He bent his head to her neck; she tipped her jaw to allow him better access. He took it, stroking his tongue up the heated column of her neck, tasting her flowery skin and the barest hint of salt. He felt her move beneath him, her chest arching to meet his.
He lowered his head to her chest, to the satiny flesh of her breasts, the exquisite puckering of her nipples, dusky pink against her gleaming pale skin. His teeth bit her gently, and she breathed his name with a catch in her throat.
Leander smiled, his head lowered, his teeth bared against her skin. A fierce, savage joy scorched through him.
Mine.
He drew his tongue down her body, between her breasts, over her belly, down to her thighs. He bit her there too, heard her make a small, restless moan as his teeth tested her succulent flesh.
He found her center, the slick ruby between her legs hot and wet under his tongue.
She gasped and stilled, her breath ragged. He dug his fingers into her bottom and reveled in her. Her musky-sweet taste like maple syrup, the muscles of her legs smooth and flexed and feminine against his shoulders, her hips and bottom so round and soft in his hands.
He kissed her and stroked her with his tongue until she writhed beneath him, her hands twisting in his hair.
“Leander,” she gasped, her voice broken, breathless. He didn’t stop. He wanted—he needed to hear her say it again. Another lap of his tongue with his fingers stroking her now, teasing, probing inside her heat and tight wetness. She moaned, her back arched.
He pushed his fingers deeper, and she gave him what he wanted with a sharp intake of breath.
“Leander!”
In one swift motion, he drew himself up her body and sank deep into her.
She shattered around him.
Her climax was abrupt and gorgeous, a delicious, shuddering clench and throb that nearly sent him over the edge at once. She cried out, her thighs trembling, her body a lovely taut bow beneath him. He clenched his teeth, willing himself to hold back against the enormous tide of pleasure her orgasm gave him, willing himself to be still as she rocked and gasped beneath him, her head thrown back, her eyes squeezed shut, the sensation of her body so lush and warm and pleasing he had to bite his tongue against it.
In a moment she relaxed underneath him. Her head lolled to the side. She breathed out, sighing again, her legs and arms slackening around him.
Still ardent and throbbing inside her, barely controlled, Leander tipped Jenna’s face toward him with a finger. He kissed her tenderly and her eyes fluttered open.
“Better?” he asked, low, gently teasing.
She smiled at him, blinked slowly with half-lidded eyes, flushed cheeks. “Almost.”
She ran her hands down his back, palms open against his skin, urging him closer. Her knees slid up, her ankles crossed at his waist. Her smile now was something utterly feminine, knowing and sensual. She arched into him and drew him deep with an erotic, fluid motion of her pelvis.
He breathed out with a moan, all teasing gone.
She lifted her hips and sank her fingers into his buttocks, and now he could not stop. He thrust into her, agony burning through him with the feel of her, lustrous and hot against his skin.
She gave a soft moan, her head tipped back, the heat of her burning him to his core. He reveled in the sight of her beneath him, her beauty and flexed rapture, her hair a ripple of silken gilt tumbled over the pile of cashmere and wool, the dim gleam of milky skin, slender thighs wrapped tight around his waist.
“Jenna,” he gasped, caught between her pleasure and his own release.
She shuddered, said his name, formed other broken words that meant yes and oh God, please and now. She pulled his head down with both hands and kissed him hard. Her body strained against his, she met his every thrust with shivers and low, mewling noises in her throat that resonated all the way through him.
She gasped against his mouth and tilted her head back. Almond cat’s-eyes fixed on him with a look of pleasure and ardor so intense his heart spasmed within his chest.
“Come with me,” he commanded, hoarse, thrusting deep. He lowered his head and bit her on the neck, so hard he tasted the coppery tang of her blood on his tongue. He closed his eyes and let his hips take over, the thrusts harder and faster, electricity snapping along his nerves, shooting up his spine.
“Yes,” she breathed, the faintest of sounds before her head fell back, before she stopped breathing entirely. Her whole body arched into his and he groaned, shuddering, feeling her clench around him as her orgasm hit. He pushed deep, so deep into her it must have hurt, but she only made a low, impassioned sound and tightened her legs around him. Her nails bit into his back.
His own orgasm began as a throbbing pulse that quickly expanded and exploded through his body, ripping another groan from him, this one deeper and more primal. He buried his face in her hair and put both hands under her bottom, squeezing and pumping and lost.
He gave himself to her.
His seed and his climax and things he had no name for, secret things deep in his heart he had never spoken aloud, love and longing and blazing desire knotted together as one, an upswell of pleasure and bliss fixed on this lovely creature beneath him, binding him to her.
She was his. She was his and nothing could change that now.
He thought for a brief, deranged second that were he to die at this moment, he would be the luckiest man he had ever known.
Against his chest, he felt the anthem of her heart, keeping time with his own, its frenzied beat not yet beginning to slow. They lay entwined together in the dark, upon the mess of coats, oblivious to the world for long, countless minutes. He let himself drift, let his panting slow, let the moment spin out to dreamy, lazy perfection.
When he could breathe again, he found her lips, kissed her gently. His hair trailed dark along her alabaster skin. He slid out of her and rolled her next to him, on her side, pulling her up hard to nestle in the warm space against his body, their chests and stomachs and thighs pressed together.
He stroked her face, pushed a lock of hair from her brow. A few bright strands caught the light like threads of gold. She burrowed down next to him, sighed prettily, her head cradled on his arm.
“Now I’m better,” she murmured, drowsy and lax against him.
He bent to kiss her, smiling another pagan, barbarian smile. Elation, triumph, and a piercing, fierce pride washed over him, relentless and dark as a hurricane.
Mine.
19
He’d carried her to his bed at some point during the night, though she hadn’t woken up for that, or anything else, until this very moment. She felt as if she hadn’t slept in years and was making up for lost time.
Jenna’s eyes came open to the dove-soft sheen of dawn beginning to lighten the sky through the windows of Leander’s bedroom. They were huge—like so much else in this manor house that was really more like a fortress—beveled panes of cut glass set in casements framed by heavy silk draperies showcasing the emerald-dark forest swathed in mist and shadows beyond.
His bed was massive as well, soft as eiderdown and deliciously comfortable. She felt warm and sated and utterly relaxed, like a ragdoll with loosened joints. She looked at Leander, solid and substantial and still asleep by her side, and a scotch-warm flush spread through her stomach.
He was beautiful as no other man she had ever known, burnished skin and sculpted muscle and potent masculinity laid over with elegant manners, perfectly at ease in his own body. Confident. Even in sleep he looked confident; a little, pleased smile curved one corner of his mouth.
The diffused morning light flattered him, though he didn’t need flattering, he was too perfect as it was. She lifted a finger and traced the outline of his dark eyebrow. The pad of her fingertip hovered just above the winged curve, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin.
Beneath her finger, she felt the echo of his dreams.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on his heartbeat instead.
In the four days she and Morgan had spent together in her rooms—locked into her rooms, she sourly reminded herself—Morgan had shown her how to drown out anything she didn’t want to see or feel, to manage the glut of sensation that came flooding through her with the touch of flesh upon flesh.
Thank God she had. If not, last night—with Leander’s hands and mouth and body over hers, inside hers—would have been something very different altogether.
Her gaze dropped to his lips. Her finger moved from his brow to linger over the dented curve above his top lip, a cupid’s bow of perfect proportion.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to touch his body again, to spend long hours discovering it. She wanted to tell him all her secrets and fears and feel the hard length of him filling her, stretching and inflaming her until she lost herself to him, to the magic they made together.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about this—whatever this was. She thought, frowning, she might happily forego any further thought on the subject for as long as possible.
Forever, preferably.
Last night changes nothing, she told herself firmly, dropping her hand from its ghosted exploration of his face. Nothing at all.
The lonely cry of a hawk gliding through the bleached sky drew her attention back to the windows.
A curious surge of desire pinged inside her stomach as she looked at the forest. It was deep and primal, like a bass note plucked once on a guitar string. But the note didn’t fade; it held and grew and vibrated in her stomach as she stared at the line of trees rolling off into the distance over low hills. The sudden urge to feel the loamy forest floor underfoot was an itch, an almost irresistible compulsion.
“It calls to you,” Leander murmured. He shifted his weight on the mattress, sending a waft of scented, warm air to her nose, the delicious smell of his skin folded within it. The heat of his hand was heavy and real on her hip. “Doesn’t it?”
He opened his eyes and gazed at her with a look of hot, hungry knowing.
She blushed deeply, wishing she wouldn’t. The memory of the pleasure he gave her with his body, with his hands and lips and tongue, became a delicious sweetness in her mouth.
“The forest? Yes, I suppose it does. I felt...safe there. At home.”
“That’s because it is your home.” He stretched like a cat in the sunshine, drowsy and languid, yet capable of coming fully alert at any moment to devour a mouse.
Or her.
He settled back down against the mattress and slid his hand from her hip to trace a path up her spine, making small, stroking circles with his thumb. It sent currents of electricity coursing through her body.
“What do you mean?” she asked casually, trying to ignore the pulse of pleasure his hands gave her, even this—the barest stroke of his skin over hers. Here in the clarity of the morning sun, the memory of her wanton abandon from the night before seemed something very far away—and best forgotten.
He lifted up on one elbow to peer down at her with half-lidded eyes, a secret smile. Even partially hidden behind a fall of shining jet hair, his eyes gleamed like jewels refracting the light.
“You were born there.”
She sat up abruptly in bed. The white satin sheets slid down to her waist, her skin prickled as it met the cool air. She stared down at Leander with wide eyes.
“What?”
He dropped his gaze to her naked breasts then lifted his lashes to gaze at her once again. His smile deepened. He raised a hand to her cheek, watched its path as he moved it down her jaw, over her neck. One finger traced the delicate outline of her collarbone.
“What a lovely creature you are,” he murmured, bringing his finger down to skim languidly between the swell of her breasts. “Not yet five o’clock in the morning, and you’re already shouting at me.”
She pulled the pillow out from under his head and smacked him with it.
Leander fell back against the sheets with a muffled laugh. He reached out for her, found her waist, pulled her atop his body with the easy work of strong muscle. She scowled down at him as he pushed aside her hair and cradled her head with both hands. He gazed up at her face.
“Are you ever going to stop with the dramatic pronouncements?” she demanded.
Something in his face softened. He stroked a thumb under the fringe of her lower lashes then pulled her face to his, bringing their lips into delicious friction. She thought she might not be able to breathe with want, with the desire that rolled through her as she felt his warm body under hers, his lips against hers.
Then, as he stroked one hand down her back and traced a finger into the cleft between her bottom, she thought breathing might not even be necessary.
“I may have one or two more dramatic pronouncements up my sleeve yet,” he murmured. His gaze, pale green veiled with shadows, angled to hers. “Perhaps something involving a bent knee?”
It took her a moment of stupefied silence before she found her tongue and willed it to move.
“I’m not sure I can take any more of your surprises,” she said, unnerved. She lowered her head to his chest to avoid his gaze and listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat, trying to calm herself with the rise and fall of his smooth chest beneath her cheek.
“And besides,” she said, tart, before she could stop herself, “things involving men and bent knees usually involve questions, not pronouncements. And large baubles. Specifically diamonds.”
She swallowed, bit her lip, felt flame spread across her cheeks.
“All right then,” he said, amused and unrepentant. He smoothed his hands over her head, combed his finger through the thick cascade of hair spread over her back. “I’ll say something entirely neutral. Perhaps...good morning?”
Jenna breathed in and out through her nose, vexed and rattled, verging on hysterical. “You have exactly ten seconds before your head becomes separated from your body,” she said with exaggerated care, concentrating hard on the real and grounding sight of an elaborate dressing table across the room, an elegant piece of burled walnut topped with Caraca marble and a shield-shaped mirror. “I was born here?”
He pressed his lips to her hair and she felt the laughter shaking him. “Hostile and demanding. The perfect duo. How irresistible. You are most definitely my dream woman.”
She flung herself off him with a frustrated huff, but he caught her before she rose from the bed and pushed her back into the downy softness of the mattress. He threw one heavy leg over hers, caught her wrist, and pinned it to the pillow over her head.
“You are so endearingly literal,” he said softly. Light spilled through his inky hair to paint the angles of his face deepest chocolate, espresso, and gold. She relished the heat and weight of his leg over her body, the firm muscles of his thighs and stomach and arms, the tickle of his hair against her skin.
She looked into his emerald eyes, filled with warmth and a deep, mischievous tenderness, and felt the cold and impenetrable thing that had been lodged inside her chest since childhood dissolve, like a block of steel lowered into a smelter.
She blinked up at him, dazed by an uncomfortable new feeling, something she hadn’t felt in years, something that made her body feel so light it was as if she was filled with helium and was in danger of floating off the bed and drifting up toward the ceiling.
She had a terrible suspicion this uncomfortable new feeling might be happiness.
No, she thought. Oh, dear God, no.
“Literal?” she repeated weakly. Her pulse was a sudden, thundering roar in her ears.
You cannot fall in love with him. You cannot.
He drew his hand down her arm, stroking the skin of her wrist and the soft place inside her elbow, caressing her shoulder, then her neck. He brought his hand up to cup the side of her face and lowered his head. He brushed the tip of his nose against hers.
“The New Forest has succored the Ikati of Sommerley for almost twenty generations. It’s kept all our secrets, allowed us to flourish and live undiscovered through hundreds of years
. It’s in our blood. It’s in your blood. Your body may not have been born there, but your soul was, your spirit was. It’s your home, Jenna,” he murmured. “You’re finally home.”
“Oh.” She laughed, a little too high and breathlessly, turning her face to avoid his eyes. “Is that what you meant?”
She’d never known exactly where she was born. It was just another of the many mysteries of her childhood, an unimportant fact lost in the shuffle of moving and hiding and pretending to be something she was not. “Somewhere near the water,” was her mother’s standard response, and whether she really didn’t remember or just didn’t want to say, Jenna never found out. And so it was tucked away with all the other questions that were never answered, frozen into the bitter cold that solidified around her heart so long ago. It was the kind of cold that burned like fire.
That’s why you’re here, remember? she reprimanded herself. Answers. Nothing more.
Leander lowered his face to hers. She exhaled and he stole it back from her lips, mingling their breath together. He drew his mouth over hers with a lovely, silken brush of skin against skin that made her shiver.
“My beautiful girl,” he murmured, kissing the corner of her mouth. He spread his fingers around the back of her neck, his fingers warm and strong in her hair, stroking, possessive. “My lover.” She felt the heat of his erection growing stiff and insistent against her hip. He bent his head and nipped the tender skin of her neck, pressed his lips gently where he had bruised the skin from the night before. “Say you’re mine. Tell me you’re mine.”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. NO!
She squirmed beneath him, trying to escape, but he only laughed low in his throat and pulled her even closer.
“So demure,” he teased in that pirate’s voice that made her weak all over. He slid his hand down to her chest and cupped the fullness of one breast in his palm. His voice dropped an octave. “You weren’t quite so demure last night.”
He pinched her nipple between his fingers and she fought back a gasp.
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