers from her throat. Passion shimmered and burst within her again, heat and pleasure overflowing.

  She moaned softly as he withdrew from her sultry center and caressed the bud of her passion with fingertips still slick from her own response. Heat speared through her, tightening her body. She cried out into his mouth and her hips moved beneath his hand, asking for something she had never known. She sensed his hesitation, felt as much as heard him groan, and bit back a cry of protest when he withdrew his caressing hand.

  “Hush, little one,” he murmured, freeing himself of his clothes in a few swift movements. “It won’t be long.”

  “Ty?”

  “I’m right here,” he said, gently pressing her legs farther apart, making room for himself.

  Delicately he teased the nub he had coaxed from her soft, humid folds. She trembled and her knees flexed instinctively, allowing him greater access to her body. Her passionate response spilled over him as he probed her softness with his own aching flesh. The moist, welcoming heat of her body was unmistakable, a silent command that he come deeply within her. But she was so tight that he was afraid of hurting her.

  Shivering with the harshness of his self-imposed restraint, Ty began taking Janna as gradually as evening took the day. Her eyes opened in sensual surprise and she looked up into the face of the man who was slowly, so slowly, becoming part of her. Each time the pressure of him within her became almost painful, he sensed it, withdrew, and gradually came to her again.

  The exquisitely gentle penetration made waves of heat gather and burst within her, showering him with her pleasure. She heard him groan and push more deeply inside and then felt the harsh tension shaking his body as he forced himself to stop.

  “You’re a virgin!”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ty’s accusing voice was hoarse as he fought against his deepest needs and tried to force himself to retreat from Janna’s moist, clinging heat.

  But he couldn’t.

  He wanted only to continue taking her a bit at a time, and when he caressed her to ecstasy once more he wanted to thrust past the frail barrier separating their bodies from total unity. She would feel no pain at the instant he took her because she would be too deeply enmeshed in her climax to know or care that for the first time in her life a man would be fully sheathed within her.

  Virgin.

  “Christ,” Ty groaned, “if I’d known, I never would have touched you.”

  “Then I’m glad you didn’t know,” Janna said huskily. She shivered and melted over him again, moving her hips helplessly, in the grip of a passion she had never expected and had no idea how to control. All she wanted was more of him, more of the sweet friction as she stretched around him. “I want this, Ty. Please. You’re not hurting me. I love...feeling you.” She moved her hips slowly, caressing him and herself in the same motion. “Oh, that’s so good,” she whispered raggedly, rocking, moving as much as he would allow, “but it’s not enough...not...enough.”

  “Stop it,” he said roughly as he felt the last shreds of his self-control slipping away. “You’re a virgin!”

  Her nails dug into the flexed power of his buttocks and her body twisted wildly beneath his as she whispered again and again that what he had given her was good but not enough. With each movement she became more seductive, more demanding, more welcoming, so hot and sleek that he found himself pressing again and yet again at the fragile flesh that barred total consummation.

  He groaned and forced himself to move just slightly while his fingers sought and claimed the slick, delicate nub of Janna’s passion. He controlled the instinctive rocking of her hips by settling more of his weight between her legs, pinning her in place while he caressed her, bringing her closer and closer to ecstasy.

  When he felt the sudden mist of passion flush her skin and her breath broke and her cries came quickly, rising urgently, he covered her mouth with his own and began to move again within her, trying to hold back from the elemental consummation that awaited him in the depths of her virginal body. A groan racked him as he thought what it would be like to sheathe every bit of his need in her, to pierce her virginity and feel her pleasure flow over him in a hot, ecstatic rain.

  And then it was happening, the hot rain and the sheathing, ecstasy bursting with each movement of his hips while she wept at the perfection. He let go of control and locked himself so deeply within her that she felt the certainty of his climax as the most intimate kind of caress, a pulsing presence that sent her spinning into ecstasy once again, her body caressing him rhythmically in the quivering aftermath of his own release.

  Her tiny, ecstatic cries pierced him like golden needles, reaching past the flesh to the soul beneath. Violent pleasure racked him until his muscles stood out like iron. The endless, shuddering release that followed overwhelmed him. Unable to see, unable to think, unable to speak, he spent himself again and again in the virgin who had touched a part of him no other woman ever had.

  When he was at last quiet once more, she clung to his powerful, sweat-slicked body, savoring the intimacy of lying beneath him and feeling him inside her as evening condensed soundlessly into night around them. She hadn’t known what to expect from the act of love, but she hadn’t anticipated anything so hot, so sweet, so violently complete.

  “I love you,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder.

  The words were very soft, but Ty heard them. A combination of guilt and anger raced through him when he remembered the irrevocable instant when he had taken Janna’s virginity. Silently he raged at himself and his baffling lack of control where she was concerned. He had been able to keep himself tightly reined while he seduced her, yet he hadn’t been able to pull back after he had discovered she was a virgin.

  He didn’t understand that. He should have been able to turn away from her. She wasn’t the first woman to try that particular marital trap. He had eluded the others in the past, and those girls had been much more accomplished in their snares and lures.

  But Janna had been a handful of fire and beauty, and her ecstatic cries as he pierced her virginity would haunt Ty until he died.

  “I never should have taken you,” he said in a low, bitter voice.

  Her gently stroking hands became still. “Why?”

  “Because I discovered that you were a virgin and I had no intention of marrying you, that’s why. But I had a lot of help getting past yo
ur innocence, didn’t I? First you tell me you’re not a virgin—”

  “I never said that,” she interrupted in a fierce whisper.

  “What about when you ran and I brought you down and kissed you too hard, and you said you’d taken a lot worse from men and survived?”

  “I only meant that you hadn’t really hurt me. And you hadn’t.”

  “What about Joe Troon?”

  “What about him?”

  “Ned said that Troon ‘kept’ you for a while.”

  “Ned is a drunk and a liar. Troon caught me but he never kept me.”

  “Well, sugar, you sure as hell didn’t act like any virgin I’d ever met. Ever since I came to after Cascabel’s gauntlet you’ve been rubbing up against me and sighing and smiling and looking at me out of those smoky gray eyes like I’d spilled honey in my lap and you couldn’t wait to lick off every bit of it,” Ty said in a low, angry voice. “It would have served you right if I’d backed you up against a tree, opened my pants and had you standing up like the lowest kind of camp follower.”

  Janna thought of the ways she had tormented Ty without truly understanding the elemental force of his need...and her own. The memories of how often she had smiled when he had turned away to hide the evidence of his arousal made her ashamed now.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, touching his face tentatively. “I didn’t know what I was doing to you. I didn’t know the power of what you were fighting, how much you needed me.”

  “It was a woman I needed, not you,” he snarled, jerking away from her gentle touch.

  All the movement accomplished was to remind him that he was still held within the satin sheath of her body. And she felt even better now than in his hottest memories.

  He told himself to roll aside, to separate himself from her, but his body refused to respond. He was drinking her heat, growing inside her, and his blood was beating heavily, urging his hips to move in primal rhythms.

  “Virgin,” he said, and it was a curse. “But you wanted it as much as I did, didn’t you? Hell, you damn near burned me alive with your cries and your hips sliding, pushing me deeper and deeper...”