by Cindy Gerard
She caught her breath on a gasp as he suddenly lifted her in his arms and urged her legs around his waist. The heat of his bare chest seeped through the satin of her slip. His fingers burned with the fire of banked passion as they tunneled under the edge of her panties and drew her to more intimate contact.
Where she should have felt vulnerable, she felt only need. And desire. She squirmed against him, wanting more of the big hands that kneaded her bottom, the rough fingers that squeezed, then petted, then sought that part of her that was already wet, already swollen and ready for him.
She sighed into his mouth, swallowed his ragged groan when he touched her there. Boldly. Deeply. His caress was electric. His knowledge of how to please her carnal and unrelenting.
So fast, so fierce, the pleasure came. So fast it scared her. So fierce a cry escaped. A wild sound. A wanton plea, ripe with wonder, raw with passion. Breathless, she arched against his hand, then clutched his shoulders and cried his name as the first wave of a shattering orgasm took her.
Searing heat consumed her, spiraling from the source of the flame he’d ignited to the deepest core of her body. She clung to him, riding out the exquisite sensations until she collapsed bonelessly against him, her heart exploding, her mouth open against his chest.
She’d never known it could be like this. She’d never known the world could cease to exist. That one moment in time could be the only moment, blinding, golden and glowing.
She’d never known she could feel so totally and completely indulged.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his shoulder and felt a teardrop fall.
Abel held her close against him. He felt the warm trickle of her tears on his skin, and the fullness in his chest grew heavier. He was no stranger to pleasing women. He’d even been thanked before. But never with such wonder and such sweet, aching innocence. And never had he taken such pleasure in the giving.
Even as she rested, sated and limp against him, she had no idea what her wanton response had done to him. She had no idea of the things he wanted to do with her still.
The silk of her slip sighed against his hands as he shifted her slight weight and laid her back on his bed. He wanted far more than satisfaction now. He wanted to ease that gnawing, unfamiliar ache that had been knotting in his chest ever since she’d pledged him her life.
He clenched his jaw against the rush of tenderness her faith in him fostered. He didn’t understand it. And he sure as hell hadn’t earned it. But it was there in a pair of trusting green eyes, now heavy-lidded with latent passion, and a heart riding in full view on her sleeve.
She made him want things that weren’t possible. She made him want to let down his guard. To indulge. Not only in her body, but in her spirit and the warmth of the trust she offered as she lay there, so innocently seductive in the pristine white slip his hands had tangled around her hips.
He’d told her she was pretty. She’d made him feel like he’d given her a gift. A new experience for a man who had always been a taker. An unsettling catharsis for a man who’d never wanted to share anything more complicated than sex with a woman. That’s all he’d ever been capable of sharing—a physical joining, mutual satisfaction the only requirement.
Yet with this woman who was now his wife, he’d found himself wanting to give.
He watched her face as he stripped off the last of his clothes and eased onto his hip beside her.
“You are a beautiful man, Abel Greene.” Her whisper was as soft as the fading remnants of sunlight dappling the pillow where her head lay.
He’d known she had the power to arouse him. He hadn’t known she could embarrass him. He trailed a finger along the deep vee of the white satin skin between her breasts. “I’ve been called a number of things in my life. Beautiful isn’t one of them.”
She smiled, catlike and content. “Then I’m glad the first time you heard it was from me.” Shy suddenly, she raised a hand to his hair. “Will you untie it for me?”
She was a study in contrasts. She gave praise easily but was uncomfortable accepting it. She offered generously but hesitated to ask if she could take.
That would be her first lesson. He’d teach his little bird to take what she wanted in this bed.
“You’ll untie it,” he said, “whenever you decide you want to.”
He brought her hand to his mouth. Her skin was silky soft, like her hair, like the breath that escaped when he eased a finger beneath the strap of her slip and slowly tugged it down her arm.
Heat and hunger arrowed to his groin with each pale inch of flesh he exposed. Her breasts were small, her nipples tight and hard against the fabric that now barely covered a delicate, distended tip.
He was a big man, and he hadn’t been with a woman for a very long time. She was a small woman and she was fragile, despite her determination to show him otherwise.
“Tell me,” he began, his voice raspy with the effort of self-control, “tell me if I go too fast for you.”
She told him instead what she wanted. Not in words. With a sensuous lift of her shoulder that sent the second strap slipping down her arm to bare the lush curve of her other breast; with a flirtatious lift of her hips as she shoved down her panties.
Suppressing a groan, he reminded himself to go easy with her. But looking wasn’t enough anymore. Neither was merely touching. He remembered the taste of her. Remembered the feel of her in his mouth that morning when he’d stolen a sip of a pale, pink breast. The memory demanded. The reality beckoned.
Easing down on an elbow, he lowered his mouth to the hollow of her throat, then lost himself in her fragrance and the entreaty of her throaty sigh.
She smelled of strawberries and cream and innocence. And of the heady scent of a well-pleased woman.
She didn’t know what she was doing to him. She didn’t understand that when she wrapped her arms around his neck and moved against him with a restless urgency, she was blowing his good intentions all to hell.
He’d wanted to make this slow for her. Slow was beyond him now. With a hand made rough by anticipation, he stripped the thin barrier of satin to her waist and possessed her breast with his callused palm. She arched into his touch, filling his hand with heat and softness and a delicious quivering anticipation. He brushed his thumb across the velvet peak, sucked in a breath at her trembling response, then took her deep into his mouth.
Sin had never tasted this sweet. Sex had never been this seductive. He told himself it was because of his abstinence. He told himself it was because he’d lived too many years without giving in to his needs.
But then she took him in her hand and he knew it was she who had the power to make his heart stop beating. His breath clogged in his throat, then eased out on a long, shuddering groan when, with a hesitant, untutored caress, she explored and tortured and drove him to a new level of desperation.
He grew rigidly still above her, fighting for control, holding himself together by a tether no stronger than a length of silk thread.
“Make me your wife,” she murmured, and lifted her hands to his hair. With her eyes holding his, she tugged the black ribbon free. His hair spilled over his shoulders, pooled in black drifts across the rosy tips of her breasts.
She threaded it through her fingers, caressing its length with a lover’s touch. Bringing a handful to her face, she closed her eyes and breathed in its scent.
“Make me your wife,” she said again, her green eyes dark and dancing as she pulled him down. Down into her heat Deep into her arms and made a place for him between her thighs.
He hadn’t known he’d been beaten. He hadn’t guessed that a woman so small could destroy his will with whispered words and a silken touch.
She had the strength now. She had the power. He surrendered to it willingly. Gave it over with a long, slow stroke...and discovered the exquisite, searing pleasure of defeat.
On a sharp, indrawn breath she arched against him, welcoming him home, taking him deep, as he buried himself in sleek, wet heat and tight,
clenching muscle. He ceased to exist past the feel of her. She was liquid fire surrounding him. She was shivery sighs and soft, trembling flesh beneath him.
If he could stay inside her forever, it wouldn’t be long enough. His fear was that if he withdrew he’d find out it was all a dream. But then she moved beneath him. She sighed his name, whispered a lover’s plea. And he was lost.
He pumped once, twice, and with an oath of denial, gave in to the rush that came far too soon. His climax was violent. Consuming. Complete. He rocked his hips against hers, extending the pleasure, deepening the contact to the sound of her own stunned cry of release, the taste of her on his tongue and the clutch of her fingers in his hair.
Eight
Long after he’d rolled to his back and away from her, long after he’d drifted into a sprawling, sated sleep, Mackenzie lay in his bed and watched the moonlight dancing through the window.
A hundred feelings feathered and floated around in her head, competing for and tangling with a delicious sense of weightless suspension. Excitement. Embarrassment. Wonder. Elation. She turned her head on the pillow and watched her husband sleep.
Love.
Hope.
He was wrong. He was so wrong. She didn’t give her trust too easily. And he wasn’t immune to the urgings of his heart. He couldn’t have made love to her so sweetly, with such exquisite attention to her needs, if he didn’t care.
She felt herself flush with the remembered heat, the intimate touch of his hands and his mouth. Her gaze strayed to his powerfully muscled body—to that part of him that was covered by a drift of white sheet and moonlight—and she wanted him again. The strength of her need stunned her.
She’d never thought of herself as a sensual person. And she’d never dreamed she could have given herself so wantonly to any man. But Abel Greene wasn’t any man. He was her man, and she was going to do everything in her power to take care of the needs of his heart—just as she intended to take care of the needs of his body.
She wasn’t going to have the strength to accomplish either, though, if she didn’t get something to eat. She needed nourishment. Soon. She’d been too jittery to eat much of the wonderful wedding feast Scarlett and Maggie had prepared, and the toast and coffee she’d had for breakfast that morning had worn off long ago.
Easing carefully out of bed so she wouldn’t wake him, she grabbed the first thing within reach and shrugged it on, then hugged it to her face and breathed in the essence of Abel Greene. His discarded white dress shirt was scented of him—it even felt like him, big and substantial and sensually rough against her bare skin.
She rolled up the cuffs as she shuffled out of the room, then fastened a few buttons on the way to the fireplace. Soft fire glow lit the room, accompanying the flicker of the candles that still burned and scented the cabin with cinnamon, bayberry and vanilla.
Mimicking the actions she’d seen Abel do dozens of times since she’d been here, she opened the mesh screen covering the fire, hefted a piece of birch and settled it on the grate. Then she stood back and smiled when the flames licked and caught hold.
“I think you’ve got the hang of it, Mackenzie Greene,” she said, pleased with herself, pleased with the sound of her new name as she closed the screen, brushed off her hands and padded into the kitchen.
The wedding cake on the counter beckoned. She flicked on the light over the sink, casting the kitchen in more shadow than light, and hunted up a knife. Suddenly she was ravenous. She didn’t bother with a plate or fork. She sliced a piece of the richly frosted white sheet cake, picked it up with her fingers and brought it to her mouth.
That’s how her husband found her.
The overhead light blinked on, startling her. She whirled around, her mouth full of cake, her fingers covered in frosting and her heart in her throat.
He stood just inside the room, arms crossed over his bare chest, a broad shoulder propped against the wall. The jeans he’d pulled on rode low on his hips, the zipper at half-mast. He was barefoot and she would bet her last penny, bare beneath those jeans.
And he was the most extraordinarily beautiful man she’d ever seen.
In contrast, she was excruciatingly aware that standing there in his shirt, her hair wild and bed mussed, she must look about as provocative as a grocery sack.
She swallowed a mouthful of cake, then gave him a sheepish smile.
“I got hungry,” she confessed, stating the obvious with a self-conscious little shrug that sent his shirt slipping off one shoulder.
He just stood there, his black eyes taking a slow, thorough inventory, starting with her bare toes and crawling unhurriedly up the length of her body before finally landing on her face.
The fire in his eyes was unmistakable. She felt an answering flame, amazed that she could look like this and he could still want her.
“Would you...like some...” Her voice trailed off as he walked unerringly toward her. “Cake?” she finally managed to say.
Then she exhaled on a thready little breath at his murmured “Please.”
Spellbound by the look in his eyes, she stood motionless, sexual tension vibrating between them.
“You said something about cake.” His voice was so soft it took her a moment to realize she hadn’t imagined it.
“Right. Cake.”
With her heart hammering, she turned back to the counter to cut him a slice—only to have him snag her wrist and turn her around to face him.
“No.” His slumberous gaze dropped to the cake she held in her fingers. “This is the piece I want.”
She stopped breathing. His voice was so deep. So drugging. So impossible to deny, as he drew her hand and the half-eaten piece of cake slowly toward him.
She thought she’d known anticipation. She thought she’d understood seduction—then he taught her new meanings of both. With his eyes holding hers captive, he brought her hand to his mouth, drew both the cake and her fingers inside.
Her knees turned to noodles as he lavishly and lazily licked the icing from her fingers, then treated her palm to the same lush strokes of his tongue. His eyes turned stormy and dark as he pressed her open hand to his face and bit the fleshy part of her thumb.
Thunder rumbled through her blood as he kissed the little sting away. Lightning sizzled through her body as he lowered his hands to her waist, lifted her and set her on the counter.
The countertop was cold beneath her bare bottom. The heat in his eyes warmed her as he lowered his head to hers. Instead of the kiss she yearned for, he made a pleasured sound deep in his throat and licked a dollop of frosting from the corner of her mouth.
“You’re very sweet,” he murmured, his breath whispering against her lips. “And very messy.”
She swallowed and felt herself melting as his tongue flicked out again, playing with the seam of her lips, eating at the corners of her mouth like she was a piece of candy and he was the kid who’d discovered the candy store.
“I think I’ll have some more.”
Arousal built like a summer storm as he glanced down at the cake, scooped a fingerful of frosting and brought it to his mouth.
His eyes locked on her face, he slowly licked his finger, taking a long, considering taste.
Desire knotted in her breast then unraveled in a sharp, arching rush as she watched the slow strokes of his tongue, mesmerized, electrified.
“Good.” His voice was a rough, sultry whisper that drew her eyes to his. “But I like it better on you.”
Sweet lord, he was going to tease her to deadh. She gripped the edge of the counter with trembling fingers, as with carnal attention to the play of his hands, he smeared the icing from her chin to her bare shoulder.
She didn’t have the will to suppress a shudder when his mouth followed the trail of his finger. Like a gourmet sampling French pastries, he savored and sipped and licked his way down her throat, across the rise of her collarbone and, with a combination of lips and teeth and tongue, glided over the length of her bared shoulder.
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br /> She whimpered when he lifted his head, let her head fall back against the cupboard door as his hands rose and freed the buttons on the shirt she wore. With tantalizing attention to each inch of flesh he revealed, he peeled it down her arms, exposing her breasts to his slumberous gaze.
“I seem to have developed an insatiable taste for... frosting.”
The explicit intent of his rumbled words sent her entire body into sexual overload. Her nipples were diamond hard and tugging at places deep and low even before he laved them with frosting, then drew each one alternately into his mouth.
Sweet, sharp pleasure engulfed her as he suckled and nuzzled and feasted. Desire clawed at her as she cradled his head to her breast and begged him to set her free.
His control broke the same time hers did. With a guttural oath, he scooped her roughly off the counter and laid her on her back on the table. She reached for him, lifting her hips as he moved between her legs, freed himself from his jeans and entered her in a swift, hard thrust.
She cried his name. He swore hers and gripped her hips, tilting her to better receive him...again...again...again.
Each thrust took her higher, until she was no longer aware of the table, cool and hard beneath her back, the kitchen light, harsh and bright in her eyes. She was only aware of him, and that awareness consumed her. He was magnificently aroused. Aggressively male. His eyes were closed. His head thrown back, the cords oh his neck distended and glistening with perspiration. His hair trailed down his back like a spill of black ink as he set a rhythm as savage as the warrior he resembled and as abandoned as the erotic thrill of their joining.
In a blinding rush he transported her to that exquisite peak where sensation dominated and passion ruled. And where love for this man could not be denied.
His little bird looked broken. Damning himself for an animal, Abel reluctantly withdrew from the sweet, tight haven of her body. He tugged up his jeans and zipped them, then leaned over the table to assess the damage.