“It’s mortifying really,” he said. “I find it impossible to be in the same room as you without wanting to drag you to me. To touch you. To kiss you. To take you, fill you, have you in ways you’ve never dreamed possible. That, my sweet, is why I’ve been avoiding you. I think I’ve been pushing you away for years because I hated to admit it to myself.
“And tonight,” he murmured, testing the texture and weight of the smooth material between his thumb and forefinger. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me. Imagine my surprise—and delight—when you came crashing in here to tell me how put out you were by my offer.”
He casually yanked the strap, enjoying the hiss of the silk as it tore free. Kyra squeaked and grabbed the ruined material before it slipped from her breast. Her wide eyes searched his face. Whatever she read in his expression did nothing to ease the wariness in hers. Her eyes darted about, as though scouting out an escape route.
“Yes,” she said nervously, taking a step back. “Well, on closer examination, I believe you were absolutely right, Grif. I could use some time to adjust to our situation. A week or so would be fine.”
Before she could protest, he reached out and pulled the other strap free. “Stop that!” Kyra gasped. She clutched the silk to her chest and took another panicked step back. Then another.
Grif smiled and followed. “Since my lovely wife has doubts as to how much I want her, I’m afraid I must rescind my earlier offer.”
“You can’t do that,” Kyra argued abruptly. “It would be most ungentlemanly of you to do so.”
“It would be even more ungentlemanly of me to allow my wife to believe such tripe,” he teased. “In fact, I vow not to rest until I’ve proven myself to her at least a dozen times over.”
Her eyes grew enormous, and she took another step back, only to find herself bumping into the wall. Before she could argue, Grif closed the distance between them. Placing his palms against the wall, he caged her in without actually touching her. He drank in the soft fragrance of her hair, the warmth radiating from her skin.
Leaning his head slightly, he brushed his mouth against her lips. “I want you,” he murmured against her mouth.
Taking one of her hands, he gently untangled her trembling fingers from her nightgown. Slowly Grif placed her hand on his chest, dragged it leisurely down his abdomen to his erection. When her fingers brushed against him, he gave an involuntary hiss of pleasure. Her eyes flew to meet his, but she didn’t pull her hand away. Satisfied she wouldn’t blanch, Grif slid her hand along the length of his arousal. Then he did it again. And again.
She still looked frightened, but something else was there, as well. Fascination? Curiosity? Grif took his own hand away from hers, beyond thankful when she kept hers on him, still stroking him. He gently touched his lips to hers. Lord, this was going to kill him, he realized as he throbbed against her palm. Much more of this and she wouldn’t have to worry about being ravished—he’d spill his seed before the ravishing even started. He’d known his share of women in his twenty-seven years, yet he’d never known he could be so affected, so aroused, by such an uncertain touch.
“I want you, Kyra,” he said between clenched teeth. “And I most definitely want to make love to you. As my wife. Does that frighten you?”
“A little,” she whispered, her lips plush and velvety against his. She snatched back her hand, eyes wide, just aware that he’d released it.
“Let me kiss you, Kay,” he implored. “One kiss. After that, you can decide if you want to stay or go. Will you grant me that?”
“One kiss,” Kyra agreed hesitantly, eyes still wide.
Grif felt himself smile against her mouth. He’d kiss her all night if it meant keeping her here with him. He’d tease her, incite her, beg her—make her want him until she was as insane with desire as he was. Then, when she was sobbing and blind with want, then and only then, would he release them both from this uncontrollable longing.
Knowing she braced for an onslaught, he chose instead to feather his lips lightly against hers, the barest whisper of a kiss. He felt her lips bow down slightly in her confusion, and Grif slowly brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth. He traced his mouth across the lush fullness of her lower lip to the other side of her mouth, gently nibbling at that corner, as well.
Kyra’s mouth opened, just a fraction, inviting him in. But Grif wasn’t done teasing. He traced the sleek lining of her lips with the tip of his tongue, then gently sucked her lower lip. Kyra gasped. Her shudder went right to his loins. Grif pulled back slightly, tugging her lip slightly before releasing it.
Grif met her gaze. Kyra’s eyes were almost black. Swaying unconsciously into him, she pressed her lips to his, silently begging him to take her mouth. Grif tamped down an almost violent urge to seize—he wanted her to want him, he realized. He needed her to want him.
He opened his mouth over hers, just barely, and gently kissed her lips. When her tongue swept across his lower lip, provoking, imploring, Grif dug his nails into the wall to keep from grabbing her. Unable to completely resist, he flicked the tip of her tongue with his own, just for an instant. Kyra whimpered and tried to deepen the contact. He refused to give in so quickly, however, and forced himself to pull back again.
Kyra followed him, this time throwing her arms around his shoulders. One hand snaked into his hair to pull his head, his lips, back down to her hungry mouth—blissfully unaware that her ruined night slip had slithered down to pool at her feet. Grif, on the other hand, was painfully aware that his beautiful new wife now stood completely naked before him, stretched against him, kissing him with reckless abandon.
Grif welcomed her passion, unable and unwilling to resist the temptation of her mouth any longer. He kissed her back, hard, his tongue ruthlessly plundering her mouth, rejoicing when she groaned and pressed her body into his body, mating her tongue with his own.
Kyra was so absorbed by their kiss, so heated from wanting him, she didn’t recognize that she was standing stark naked in front of Grif until she felt his warm, rough palms on her backside. She managed a muffled “Oh!” when he pulled her hard against him, his fingers skating over the soft globes of her bottom, tracing the gentle indentation just below her buttocks. Then she found herself kissing him even harder, each sweep of his skin against hers causing her to melt a little more into him.
Unconsciously she made a throaty sound, a desperate purr. Apparently her husband took that as some sort of sign. Without warning, and without breaking the kiss, he ordered in a tight voice, “Wrap your legs around me.” Kyra obeyed without thought, kissing him wildly and gripping his shoulders tight as he lifted her off the ground.
As soon as she put her legs around him, Grif groaned. If he’d had a reason for telling her to do so, he seemed to have forgotten it for the moment because she found herself pushed roughly against the wall, Grif’s warm mouth mindlessly savaging hers. After a long, violent kiss, he suddenly seemed to remember his earlier aim.
“We need to get to the bed,” he gasped. “I refuse to take you against a wall.”
Kyra’s eyes popped open in wonder. “Standing up? Against a wall? Is that even possible?”
Grif’s eyes fluttered shut. “Yes,” he said, sounding somewhere near agony. “In fact, you’re very close to finding out exactly how possible it is.”
“Hmm,” she murmured nibbling his lips, his jaw, his throat.
“Kay,” Grif growled, “unless you want your first time to be against this wall, hard, I suggest you stop doing that so I can focus what little sanity I still possess on getting to the damned bed.”
Kyra didn’t answer, but she did return her lips to his mouth to give him a brief, playful kiss. Grif kissed her back, lightly, then grabbed her possessively to him and strode to the bed in large, determined strides.
“Next time, remind me to rip off your nightgown when you’re a bit closer to
the bed,” he muttered, gently untangling her legs from his hips and setting her down on the coverlet.
* * *
Kyra rose up on her knees, fully aware that her husband was staring at her naked body. Instead of feeling embarrassed by his hungry gaze, however, she felt oddly excited by it. Her entire body tingled as Grif’s green eyes swept greedily over her. It made her feel beautiful. Sensual. Powerful.
She reached for the buttons of his shirt, flicking one open. “You should be naked too,” she purred, amazed by her own boldness.
Grif’s jaw clenched as she slowly trailed her fingers down his chest, down his abdomen, unfastening the remaining buttons. He was breathing heavily by the time she released the final one. She swept her hands up his shoulders, slowly pushing his shirt down and off his arms. Kyra ran her hands across the smooth expanse of his lean torso, relishing the clean, strong lines of his stomach, the solid muscles of his chest. His naked chest was beautiful, more beautiful than when she’d spied on him at the swimming hole.
A liberal dusting of dark hair covered his breastbone and his lower abdomen, trailing down below his breeches. Kyra ran her fingers through it, enjoying the crisp, rough feel of it. He had a nasty scar traversing his left side, running down his rib cage all the way to the jut of his hip bone—a souvenir from the war, she guessed. Kyra frowned at it, traced its length. Grif could be wounded, she realized. He wasn’t immortal, after all. He might have been killed. Her heart clutched at the thought. He might have died, and she would never have had this chance.
Kyra looked up into his eyes, so dark they looked almost black. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was Grif—being with him in any capacity he would allow. Whether it was as his nemesis, his wife, his lover; it didn’t matter as long as she could just be with him.
Without thought, she leaned over and pressed her lips to the pearlized skin of his scar, as if she could heal him. She barely heard Grif’s sharp intake of breath as she ran her lips down the span of it, all the way down to his hip. Fumbling absently at the fastenings at his breeches, Kyra gently nipped the smooth skin covering his hip bone.
Grif jerked away from her and glared wildly down at her. “Damnation, Kay! I’m barely holding on as it is!”
Kyra only blinked in innocent confusion. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“Kyra,” he warned in a trembling voice. “If you touch me like that...I can’t...I...” He looked down at her, his eyes full of heat and need and hunger. “Oh. Hell!”
Before she knew what was happening, Grif had toppled her back against the pillows. He followed her down and kissed her roughly, voraciously, and Kyra tasted a mounting urgency, a wild desperation, on his lips. Rather than frightening her, it sparked some inexplicable need in her. His hands were all over her, roving frantically, as though he couldn’t gather the sensation of her skin, her body, fast enough.
Kyra pressed herself shamelessly against his bare chest, loving the feel of his heated skin against her naked breasts. One hand traced the length of her thigh, from knee to hip, drawing a shiver from her. His other hand cupped her breast, roughly kneading the soft mound, torturing her nipple with his fingertips, until she moaned.
She protested as his mouth left hers to trail hot, openmouthed kisses down her throat. He sank his teeth into the soft juncture of her neck and shoulder, and Kyra felt her body bow into him. Grif slid lower, found her breast and laved her nipple, again and again, making her breasts feel hot and prickly and uncomfortably heavy. It was too much and not nearly enough.
When she finally whimpered in frustration, he drew the whole peak into his mouth, suckling relentlessly. Just as she was getting use to the unfamiliar pressure, he released her breast, nipped playfully at the nipple and drew it back into his mouth an instant later. Kyra gasped at the shrill sensation, even more intense than before. Then, the instant before she went insane, he switched his attention to the other breast, tormenting it as effectively as he had the first.
Kyra was nearly weeping with want. His mouth, his hands, she knew they were pushing her toward the glorious release she’d experienced that night at the inn. Yet they weren’t anywhere close to satisfying her. In fact, the more he touched her, the worse the craving for release grew. She needed him to finish it.
“Grif, please,” she whispered.
Grif looked up at her, dark eyes gleaming. He grimaced. “Not yet. I want you frantic with desire. I want you writhing, sobbing with want. I want you to need me as desperately as I need you.”
Kyra moaned. His words only fanned the flames that were consuming her. She felt his lips skate lower, lick her navel, nip low on her belly. A new, violent ache seared through her. Grif caressed the gentle flare of her hip, grazing his teeth across the sharp jut of her hip bone. Kyra felt his tongue tracing the line of her hip, felt him licking the top of her thigh.
“Grif?”
He ignored her question. Instead, he suddenly, ruthlessly, grabbed her leg behind the knee and swung it over his shoulder. She felt his tongue tracing the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh, a place no man had ever before seen, much less caressed.
He worked his way up her thigh, and Kyra couldn’t stop the shivers that racked her spine. The thought of him that close to her femininity, to her core, disturbed and thrilled her. It was so intimate, so wicked to have him there. Still, Kyra wasn’t ready for the shrill sensation that flooded through her when he pressed a kiss there.
“Grif?” she asked nervously. A second later, “Ethan!”
His tongue flickered over her again, deliberately, and Kyra shrieked. Another long, languorous stroke and she found herself incapable of thought, much less speech. He quite simply feasted on her as though she were indeed a strawberry tart and he a starving man. And when he roughly lifted her hips and entered her with his tongue, Kyra had no idea that she gripped the sheets in her fists, crumpling the smooth material into a wrinkled ball. She was completely unaware that her head was thrashing wildly, her body writhing desperately, and she didn’t hear herself begging, sobbing, for the release he was holding back.
* * *
At last Grif raised his head from tormenting her. Kyra stared at him, her eyes blind with passion, her face tight with need, her hair a fiery, unruly mass against the pillows. Her whole body quivered with unsated desire.
Grif had never seen such a beautiful sight.
“Grif,” she said again, her voice gravelly from her earlier shrieks.
He stood and quickly kicked off his boots and stripped away his breeches. His wife reached for him and he went to her, kissing her. He pressed his naked body against hers, savoring her softness, her heat. She moaned a little and Grif felt her hands wandering mindlessly over him, across the breadth of his shoulders, down the column of his spine, over the muscles of his backside. Kyra gripped his hips and undulated under him, instinctively seeking him.
Grif shifted slightly, placing his erection between her legs. Kyra impatiently rubbed against him. His eyelids drifted shut. He’d never survive if she kept moving like this. He was about to tell her to remain still when she moved again, her hand guiding him to her entrance, making him forget everything but burying himself inside of her.
With a groan, he thrust into her, barely conscious of the thin barrier he annihilated. At her pained gasp, he forced himself to stop. She was so tight, so hot around him that he wanted nothing more than to grab her hips and plunge further into her. Instead, he forced himself to stay perfectly still, throbbing inside of her.
Her whole body was tense. Withdrawing was definitely out of the question. He needed to soothe her, get her to relax again, to enjoy his invasion. She was a virgin, after all, despite her natural wantonness; a little finesse was the least he could strive for, especially since he wanted to do this with her again. And again.
“Are you okay?” he managed to grate out. He shifted a little, to take some of his wei
ght off of her. Stroking an errant lock by her ear, Grif looked down into her huge eyes. “I know it can be painful at first.”
“It feels so...full,” she gasped. “Like you’re deep inside me.”
“I am,” he chuckled, feathering kisses across her brow, her cheeks. “I promise it gets better before it’s over.” Her smile was brave but skeptical, and he couldn’t stop himself from brushing his lips against hers. “Trust me.”
Kyra nodded bravely. “I trust you. What should I do?”
Why couldn’t she be this biddable outside of the bedroom? “Kiss me.”
She pressed a chaste kiss against his mouth, almost shyly. Grif groaned at the soft caress. He was going to explode soon, and he certainly didn’t want to do so with his wife clenched nervously around him. He wanted her writhing and panting and screaming before he let go. He needed her to relax. He needed her wild with passion again.
“I need more than that, Kay.”
Kyra obliged without protest. She pressed her lips firmly against his, surrendering to him completely. Grif forced his thoughts away from where their bodies were so intimately joined, focusing instead on just kissing her. As he coaxed her mouth open, his tongue delving deep inside, he felt her softening, relaxing just a fraction. He nipped her lower lip. Kyra gasped and kissed him back more earnestly.
Grif let his hand wander down to her breast. He gently caressed the soft flesh, brushing his thumb teasingly over her nipple. Kyra moaned and arched into his hand. Grif tried to keep his mind on the task at hand. Dragging his mouth from hers, he traced his lips across her cheek to her ear. He traced the graceful whorl of her ear, gently biting the lobe. His patience paid off. Beneath him, he felt her body stirring, her hips lifting fractionally to meet him.
An Inconvenient Wife Page 19