The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh

by Stephanie Laurens

  He locked his gaze with hers; slowly, he walked across the tiles to her side. Halting there, he looked into her face, let a heartbeat pass, only then asked, “Is that a challenge?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll see it in that light and exert yourself accordingly.”

  A part of him laughed; the rest rose to her lure. Lips curving—amused, yes, but intent, too—he reached for her . . .

  She bolted.

  On a smothered laugh, she raced up the stairs.

  He was on her heels before he’d thought.

  Then he did. He let her reach the landing before looping an arm around her waist, spinning her into him as he turned. Setting her back to the side wall, he crushed her lips with his.

  And devoured.

  Mary sank her hands into his hair and hung on for dear life. Let her wits spin away and opened her senses wide. Gloried, for one long instant simply drank in his passion—then she flung her heart and soul into returning it.

  Fingers clenching in his hair, she kissed him back, returning every rapacious foray with her own fire. Her own need. Her own burning brand of desire. She could feel it surging inside her, undeniable, all-powerful, a heated yearning to be together, to be naked and merged and totally lost in the flames.

  The compulsion built, rose higher.

  Urgency raced down her veins.

  Lips melding, hungry, hot, and urgent, the kiss raged back and forth, first driven by him, then by her, their tongues dueling, seeking, searching—he for supremacy, she for equal strength.

  She won. He didn’t.

  She held her own and pressed him even harder.

  Knew when he broke, when he accepted that he didn’t care how, just as long as he had her—and she had him.

  She only had a split second to wonder what next before he hoisted her up against him. She responded immediately, adjusting the angle of the kiss, unwilling to allow the connection to break, to allow either of them a chance to think, even for a heartbeat. Then he turned from the wall and she raised her legs and wriggled and hitched and conquered her skirts enough to grip his hips with her thighs.

  He grunted, but, like her, made no move to end the ravenous engagement of their mouths; sliding his palms beneath her hips, carrying her, he started up the stairs.

  Giving thanks for his strength, she left it to him to get them to his bedroom and focused her will on the kiss, on keeping them both, he and she, so deeply immersed that the flames they’d already ignited didn’t wane.

  She succeeded so well that, on reaching the corridor to his room, he sat her atop a wall table, clamped his hands to her face, took over the kiss, and poured fire down her veins.

  On a gasp, she tipped her head back and broke the kiss—and he let her. One hand framing her jaw, angling her chin, he ducked his head and set his lips, burning, branding, to her throat. Followed the arching line down to the hollow where her pulse raced. He licked, laved, and she shuddered.

  He made a sound, low and guttural, and then her bodice was loose and he was drawing it down; before she gathered her wits enough to react, he stripped bodice and chemise to her waist, and set his mouth to her bared breasts.

  She cried out as he sucked one furled nipple deep; evocative and arousing, the sound echoed in the dark.

  He chuckled, harsh and ragged; cupping her other breast, he kneaded and squeezed while with lips and tongue he claimed. One hand sliding to the back of her waist, holding and supporting her, he waited while she blindly freed her arms from her sleeves, then he tipped her backward until the back of her head rested against the wall and he bent to his task—apparently intending to reduce her to an utterly wanton state . . .

  She was already there. Hands sunk in his hair, eyes closed, head back, she moaned, then arched, wanting more of all he lavished on her—the hot worship of his mouth on her sensitive flesh, the excruciatingly piercing sensations he sent streaking through her.

  Driving passion was already a pounding thud in her veins; she wondered how much stronger it could get.

  Shivered with anticipation at the certainty of finding out.

  Despite the potent compulsions of desire, tonight she was more aware—more able to appreciate his sensual expertise. Previously, her senses had been swept away; tonight, they were riding the tide.

  And she wanted, craved with a deep-seated need, the heat and the flames and the surging, swelling passion. More than anything else she craved the fusion they would lead to, the intense, intimate, physically powerful joining.

  She’d been too distracted earlier to properly absorb every detail; tonight her senses were greedy and grasping, devouring every nuance.

  Her gown and chemise lay crumpled about her waist. Standing as he was, his hips forced her knees wide; he shifted, then the hand at her breast released and stroked down. Down over her waist, pressing her clothing aside, sliding over her stomach to splay there, then his long fingers reached further, parting the curls at the apex of her thighs to push down and in.

  She started, shivered, then caught her breath on a gasp as his fingers explored, caressing and parting her slick folds, then circling, lightly pressing. Delicious sensations spread under her skin. Panting, she squirmed, needing more, wanting . . .

  Drawing his mouth from her breast, he softly cursed and withdrew his hand from between her thighs.

  She clutched his arm. “No—”

  “Wait.” The gravelly order brooked no argument, but he was already hauling up her skirts, pushing them high to reach beneath. Locating her stockinged knee, he skated his hard palm over her garter and up her thigh, then boldly cupped her swollen flesh.

  Reaction jolted her, the possessiveness in his touch sharp and keen.

  She shivered when he pressed first one, then two fingers into her. Deep, then deeper.

  On a gasp, fingers gripping his arm, clutching his skull, she arched, lifting, instinctively giving him greater access. Access he seized; his hand flexing beneath her, he pressed in and stroked, deeper, faster, ruthlessly playing on her senses.

  Tension gripped her—similar yet not the same as the compulsive need of their previous time, but swelling, rising, built and driven by his intimate touch. By every deep stroke of his fingers.

  Then he returned to her breasts, setting his mouth to the aching, swollen mounds, catching the tightly furled buds of her nipples between his lips, tugging, then taking them into his mouth and suckling.

  Sensations cascaded, clashed and sparked, flushing beneath her skin, pulsing through her flesh. She closed her eyes, listened as her breathing grew harried and desperate. Felt the flames rage and coalesce, sinking deeper, searing and burning, then flaring ever hotter.

  Tighter, harder, faster, hotter—she gasped, squirmed, yet nothing seemed to ease her escalating need, to appease the hungry emptiness yawning within.

  Then he shifted his hand and his thumb found the nubbin hidden amid her slick folds, and he artfully pressed in rhythm with his increasingly forceful penetrations, with the increasingly powerful suckling at her breast—

  She fractured.

  Cried out and clung as her world shattered and her senses fragmented and spun.

  Overcome by the cataclysm of sensation, she swayed. All strength fled; a deep, unraveling lassitude swept her.

  All awareness seemed distant, remote, detached, yet she still felt, still knew. Could still follow what was happening.

  Her breathing in ragged disarray, her heartbeat echoing in her ears and pulsing in the honeyed flesh between her thighs, she felt—acutely felt—the retreat of his fingers from her body. Drawing his hand from beneath her skirts, he swept her unresisting—unable to resist—off the table and into his arms, and carried her to his room.

  Juggling her in his arms, Ryder opened his bedroom door, angled her inside, then heeled the door shut. Tonight, Collier had left only the two lamps on the bedside tables burning;
although both were turned low, they spilled golden light over the golden bed.

  A perfect shrine for beauty in aftermath.

  Carrying Mary to the bed, he knelt on the mattress and laid her gently down, her head on the pillows, her sable curls a sharp contrast against the ivory. He took an instant to savor, to give thanks he’d been able to rush her on to her climax and so grasp the chance—the slim and possibly only chance—to reassert control. To regain the upper hand.

  Passion beat powerfully, unrelentingly, in his veins, insistent and demanding, but this was a situation he—and that driving need within him—recognized. A familiar pause in proceedings, not a denial but a staving off, a temporary holding back that would ensure he would soon reap a deeper and even more complete satisfaction.

  God, she’d been . . . the word that came to mind was potent. A drug that held the power to drive him crazed with desire, and make him ache with passion.

  With a powerful drive, one he needed to rein in and manage; even after their first encounter—perhaps even more because of it—he felt an absolute need to remain in charge, of himself at least, if not her as well.

  Knowing he would have only so long before she stirred, and sought to manage him and them, this, and all, he leaned over her and stripped her of gown, chemise, and stockings. Tossing the gold silk coverlet over her cooling body, accepting that if he didn’t shed his clothes himself, she would be eager to assist him—and God only knew where that would end—he shrugged out of his coat and waistcoat, unknotted his cravat and dispensed with shirt, shoes, stockings, and trousers in record time.

  He felt the caress of her gaze as he turned to the bed. With an openly sensual appreciation, she examined and surveyed, her lips lightly curving, her gaze warming, the blue growing more intense as he neared.

  He knew well enough how women saw him; impressive was an epithet frequently applied.

  Somewhat to his relief, he detected nothing more than a certain smug, very feminine possessiveness in her face, with no hint of surprise, much less fear, clouding her violet-blue eyes.

  Indeed, all he could discern was expectation, an anticipation that was more specific, more focused, than two nights before.

  Her expression stated she knew what was to come and was looking forward to every second.

  Already fully aroused, that expression, its implication, only made him more rigid.

  Pausing beside the bed, he reached out and drew down the coverlet, and took one last instant to drink in the sight of her, rumpled and sated, limbs asprawl in sensual abandon in his bed.

  Slowly, he let his gaze sweep from her small, delicate feet, over her shapely calves, dimpled knees, and sleek thighs, up over the already dampened thatch of dark curls at their apex, over the slight curve of her stomach, the indentation of her waist, gliding up over her firm, high breasts, her nipples puckering under his gaze, to her throat, her chin, to her lips, and finally to her eyes.

  Mary had been waiting. She smiled, gentle yet intent, and slowly, gracefully, raised her arms and beckoned.

  He blinked, but complied, letting himself down on the bed, propping on one elbow and stretching his long limbs and heavy bones alongside her.

  He reached to set a hand on her stomach, but before he made contact she rolled toward him and sat up, the movement making him instinctively tip back—he realized and tried to reverse, to sit up again, but she’d already spread her hands on his chest.

  Greedily.

  She swiveled to hang over him, sinuously sliding her body along his until his hips lay half under hers, her stomach brushing his, her legs tangling lightly with his, his heavy erection grazing her hip; she closed her eyes for a second, breathed in as she savored, this time fully aware of the evocative feel of his naked body against hers, of his hair-dusted limbs lightly abrading her smooth, fine skin, of the ineluctable tactile contrast between his hard muscled frame covered by taut skin and her firm, silky sleekness.

  He could easily have forced her back, yet as she opened her eyes, met his, then sent her hands skating, caressing and tracing, unabashedly reveling, he lay still and searched her face, trying to guess what she was about.

  Thoroughly pleased with him, she smiled and obliged. “Before we reengage, I wanted to ask . . . can you—will you—go slow when I say?”

  He blinked, then arched his brows in patent disbelief. “You want to go slow?”

  “Only when I say,” she quickly clarified. “And only for those moments.” She held his gaze, then arched a brow back; with him, challenge was undeniably her best weapon. “For the rest . . .” She raised a shoulder. “I would prefer to go at our usual headlong pace. So much more us, don’t you think?”

  When he didn’t reply—when she saw wary suspicion bloom behind his eyes—she laughed. “No, truly.” Folding her arms, she settled on his chest, pillowing her breasts on the thick muscle, delighting in the tension that spread through him in response, and smiled into his eyes. “So what do you say?” Abrasion from the crinkly hair on his chest made her nipples ruche painfully tight; resisting the impulse to close her eyes in bliss, keeping them on his, she pressed, “Can we do it my way—just this once?”

  “Once?” Ryder wasn’t at all sure it would be once. Or rather, that the once wouldn’t affect him—and them—forever more. His instincts, entirely uncharacteristically, were no help; on the one hand, they warned—stridently and insistently—that danger lay waiting along the path she was, sirenlike, luring him down, consequently urging caution, if not retreat, while simultaneously, those very same instincts were pushing him to give her whatever she wished. More, were insisting it was his duty to slavishly pander to her every whim.

  And there really wasn’t any choice. Despite awareness of the former, the latter impulse was dominant, if not paramount. Drawing in a deep breath, steeling himself against the more definite pressure of her breasts against his chest, he held her gaze. “All right. Your way. This once. So how?”

  Her smile beamed like the sun. Shifting higher on his chest, eyes sparkling, expression eager, she reached for his face. “I’ll tell you when.” Then she bent her head, set her lips to his—and plunged them back into their fire.

  Leaving him reeling, then mentally racing, trying to catch up with her—trying to exert some degree of control.

  He hadn’t known the flames had hovered so very close. Yes, he’d been brutally aroused from the moment he’d joined her on the bed, but he’d thought—had expected—that she would have cooled, that it would take time—

  But no. Just one kiss, one flagrant foray into his mouth, coupled with his instinctive response, and she turned to living flame in his arms.

  And there was no slowing down, no controlling the fiery passion, the conflagration of desire that raked and razed and raced through them both. That consumed them both.

  Abruptly, she rolled onto her back; he didn’t need her urgent tugging to follow. And then they were tussling, her hands streaking over his skin, reaching for his erection, greedy fingers searching, finding, closing, palms hungrily stroking.

  Her breasts filled his hands while he filled her mouth, and she, his wanton, urged him on.

  Slow? Where was her slow?

  It was she who parted her thighs wide, who wriggled and writhed to get his hips just so. On a curse, he pulled back from the kiss long enough to reach between them and position the blunt head of his aching erection at her entrance.

  Scalding slickness bathed the broad head. She was wetter than wet, so ready and willing, as the desperation in her clutching hands assured him.

  Equally trapped in the heated desperation, lying fully and heavily atop her, prey to her every arch and writhe, he clamped both hands about her hips, plunged back into the fiery delight of her mouth, and tensed to thrust home.

  She wrenched back from the kiss. Hoarsely panted, “Now. Slow now!”

  Now?

  “God almi
ghty.” His weight on his elbows, he gritted his teeth, jaw clenched to cracking as he locked every muscle against the driving, pounding insistence that he move—that he thrust into the heated haven waiting, beckoning.

  She gulped in air, managed a tiny nod. “I want to feel . . . you. There. I didn’t get a chance to the first time . . .”

  Her explanation wasn’t helping. “I’ll try,” he ground out, then shut her up in the only way that ever worked.

  And fought, battled, to give her what she wanted.

  He eased in—a fraction. Just enough to push the head of his erection past her tight entrance.

  Beneath him, he felt her quiver—not with fear but with a sensual expectation that reached to his bones and made him shudder, too.

  Gave him the strength to try for another half an inch. Then pause. Then another incremental advance.

  Her body tight as a bowstring, every bit as tense as he, she sighed into his mouth, then shifted her lips enough to whisper against his, “Oh. My. Lord. Yes.”

  The quality she invested into the last word—that alone would have been worth his pain.

  Accepting that, accepting that acceding to her request had indeed lavished untold pleasure on her, made it easier still to continue to penetrate her inch by slow inch.

  Mary lay beneath him, utterly overwhelmed, her senses locked on the sensation of the veined rod, hot as flame and as unforgiving as forged steel, slowly, and now more steadily, pushing into her. Stretching her, filling her, in some way she didn’t fully comprehend, completing her.

  The moment overloaded her mind in every way, obliterating the hollow emptiness that had dwelled deep within her when he’d first laid her on the bed.

  With an effort, she raised her lashes. His eyes were shut; his face appeared graven, every plane sharp-edged with desire. With reined passion. She could feel the rigid control he wielded—to give her what she’d asked for.

  Lids falling, she mentally reached out and wrapped her expanding senses about them—and savored all the excruciatingly sensation-filled moment was doing to them both. They were both panting, heated breaths mingling, lips dry, but still hungry.