by Julia Keaton
Winter opened her eyes, caught his heady look as he lingered on her body, missing nothing as he caressed her every inch. She’d never felt beautiful until that moment, and seeing herself through his eyes was intoxicating. She’d never felt so desirable in all her life.
He took her hand and guided her to the bed, bidding her lay down. Joining her, he spread one hair roughened leg across hers, laying on his side as he toyed with her hair.
“I have wanted this from the first moment I saw you. I knew that one day, I would have you as my wife.”
A faint smile curled Winter’s lips, but it was without humor. “As badly as I behaved I cannot imagine why you would have wanted me.”
Logan touched her face. “I thought you were an angel … when I opened my eyes and saw you looking down at me with such caring on your face, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Winter sat back, frowning, tilting her head questioningly. “I don’t think I understand.”
His lips twisted. “I didn’t think you’d remember.”
“Remember what?” Winter asked, exasperated.
“The day you found me in the street, beaten almost to death. The day you helped me up and walked me through the worst part of town because I couldn’t walk without your help. I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and in that moment, I loved you. I knew that someday you would be mine.”
Winter stared at him a long moment, remembering, realizing at last why it was that he had always seemed familiar to her, why she’d always felt that she should know him. She could not find her voice to speak, could say nothing but pulled him down for a kiss that seared her senses.
He cupped one breast as he plunged his tongue into her mouth, pinching the nipple, kneading her firm breasts and then splaying his hand across her stomach. He moved it lower as he trailed from her mouth to her ear, easing his tongue over the intricate whorls as his fingers journeyed past the curls covering her sex to her moist cleft. He pushed two fingers into her folds, spreading them open until he could rub her clit, sliding in the juices flowing from his touch.
He breathed hotly into her ear as he drove his fingers into her, pumping into her as he rubbed his thumb over her clit again and again.
Winter moaned and clutched at his shoulder, eager for more, helplessly bucking her hips against his hand.
“Take me, Logan. Please. Do not prolong the torment.”
“Why? It is so enjoyable,” he murmured.
He sucked at the corner of her jaw as he moved on top of her, and she spread her legs open to accommodate him. He buried his face against her neck, propping on his arms as he guided his shaft to her cleft. Rubbing his body against her, pressing his hard chest against her aching breasts, he rocked his hips, slipping across her folds and the center of her sex. His arms trembled, and he pushed into her.
Winter jerked with the contact, gasping for air. She clutched his shoulders, wrapping a leg around his hips to pull him in more. He was so large, it felt so tight, so hard. He resisted her efforts, moving at his own pace. Inch by agonizing inch, he worked into her, his member stretching her to the limits of her endurance. Then he withdrew, slowly, almost completely withdrawing before pushing inside again. Each time pressing against the mouth of her womb, until the muscles of her sex relaxed and eagerly accepted him. Pleasure gained maddeningly close.
He lay half atop her, freeing one hand to move between their joined bodies, to rub against her clit with maddening speed. Winter moaned, clenching inside, and Logan grunted in pleasure, thrusting against her until he stretched her to the breaking point.
He stilled his movement, still rolling his fingers over her clit. He was bringing her to the heights of pleasure, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted him to join her.
She looked into his smoldering eyes and cupped his buttocks, digging her nails in as she pulled him inexorably forward. His body straining against her and the inevitable, he growled low in his throat and plunged fully into her depths.
Winter cried out and he muffled her cries with his mouth before raining kisses over her face. She trembled underneath him, her body adjusting to his size. He held still, and her sex quivered around him, clenching and unclenching.
“I am sorry for ever causing you hurt,” he whispered, looking pained.
“All is forgiven,” she said, enjoying the pleasure of having him completely inside her. She moved against him, holding him close in her embrace.
He groaned and pulled his shaft out to plunge it inside her again. She arched her back, meeting him. “You’ll be the death of me,” he said, increasing his tempo, her slickness easing his way, in and out, harder and harder as she met each thrust with abandon.
“La petit mort,” she gasped, the little death, kneading his tight buttocks, pulling him deeper with each thrust, until she thought the sensations would overwhelm her and she would go mad.
He buried his face against her neck, grinding his hips against her, building to the release hovering on the edges. She gripped him with her sex, massaging him with each powerful thrust, until she could take no more. She closed her eyes, blinded by the orgasm raging through her, quivering on the end of every nerve. She called out his name as she climaxed again and again, until he gained his own release and his seed shot deep into her womb.
He collapsed on top of her, exhausted, and she lay trembling beneath him, her sex twitching as the waves of pleasure eased away, debilitating her, until she was drained of everything but pure feeling. She rode down the high of his loving, her mind shutting down.
They drifted off to sleep, nestled in each other’s arms.
Sometime later, Winter awoke to Logan’s caress as he stroked his hands through her hair.
She smiled lazily, looking up at him. “How long have you been watching me?”
“Not long enough,” he said, a corner of his mouth hitched high, and he kissed her. “I have something I wanted to give you, but didn’t want to wake you.”
Underneath his pillow, he pulled out a small box and presented it to her. It seemed to be formed of a single piece of wood, for she could see no latch or opening, nor ridges for the lid. Oval shaped glass was inset on the top. She picked it up from his palm and peered into it. Inside rested the necklace he had given her, held immobile under the glass. She hadn’t even realized it had gone missing, couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it.
He closed his hand over the box and her hand. “We will lock the ice princess away forever, my love.”
And they did.
The End
Read an excerpt from Stranger in my Bed by Julia Keaton, available at Amazon.com, B&N, All Romance Ebooks, and other fine retailers:
It was a tickle of sensation that roused Melantha, brought her floating upward toward consciousness and at the same time stirred warmth low in her belly. For several moments it teased her mind that she was experiencing one of the delightfully stimulating fantasy dreams. The tightening of something around her wrist wrenched her wide awake abruptly, however. Still disoriented, Melantha tugged at her arm and discovered she couldn’t move it.
Her eyelids snapped open but she found that the room was as bereft of light as the inside of a cave, the darkness so profound she could almost feel it.
She lay perfectly still for several moments, feeling her heart rate leap from slow even beats to a rapid gallop as she tried to move and discovered her arms were bound at the wrists and her legs at the ankles.
Coolness wafted over her, and then warmth as someone leaned near.
“Where is it?”
A shiver skated down Melantha’s spine. The voice was definitely male, but the whispered words made it impossible to identify the voice even if she had known it well enough to recognize it and she was suddenly very much afraid that she would not have recognized it. “I’ll scream,” she whispered shakily, finding her voice at last. “I’ll scream the house down!”
Something warm and rounded that she finally decided was a fingertip touched her just below
the collar bone and traced a path straight down her body, pausing at the thatch of hair that covered her mons.
She felt it all the way down.
“I don’t think so. You’re completely naked and tied spread eagle to your bed. If it’s your desire to be found like this by your brother, your grandmother, the servants and the half dozen or so guests currently staying here, though, by all means scream.”
The picture he painted so deliberately in her mind closed her throat. As if to emphasize what he had said, she felt her skin prickle in acute sensation, felt her nipples draw tightly. “How dare you!” she managed to get out in a croak of a whisper.
He grunted. She felt the bed dip as he settled on the mattress beside her. Almost casually, he traced a path with his finger again, this time circling her belly button, and then moving upward and circling her breasts in a lazy figure eight. Melantha held her breath, trying to close her mind to the finger but found it impossible. Her skin rippled beneath his touch, sending sparks of increased awareness through her. “I think you can safely assume that there is not much that I would not dare, all things considered.”
The finger, to her relief, disappeared. “I know you know where it is.”
Melantha licked her lips, straining to pierce the darkness and see the man she knew was hovering over her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I think you do,” he murmured, his voice husky, but still too raspy and indistinct to identify. He said nothing for several moments, as if he was thinking. “Should I torture it out of you, I wonder?”
Fear closed over Melantha at that none too subtle threat.
She jumped at the first, light brush, expecting pain. Instead, the touch was so light she wondered if she would’ve felt it at all if every nerve ending in her body hadn’t been standing on end seeking stimulation to tell her what was going on around her. The touch traveled up and down her body in slow, mesmerizing circles. Goosebumps erupted all over her as it stroked over her breast, circled one nipple and then glided back and forth over the tip, stirring currents of warmth in her breast and a tightening sensation in her lower belly.
She was having trouble controlling her breathing by the time it ceased to circle her nipple and traveled down into the valley between her breasts and then around and around the other breast in ever tightening circles until she grew tense with anticipation. She let out her breath with a slight gasp of sound as it brushed across her other nipple, back and forth, lightly, just enough to tease her with the need for something more substantial.
It was a feather, she realized as the soft brushing moved on, traveled up the side of her neck and down again.
A feather. He was stroking her body with a feather.
Almost the instant that filtered into her mind, her thoughts leapt to her diary.
“You bastard! You stole my diary---and you read it!”
A hand clamped tightly over her mouth right in the middle of the word bastard, cutting her off so that the remainder of the accusation was a muffled murmur of anger against his palm. Tsking, he leaned toward her. Teeth dug into the nipple he had just teased to exquisite sensation, knocking the breath out of her. She made a frightened sound against his palm, squeezing her eyes closed against the pain she expected to flood through her at any moment. Instead, after bearing down slowly until she had stilled in discomfort, he covered the tip with his mouth, sucking it like a ripe berry.
Fire coursed through her in a wave that stunned her. Her lungs felt as if they had collapsed. Tensing all over, she curled her fingers into the palms of her hands, digging her nails into the sensitive flesh, but even that was not enough to pull her mind from the sensations coursing through her from the feel of his mouth.
Feeling as if she was falling into a dark pit of live coals, she struggled to evade the heated torture of his mouth, shifting, bucking, and twisting. Again, he caught the tip of her nipple between his teeth, pinching warningly, and bearing down harder and harder until she abruptly went still. When she did, he covered the tip with his lips again and sucked on it until Melantha thought she would pass out from the heat that enveloped her. For a few moments she continued the fight internally, but her resistance faded rapidly, drained away by the mesmerizing lure of the pleasurable tension building inside of her until she was no longer certain whether she wanted him to stop or keep doing it until she could stand no more.
By the time he lifted his head, she was so consumed by the need to drag enough air into her lungs through her nostrils that her mind was liquid with the swirling intoxicant that filled her blood stream and sizzled along every nerve ending. And she had lost awareness of everything except the pull of his mouth on her flesh and the gathering heat and moisture and tremors in her quim.
Coolness washed over her when he lifted his mouth at long last and the heated moisture left by his mouth on her breast seemed to freeze over, sending a shiver through her. Slowly, his hand eased from her lips. She gasped in a sharp breath of air, filling her burning lungs, struggling now against the heated stupor she had fallen into.
As her body cooled, her breathing slowed and her heart ceased to beat frantically, her body returning reluctantly almost to normal except for the tension that seemed to remain stubbornly, she began to wonder if he had left. Even as she turned her head to try to locate the shadow within the shadows, she felt the warmth of his breath on her nipple, the one he had already teased until she thought she would go mad. She gasped in a sharp breath to protest, but he covered her mouth with his hand at once, nipping painfully at the nipple that was still swollen to painful sensitivity.
She cried out against his hand, going still. “Pain or pleasure. Your choice … as long as you’re quiet. One scream, one threat of a scream and the choice is no longer yours.”
Melantha swallowed, nodding her head to let him know she understood. His hand eased on her lips but did not disappear, hovering lightly against her lips. Again, his mouth covered her nipple. She flinched, more than half expecting the pain of before. Instead, he sucked it, drawing forth the dizzying heat in a mind sundering rush, more rapidly than before. She fought it, struggling to keep her wits about her, but he ignored her internal battle, sucking and teasing the sensitive tip until her will collapsed beneath the tender assault.
The tremors centering in her quim spread outward until she was trembling all over, until she felt feverish from the heat emanating from her body, until she could no longer remain still. A soft sound of distress escaped her lips in spite of all she could do.
His hand tightened momentarily over her lips and then disappeared. He lifted his head.
Disappointment filled her.
Gasping, shuddering, she wrestled with the pounding waves of pleasure as they slowly ebbed.
“Where is it?”
The question baffled her. She could not collect her wits enough to make any sense of it at all for many moments, but as her body began to cool again and her brain began to function, she remembered what he’d asked her before he’d begun to torment her with his mouth until she was ready to scream.
He had read her diary.
“The papers that were in the casket,” he prompted, impatience in his voice now. “Where are they?”
For several moments more, confusion still gripped her, but abruptly she remembered the yellowed, ancient looking legal papers she had taken from the box.
The problem was it did not immediately come to her just where she had put them.
He was not a patient man. She was still trying to think what she had done with the papers when she felt his heated breath on her breast again. “No!” she gasped.
She was immediately sorry she had. He covered her mouth with his hand and nipped at her hard enough it sent a sharp jolt of pain through her. She stilled instantly, panting against his palm.