Dressed in only her drawers and chemise, she stood and began the agonizingly slow process of taking the pins from her hair. He tried not to but his gaze strayed down to the apex of her thighs where he could just make out the shadow of curls scarcely hidden by the too-thin linen of her drawers. He felt himself harden and made himself look away. But the hairpins clinked one by one to the bedside table and when they stopped his gaze darted back in time to see her glorious mane, shining gold in the lamplight, fall down to her waist.
The chemise mocked his discomfort and dropped off either shoulder, baring an indecent amount of soft, smooth flesh when she bent over to move her shoes out of the way. He closed his eyes and pretended he hadn’t just seen the lush, unrestrained curves of her breasts. But the memory of her nipple, pink and bared to his gaze and mouth, flashed through his mind. If he hadn’t been fully hard before, he was now.
“Gray?” Her soft voice carried to him.
Gray waited until he got himself under control. “What?” He finally bit out between clenched teeth.
She had paused, one knee resting on the bed, chemise drooping dangerously low to reveal the upper swells of her ripe breasts, the very image of an innocent seductress, until his gaze found hers in the mirror.
So she knew he’d been watching her, he realized. And something wild broke free within him.
“I…I wouldn’t tell anyone…”
His blood, already hot and heavy in his loins, roared through him with such savage energy Gray knew he was powerless to resist its urging. He had just lost whatever tenuous hold he had on rational thought.
“Ah, hell,” he growled.
In the space of a heartbeat, he had damned the consequences and crossed the room to reach her.
Chapter Five
The stark need in his eyes as he approached might have filled Sophie with apprehension had she had the time to process it before Gray pulled her into his arms. But he moved so fast she barely had time to keep her heart from exploding from her chest before his mouth covered hers. His fingers gripped her arms and pulled her tight against his chest as he plundered her. His tongue pushed inside, mating with hers with an insistency that caused such an immediate, responsive arousal in her that it left her breathless.
Sophie loved the solid press of his chest against her breasts and moved her palms against the hard planes as they made their way to his shoulders and then up so her fingers curled around his neck and twined in the silk of his hair. She loved his hair and had been aching to plunge her fingers into the richness. But they couldn’t stay still. There was too much of him to explore. They greedily sought to cup his strong jaw as it moved with his kiss before moving back down to curl around the breadth of his back and pull him closer.
He groaned low in his throat and dropped his hands to fill them with the fleshy globes of her nearly naked bottom. Sophie marveled at the languorous heaviness that settled low in her belly in response. Then he squeezed hard and she broke the kiss to gasp at the thrill that shot through her groin. An answering flood of heat pooled between her thighs. His hot breath fanned her lips, sending sparks of electricity prickling across her face. His lips brushed hers, but softer this time, and then she was moving backward in a controlled fall that ended with him raised above her on the bed.
She opened her eyes to question him, but was caught in the intensity that met her gaze.
“You’ve been kissed. Now go to sleep.” And he pushed himself off of her to flop on his back beside her.
Sophie laid there breathing heavily, trying to come to terms with what was happening to her body. She knew he was right to stop, was fairly certain what the pulsing of her body meant, but she didn’t care. It became clear to her that everything had been building to this. She should be angry with him for not helping her escape. She should hate him for thwarting her. But those thoughts had hardly even raised their heads.
So she closed her eyes and laid there by his side until she could get herself under control. It didn’t help that the bed was so small he was pressed against her from shoulder to hip, that his scent permeated her senses and refused to let her calm down. But finally she felt herself return to some measure of normality and she rolled on her side to give him more room while raising herself on an elbow to look down at him.
He lay there with an arm thrown over his eyes and she noticed, with quite a bit of pleasure, that he was still breathing heavily. She took note of the strange band of leather tied around his wrist, wondering what it meant. Her appreciative gaze traveled over the rest of him until it came to a stop on the hand that rested on his stomach. Before she could stop herself, she reached for his gracefully long fingers and brought them to her lips.
His eyes jerked to her then and she smiled as she met them. “Thank you for the kiss.” She did not relinquish his hand and in response his fingers curled around her own. “Thank you for stopping, too. I never knew you were such a gentleman.” She teased.
“I’m not.” He was not teasing. “You’re innocent. I wouldn’t take that from you.”
Sophie thought about that for a while. Yes, she was innocent, strictly speaking. But he’d made her feel things innocents were probably not supposed to feel and she suspected those feelings to be rare. Feelings she may never have again. Particularly if she escaped, which she had every intention of attempting, and especially if the worst happened and she married Anton. This night had been given to them as a gift, maybe she’d realized it even as he’d led her away from the gaming hall. It was their one night to explore what was between them. Their only night. She’d be a fool to let it pass. If she escaped, it would be a nice memory, if she went to Anton, it would be the only thing she could keep of her own. Anton was expecting a virgin, but she’d deal with that later. Maybe he’d divorce her, she mused.
“What if I gave it to you?”
Gray went stone still as the words settled between them. She watched his face as he processed them and held her breath. Her heart fluttered in her chest when he turned and rose on his elbow in a pose identical to hers. But he was bigger, so she had to look up at him. “Are you?”
His husky voice raked her skin, sucking the air from the room. The heat emanating from his body made her feel too hot. Along with her heart palpitations, it left her momentarily dumbstruck. “W-what?” she finally managed to stutter.
“Are you giving me your innocence?” Him thumb brushed her knuckles in a light caress that left them tingling.
“Yes,” she whispered. It seemed inappropriate to say the word too loudly.
His breath warmed her cheek as he breathed slowly in and out. But his gaze had left her face to settle on their joined hands. “You don’t know how often I’ve thought about it.”
“You’ve thought about me?”
He nodded. “I’ve thought about how if we’d been born thirty years sooner, I could have taken you away and no one could have challenged me. If I was a Comanche warrior, I could disappear with you and you’d be mine.” His gaze met hers after he said that and she felt its jolt all through her body.
His words set off a spark within her and she felt her momentary bout of bashfulness fade away. She laid back and his hand automatically moved to rest on her middle. “So maybe for tonight we can pretend you have run away with me.”
Something deep and primitive crossed his face and his hand tightened in her chemise. It was her only warning before his mouth crushed hers.
“Ow!” Gray pulled back immediately at her cry of pain. “Your gun,” she explained in a whisper, already reaching to pull him back. It had dug painfully into the soft flesh of her hip.
Gray sat on his knees to untie the leather thong from his thigh and unbuckle his gun belt, hardly waiting for it to drop to the bare wood floor before he was on her again. His clothed body covering her almost naked one.
She welcomed the weight of his body on hers and parted her lips to his kiss. His tongue swept into her mouth, filling her body with a new level of excitement because now she knew the kiss was only t
he beginning. But soon his lips left hers to brush hot, open-mouthed kisses across her cheekbone to the lobe of her ear and down her neck. A calloused hand moved roughly to push the chemise down her shoulder and then even lower until her nipple strained against the fabric briefly before pushing free. The hand immediately covered her lush breast and kneaded, surprisingly gentle despite his urgency. His thumb moved slowly over the pebbled tip.
Sophie arched into his touch. He was still kissing her neck but she remembered what his mouth felt like on her breast and wanted to feel it again. So she twined her fingers in his hair and pulled him down to the one he had just exposed to the night. His husky laughter caressed her skin, making it prickle, but he obliged and in moments she felt the moist heat of his mouth close over her. The tug of his lips brought about an immediate twinge of pleasure she felt deep in her core.
When his teeth scraped her, she arched involuntarily against him.
He responded by grinding his hips against her thigh. The hard ridge of his manhood pressed hot against her and she instinctively knew she wanted, needed, to get to that. Her hands left his hair and in moments one had found a gap between them and had moved down to feel him through the soft buckskin of his pants.
“Ah, Sophie,” he gasped against her flesh.
She chewed her bottom lip and let her palm slide along the ridge, marveling at his length and how he responded to her touch. His hips bucked lightly against her stroke so she experimented with her power and squeezed gently, wringing a strangled cry of pleasure from him. But then he pressed himself firmly against her thigh, stopping any further play on her part.
“Don’t stop, mon coeur. I need you.”
His mouth took hers hard one more time before pulling away, stopping only to hook a finger in the second strap of her chemise and tug it down, exposing her other breast. Gray placed a tender kiss on the pink nipple before leaving her to sit on the edge of the bed.
His boots fell with two soft thuds onto the hard floor before he stood and worked the buttons of his shirt. His skin gleamed in the low light as he shrugged out of it and tossed it to the chair to join her pile of clothes. Sophie’s lips parted in surprise when she saw the twin tattoos. They were various geometrical shapes etched in a black band around each of his biceps.
Shirtless, wearing nothing but buckskins, and with his hair hanging loose except for the one braid, he looked Comanche. She moved to her knees in front of him, torn between wanting to see more of him and needing to touch what she had only imagined before. Her fingertips lightly trailed over the peaks and dips of his smooth chest before her palms dared to press against the warm flesh.
“You’re so beautiful, Gray.” If there was ever a finer specimen of a man’s chest, she had not seen it. Not in any of the books on Grecian art she had studied or even on the occasional shirtless man she had seen at the stables. Or maybe it was only that this was Gray’s chest and, somehow over the past months, he had become the standard by which all men were measured.
Her palms moved down over the hard ridges of his stomach, fascinated by how he was so different from her. Hard where she was soft. They came to a stop at the waistband of his pants and she felt him draw in a deep breath.
“Can I?” Her tentative blue eyes met his hot gray ones.
“You have to know I’m at your mercy.” His intense gaze pierced hers.
She smiled and slowly pulled at the fastening. Her breath hitched when she saw the first sprinkling of dark hair. She pushed down but the pants caught. His hands came up to work them past his erection and then it sprang free, perfectly upright and reaching for his navel.
Sophie slowly reached for him, surprised and faintly apprehensive about his size. He was hot in her palm and jerked slightly when she held him. Steel encased with satin. A tiny bead of moisture gathered at the tip and she couldn’t resist rubbing it with her thumb. She looked up to gauge his reaction.
“Lie back.” His eyes had gone hooded and his voice brooked no argument, but she was more than willing to comply. Her insides felt like they had turned molten and she ached between her legs where before she had only felt tingles of awareness.
She should have been far past blushing but she felt herself do just that when Gray’s fiery gaze devoured her before bracing a knee on the mattress and gripping her drawers. But he paused as her gaze met his.
“You knew I was watching you undress?” he asked.
She had the grace to smile sheepishly as she confessed, “I knew.”
He smiled, too, a wicked, sinful thing, and tugged. She lifted her hips to help and her drawers quickly joined the growing pile of clothes on the chair.
“Gray.” She squirmed now, wanting him in a way she couldn’t name.
His face gave nothing away as his gaze raked her body before he slowly leaned down. His lips brushed her thighs and then placed a tender kiss on the golden curls at their apex. His fingers pushed up the cotton chemise so he could kiss her belly, tongue dipping into her navel, before placing an open-mouthed kiss of possession on each nipple and finally making his way to her mouth. She felt his urgency when his knee worked its way between her unresisting, but suddenly hesitant, thighs and he settled himself between them. That part of him seemed to have a life of its own, and brushed against her.
“Look at me, Sophie.” His words brought her gaze to his, only inches above her. He didn’t smile, but his eyes were tender as his hand moved between them. Her eyes widened as she felt his fingers touch her where she ached and she would have closed her thighs except his body was between them. She gasped aloud when he suddenly sheathed a finger inside her. It intensified the aching there. She tried to move with his finger but his weight pressed her down so she only managed to grind herself against him. But, oh, the friction felt so good.
“You’re so wet. So ready.” He whispered in her ear just before taking the sensitive lobe between his teeth, causing her intimate muscles to tighten deliciously.
She was ready, more than ready. Sophie felt wanton as she bent her knees to put her feet flat on the bed so she could open her legs wider. His finger left her and then she felt that foreign part of him touching her. He flexed forward and pushed the head inside, just past the tight opening. The delicious heaviness of him there, hot and throbbing, parting her, made her arch to take him in farther. But he moved slowly, priming her with a few easy, shallow thrusts that stoked the tension inside her and made her moan to be filled.
Gray held back. And instead of taking her like she wanted, he raised himself on an elbow above her and moved his hand back to where they were barely joined and stroked her there. The pad of his thumb moved over the tender, distended flesh in a steady rhythm that slowly increased with her arousal. Sophie panted as her universe narrowed to that touch occasionally emphasized by the inadvertent jerk of his hips. She watched as a telling bead of sweat formed on his brow and lazily trickled down to his cheekbone, and wanted to lick it from his skin, before her eyes closed, too far gone in her own pleasure to think of anything except his touch. Then the tremors began. Starting slowly at the precious spot where his thumb worked and moving their way out through her whole body. She groaned when the first wave crested and held on tight as others came and washed over her.
Unable to hold back anymore, Gray sheathed himself completely inside her in a deep thrust, tearing through her maidenhead and forcing the delicate tissue of her channel apart to accept his size. Sophie stiffened and made a noise low in her throat, her nails biting into his shoulders to stay him. He tried to hold back, to allow her untried body to get used to the feel of him, his whole body shaking with the effort, but he failed miserably. His fingertips bit into the soft flesh of her buttocks to hold her still for him as his hips grinded against her, unwilling to obey the commands of his mind.
She was so tight and hot wrapped around him, he only wanted to pound into her in a mindless fervor of abandon. And then she moved. A simple shift of position, probably, but his body took it as submission and before he could get a grip on his
passion, he pulled back and pushed into her. A single, deep, mind-numbing in its intensity thrust that was in no way gentle and in all ways the raw hunger he was afraid to unleash on her.
“Shit, Sophie.” He pulled away from her, stunned into sobriety by his own actions. “I’m sorry,” he whispered when he had completely withdrawn from her body.
“Gray.” From beneath him, her voice penetrated his conscious and summoned his gaze to hers. “Don’t leave!” She grabbed him desperately. “Please.”
He didn’t breathe as he looked down at her, hardly able to believe that he was hearing her correctly. That despite the pain he had caused her, she still wanted him. There was no fear on her face. She wanted him! To prove it she grabbed his hips and pulled him back to her.
“More!”
And then her hips were arching up to him, attempting to join them again and he hoped she knew what she was asking because he was lost. He fell over her then, resting on his forearms, aware of her slim, delicate body beneath him. His hands were trembling as he fisted them in the sheet on either side of her. Slowly and with infinite gentleness, he pushed into her again, his gaze locked on her face until he was fully seated within her. Her passage was so incredibly tight he was sure he’d hurt her, but her eyes were heavy-lidded and glazed with passion when they met his. He pulled out of her almost completely, and smiled when her fingernails bit into his hips to pull him back. He obliged and tenderly thrust into her again.
Her Forbidden Gunslinger Page 4