She licked his throat. The shiver became a shudder, but he still did not lower his head.
She was a seasoned seductress, a heartless, irresistible jade. Men everywhere, including this one, proclaimed it. Then why could she not seduce Thomas McClairen into giving her more kisses!
“Thomas,” she began.
He looked down at her, stilling whatever she might have said. His eyes blazed with desire, unadulterated, barely controlled. A ripple of apprehension raced through her.
“Is this some new form of witchery?” he demanded hoarsely. “A torment dreamed up in that complicated little mind of yours? Because it is unnecessary. There is nothing you can do to make me want you more and to make that wanting more unbearable.”
“But you are bigger, far stronger than I.”
He gazed at her ruefully. “I am weaker than a day-old kitten where you are concerned, madam. I am undone by you. I could no more force myself on you than I could fly.”
“Even if I tempted you, teased you, brought you within an inch of what you want?” She did not know what evil impulse drove her.
He shook his head. “Would you have blood, Fia? Blood I would gladly give, if you would but cease these games and leave me in peace.”
“I cannot.”
“Then we are transfixed here, for I cannot leave you.” His smile was infinitely sad.
Her heart pounded. She stood poised on the precipice.
“What do you want?” she asked softly.
He answered at once. “I want you to bid me to stay,” he commanded. “But bid me stay knowing that I will have you beneath me on your back.”
He said not a word about affection, but she was a woman, not a maiden. Her marriage bed had had no affection in it. She knew now its presence because she’d known well its absence. He needn’t say the words for them to be true.
“Please,” she managed to say, “stay.”
Triumph blazed in his expression and his lips parted on an exultant smile. He swung his leg over the saddle and slid to the ground without releasing her.
He carried her back above the crest of the knoll, striding to where the grasses grew sweet and lush and thick to the edge of the pine copse. Only then did he release her, as he worked at divesting her of her skirts while her own hands hastily unlaced her bodice, as though they expected some clock to suddenly strike the hour and break this spell of enchantment.
Her skirts fell; her bodice was withdrawn; her shoes slipped from her feet. Thomas stepped back.
Uncertainly, Fia’s gaze followed him as she became self-conscious and awkward. Why was he looking at her like that? She was supposed to be the bloody enigmatic one, not him!
“Are we going to … lie together now?” she asked, startling Thomas.
Her words were prim, uncertain, as if she didn’t have a name for what she wanted of him. Her straight shoulders were drawn back, her chin tilted in that heartbreakingly valiant manner. But she didn’t know what to do with her hands or arms. They hung stiffly at her sides, her palms turned out in an attitude of unconscious supplication. And her eyes were huge pools of fevered impatience and … trepidation.
A slow dawning suspicion took hold of his imagination. Could it be? “Fia,” he said, “how many lovers have you had?”
She was lovely, so vulnerable. She shivered, standing there in her undress, the tip of one breast peeking through the lace trim of her chemise.
“Fia?”
She took a deep breath; the nipple quivered deliciously.
“I’ve had one husband,” she declared. “I’ve never known a lover.”
The gift of what she offered staggered him. “Let me be your lover, Fia.”
“I would,” she said faintly, “but I doubt I can walk.”
He laughed at this frank confession, delighted with her honesty. In a trice, he swept her up in his arms—all softness and silkiness, lithe and elegant and tense. He nuzzled her throat, nipped at her collarbone, and licked the soft indentation at the base of her throat. Then he dropped easily to his knees, sliding his arms from under her and shedding his jacket so that she might lie back upon it.
“God, I love your hair,” he muttered, lifting a handful of the silken mass and letting it filter down over his forearm. He wanted this to be slow. He wanted to play with her, touch her, and have her touch him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling his body tremble.
“Nothing,” he assured her, whatever eloquence he could claim dammed up by desire. “I want you. I want you and it’s hard not to just … take you.”
His coarseness sent a wave of color up her throat and face. He bracketed her face between his forearms and leaned over her, conscious of how small she was beneath him, how delicate.
“I won’t.”
“But I want you to.”
The admission was less timid now; she’d begun to believe in the depth of his want. God knows, she should, he thought humorlessly. His cock prodded her hip with something less than subtlety.
He rucked up her petticoats, finding her legs still sheathed in their expensive clocked silk stockings. He sat up, took hold of her ankles, and pulled her toward him until her legs lay across his lap. Her eyes grew round with wonder.
He grinned wickedly at her. “You’ve lovely legs, Lady Fia. As pretty a pair as I’ve seen grace a filly.”
Her pupils sparkled. Her lips parted on an “Oh!” of delight. How Fia loved to be teased!
“Seems a shame to cover them,” he said. “Why would a soul do that, do you suppose?”
“Perhaps there are warts beneath those stockings, sir,” she said a bit breathlessly, lying back down, her legs sprawled across Thomas’s lap.
“I think yer lying, Lady Fia,” Thomas intoned, his burr a whiskey-rich brew, sensual and intoxicating. “I think yer legs are as flawless as the rest of you, and I mean to find out.”
Still holding her gaze, he grasped her knee in one hand while with the other he slowly untied the beribboned garter. His fingers skated behind her knee to the sensitive skin there. She started at the feel. Thomas’s wolfish grin grew hotter.
Slowly, incrementally, he rolled the silk stocking down, his finger sliding in a long, leisurely journey down her calf. His eyes glowed. A little muscle jumped at the corner of his wicked, “eat-you-up” grin.
“What penalty do you suppose I should extract if this leg is as fine as the rest of you?” he asked.
She couldn’t answer. Her voice wouldn’t work. Her breath jumped in her throat. She raised herself to her elbows to see his dark, strong fingers on her thighs. The sight was indescribably erotic, and awareness pulsed in the tips of her breasts and between her legs.
“Well?” His eyes looked darker. “It’s perfect.”
“Must be on the other leg.”
His smile bespoke his disbelief, but he grasped her other leg and with a flick of his fingers undid the garter. His palm stroked the back of her calf, moving slowly up past the back of her knee. Climbed higher. And higher. Her eyelids slid half closed. She shivered. Higher his hand traveled, skating to the very top of her thighs. Her head lolled between her shoulders. There was more. She could sense it, just … Ah, yes! He cupped her bottom.
She panted a little, closing her eyes to better concentrate on his touch, the heat of his hand, the roughness of his callused fingertips, the breadth of his palm.
“Lie back.”
His voice was very near. He’d looped one long, muscular arm behind her back, easing her down. “Lie back, Fia love.”
Fia love. How many maidens had tumbled back, legs sprawled wide, at the sound of similar words? Nonetheless, she heeded the sweet, hushed urgency of his voice. She was weak and drifting, hot and tense all at once. Lie back, Fia love.
His hand curved around her bottom, his fingers limning the cleft and moving lower, easing between her lax thighs and grazing the small triangle of black between her legs. She jerked, startled by the electric sensation accompanying that seemingly casual contact.
Dear Lord! She clasped his shoulders, needing some anchor to keep her from being swept away by a tidal wave of sensation. He held her with his free hand while working his sensual magic with the other, whispering unintelligibly, sounds both yearning and encouraging.
“Yes. Yes,” she answered, agreement, consent, and encouragement all expressed in that breathless, urgent word. “Yes.”
Her hips rose, intuitively seeking him. One knee fell to the side, opening her completely to his ministrations.
“Easy, Fia.”
His finger entered her.
She arched upright like a taut bow, her fingers digging into him. She’d not known. She’d heard but never realized, counted herself lucky to be amongst those women who were not at the mercy of sexual appetite. Fool!
His finger worked deeper. Her head spun, the earth whirled, and her eyes opened, seeking him, finding his gray-blue gaze riveted on her face, a sheen of moisture making his skin gleam like oiled bronze.
She understood. He wanted her. Wanted more of her than this. She did, too. She wanted the thick presence of him deep within her.
“Please,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked, his voice rough, his gaze searching. “What do you want? Tell me.”
“I want you in me.”
He rolled away from her, his hands already at the closings on his breeches. She grasped his heavy wrist, stopping him. “I want you inside me and I want … I want you to be naked.”
She waited, her breath staggering in her throat at her boldness. Would he think her cheap, sluttish—
In one swift graceful movement, he rose to his feet, stripping off his linen shirt as he went. He flung it carelessly aside, standing on the heel of his boot, jerking it off, and kicking it aside. He did the same to the other, and then straightened, fumbling with the closures on his breeches.
He was so male. His chest was broad and deep, covered with fine, dark hair that tapered where it grew lower on his belly. His arms were long and lean with sharply defined musculature, the skin smooth and clear.
He turned slightly, peeling off his breeches. His buttocks were as hard and well defined as the rest of him, his hips narrow, his legs long. Her gaze moved up to his face.
He was watching her with fascinating intensity, like he would devour her, or envelop her, but somehow consume her. He stepped out of the breeches and pushed his smallclothes off his narrow hips.
Her gaze traveled down a flat belly rippling with muscle to where his member sprang thick and swollen, angling proudly erect. He was big there, too. Thick.
A flutter of trepidation warred with mounting urgency. His gaze followed her own. A half smile lifted the corner of his mouth, revealing that unexpected and spellbinding dimple. A cocky thing, that smile, a hint of purring masculine self-assurance in it.
“I’ll not hurt you.”
“I know.” And she did. He would not hurt her, unless he left her like this, on the brink of some arcane feminine experience she’d never before suspected and now needed above all things to know.
He knelt next to her and gently pulled the lace edges of her chemise apart. He sat back on his haunches, his eyes glowing.
“Beautiful.”
She’d never understood the masculine preoccupation with breasts, but now she was glad of it. Glad he approved of her own so openly, so heartily. He made her feel utterly feminine, oddly vulnerable, yet completely powerful.
She’d known she was beautiful but she had never felt beautiful, not until Thomas McClairen had called her such.
He bent his head and placed his lips on her nipple. He kissed it, wet it with the tip of his tongue, sipped it into the warm interior of his mouth and … and did things. Marvelous things. Unspeakably stimulating things; rolling it between his lips, lathing its silky smooth perimeter until it glistened, nuzzling the deep curve of her nether breast and nipping it, and then going on to give her other breast similar attention.
She purred with the pleasure of it, grasping handfuls of his silky hair and holding his dark head to her. He pulled her nipple deep into his mouth, sucking hard and rhythmically.
Her heels dug into the ground as she lifted her hips, demanding, begging, seeking what she wanted.
Him.
In her.
His hand slid down her ribs and clasped her hip. Gently, he pushed her against the ground and rolled one heavy leg across her. She felt it between them, his cock, warm and incredibly hard, like chamois-sheathed steel, tantalizing in its proximity to her mons.
He kissed her mouth, burnishing her lips with his own as he’d done before, coaxing them apart. She knew now what he wanted. At once she opened her mouth, raking her fingers through the rich, thick waves of his hair before sending her hands flowing down his back, savoring the jump and bunch of his muscles beneath her palms, the smooth-hard texture of his skin. And all the while he kept giving her those deep, plundering kisses.
He shifted his hips, moving fully on top of her. His weight felt good. His body dense and masterful, her own lush and accommodating. His hand drifted down her side and then between them. He grasped his hard shaft and slowly, teasingly moved the swollen head between her sleek folds, over that little amazing bump. She cried out, and he drank the sound, moving closer, deeper, until …
“Fia,” he muttered, and with a deep, controlled thrust pushed himself inside of her. She bucked. His body trembled, and he released her mouth, dragging his lips across her cheek and resting his forehead on the ground next to her.
“I am striving for some portion of control here, Fia,” he whispered thickly. “I beg you to help me. Don’t move.”
Her eyes flew wide at his words, at his presence in her, at the feel of him lying on her. Not move?
Impossible!
She wriggled. His shaft jerked in response, drawing a gasp from her. Aye! More of this. More.
He pulled himself out and then slowly pushed back in. She followed his withdrawal, wanting more.
“Nay,” he whispered harshly. “Wait.” He withdrew on a long, slow hiss of pleasure. “Meet me now. Come to me, love.”
He thrust as she raised her hips. A cry of discovery broke from her throat.
“Again.”
And again. Each thrust and counterthrust taught her the rhythm of this ancient dance. Each fiber of her body sang with discovery, with involvement. His thrusts grew deeper, more powerful, and more elemental.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Please.” For there was more. Just beyond this point, beckoning, urging, promising. There was more.
He grasped her leg, hooking her knee above his hip, increasing the depth and tempo of his possession. His jaw tensed, the hard muscles of his chest bulged, corded over with veins. His skin grew flushed with exertion.
Her eyes closed. Sparks careened against the velvety blackness; the sensations spiraled around her, in her, taking her, owning her.… A pleasure so intense it felt like pain thrummed through her. He whispered, his rock-hard body straining above her and in her.
With her.
She lost herself, instinct overriding the dense armor of her self-protection. “Please, Thomas! Please!”
His arms surrounded her, lifted her. His mouth fell on the side of her neck, sucking gently in counterpoint to his hard thrust. “Let go, Fia,” he murmured. “Let go.”
Warmth flooded her. Electric waves of sensation coiled tighter and tighter, until all that was left was an urgent essence of need.
“Make it yours. Take it now.”
With his words, desire exploded into fireworks of pleasure, rolling through her body like thunder, expanding as it went. Wave upon wave rippled outward, coursing, streaming molten satisfaction, emptying even as it filled.
“Thomas,�
� she gasped in amazement. “Thomas!”
He did not answer, could not answer. Her body molded beneath his, accepting and giving back in kind his rising passion. He rode the thick, bucking waves of it, blocking out everything except the two of them, the cries she no longer tried to control, the beauty of her climax.
Then her thighs tensed, her fingers dug into his biceps, and another cry broke from her, one of pure repleteness, as deep within he felt her tighten around his cock.
His own crisis was upon him then. He planted his hands on either side of her and rose, leveraging his hips hard against her, driving himself fully into her, and shouted his release to the sky.
Chapter 20
Fia touched Thomas’s face, her fingertips a sigh across his mouth. Her eyes were lucent but sad, like moonlight.
“I never knew it could be like that,” she said.
He turned his head, pressing a kiss to her palm, and read in her soft smile her regret and her withdrawal. He knew what she would say before he heard her words, and yet when she said them each one drove like a spike through his heart.
“It can’t happen again.”
“No?”
“It would … it would only end up hurting more when it was over.”
A small part of him wanted to deny it, to ask why it needed to end. Why something that had felt so right, so perfect, must be “over”?
But honesty kept him silent. She was right. She saw his acquiescence in his face, and before he could read her thoughts, she dipped her head and turned her back as she began lacing up her chemise. Her neck looked vulnerable.
If this had been a fairy-tale romance, they would have fallen asleep in each other’s arms and woken to a flight of swans casting shadows over their faces. They would have turned to each other and whispered sweet pledges and vows, risen from their pine bed, and ridden off into the setting sun.
But this was not a fairy-tale romance.
He looked away, reminding himself with bitter force that they did not exist separate from their pasts, their lives, their futures. What they did mattered to others as well as to themselves. He’d only to turn his gaze eastward, toward McClairen’s Isle and all the people he’d brought here, to understand just how little time he could waste on his own pain, no matter that the wound felt mortal.
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