Not that she hadn’t accomplished what she’d set out to do. She’d definitely seduced him. But not with her sexual prowess or experience. It was her innocence that had done him in. The tremble of her hands against his skin, the quickening of her breath when she’d dared press herself against him. The thrumming of her pulse when he’d taken the kiss she’d offered.
He’d ached for her ever since. One taste of her sweet, inexperienced mouth had left him hungry and hard and knowing he could show her much of the art of physical love.
While an emotional involvement was beyond him, a physical one was not. He regretted that he couldn’t give her the commitment he knew she wanted...but he had every intention of giving her pleasure.
“Come,” was all he said—was all he trusted himself to say—as he took her hand in his and led her to his bed.
Dusk came early to the lake land in December. It was barely five o’clock, yet soft shadows danced through the west window of his bedroom. The sun, a brilliant magenta disk, surrendered the day by painting the sky a mottled red and casting a rosy, translucent glow over the darkening room... and the man who stood watchful and waiting before her.
She’d known he would be beautiful. Even before he’d slipped out of his jacket and freed the buttons on his shirt, she’d known the skin beneath would be smooth and golden, the flesh it covered fluid and generously muscled.
What she hadn’t known was that her desire for him would outdistance her reservations. She’d lost her heart when he’d taken her hand at the altar. She’d lost her inhibitions when he’d told her she was pretty and led her to his bed.
It shouldn’t be like this. She shouldn’t feel like this. She knew so little of him, really. What she did know should have filled her with reservations. He’d minced no words when he’d told her she was letting herself in for heartache if she expected more than a physical relationship. But she could no more sever her emotions from her desires than the tide could deny it was pulled by the moon.
She couldn’t stop herself. When she reached out to this man who asked for and offered nothing more than the physical side of love, she reached with her heart as well as her hand.
There was no hesitance in her touch. No thought that he would deny her. She spread her fingers wide over the sculptured breadth of his bicep as he slipped out of his shirt and tossed it to the floor. Her hand looked small and pale, an erotic, hypnotic contrast to the bronze skin it caressed with a slow, tantalizing exploration.
With a thready breath, she brought her hands to his shoulders. Silk over steel. Hot to the touch. The tension in his finely honed body was drawn as tight as the anticipation that was knotted in her breast.
What would he be like, her savage, sullen lover? What would he do with all that strength? All that power?
She closed her eyes when he lowered the zipper on her dress. Pressed her hands against his chest to steady herself. The warmth of his breath feathered across the top of her head. His deep voice rumbled beneath her palms.
“You’re not afraid?”
She was many things at this moment. Restless. Yearning. Needy. But the only thing she was afraid of was that she would die of this fierce desire to make love to him.
First she told him. “I’m not afraid.”
Then she showed him.
Slipping her arms free of her dress, she let it slide down her hips and pool at her feet on the floor.
He went deadly still. Only his eyes touched her, awakening every pulse point, arousing every sensitive secret spot that ached for the caress of his hands, the warm, wet heat of his mouth.
“You give your trust too easily.”
With a trembling hand, she trailed her fingertips along the proud, defiant rise of his cheek. “I give it where I know it’s safe.”
His eyes darkened, denial and warning tangled with desire.
“I know the parameters.” Her voice was barely a breath that rustled the tension in the room. “This isn’t about expectations. This is about choices.
My
choices. It has nothing to do with yours. I want to trust you. I know that I can.”
He looked past her to the fading blush of the twilight sky. She sensed the battle he was waging even before he said the words.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Mackenzie.”
He wasn’t speaking about physical hurt. He was talking about another kind of pain. One he knew about well, and which kept him from offering anything more than the comforts of his home and the pleasures of the flesh.
“I know.”
Despite his words, she was aware of the need in him and it fired a new urgency to complete the act that would bind them together as husband and wife.
“Will you kiss me, Abel?” she whispered, desperate suddenly. “Will you kiss me...like that morning in the kitchen?”
Slowly he raised his hands to her hair. Gently he cupped her face in his palms. His eyes were open, searching as he stroked the underside of her jaw with his long fingers. His mouth was seeking as he slowly lowered his head.
The first touch of his lips to hers was more whisper than contact. More promise than pressure. Much more give than take.
Yet he took her breath away.
She clasped her fingers around his wrists to draw him closer. He wouldn’t give her closer. He gave her temptation instead. He gave her the sweetest kind of torment, leaving her breathless and whispering his name.
His mouth was incredibly tender, achingly seductive, as his tongue flirted at the seam of her lips, allowing only a taste of what she wanted, only a hint of what was yet to be.
He played his mouth across hers. A gentle nip. A silken sip. An agonizing withdrawal. Each touch enticed her higher. Each lazy thrust of his tongue pledged a promise and left her wanting more.
“Please...please,” she murmured then knotted her hands in his hair and begged him to take her deep.
His desire became a dark thing then. His passion went far beyond need. She felt it in the crush of the arms that enfolded her, in the taste of the mouth that finally claimed and possessed. And she wanted it all. Every groaning sound of hunger. Every urgent breath of greed.
His kisses consumed her. He tasted of champagne and danger and wants she could only imagine. She drowned in the heat of his mouth and sweet savage demands of his body.
His hands were everywhere. Pressing and pulsing along the length of her back. Possessing as they claimed her hips and ground her against the hard length of his arousal.
She caught her breath on a gasp as he suddenly lifted her in his arms and urged her legs around his waist. The heat of his bare chest seeped through the satin of her slip. His fingers burned with the fire of banked passion as they tunneled under the edge of her panties and drew her to more intimate contact.
Where she should have felt vulnerable, she felt only need. And desire. She squirmed against him, wanting more of the big hands that kneaded her bottom, the rough fingers that squeezed, then petted, then sought that part of her that was already wet, already swollen and ready for him.
She sighed into his mouth, swallowed his ragged groan when he touched her there. Boldly. Deeply. His caress was electric. His knowledge of how to please her carnal and unrelenting.
So fast, so fierce, the pleasure came. So fast it scared her. So fierce a cry escaped. A wild sound. A wanton plea, ripe with wonder, raw with passion. Breathless, she arched against his hand, then clutched his shoulders and cried his name as the first wave of a shattering orgasm took her.
Searing heat consumed her, spiraling from the source of the flame he’d ignited to the deepest core of her body. She clung to him, riding out the exquisite sensations until she collapsed bonelessly against him, her heart exploding, her mouth open against his chest.
She’d never known it could be like this. She’d never known the world could cease to exist. That one moment in time could be the only moment, blinding, golden and glowing.
She’d never known she could feel so totally and completely indulged.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his shoulder and felt a teardrop fall.
Abel held her close against him. He felt the warm trickle of her tears on his skin, and the fullness in his chest grew heavier. He was no stranger to pleasing women. He’d even been thanked before. But never with such wonder and such sweet, aching innocence. And never had he taken such pleasure in the giving.
Even as she rested, sated and limp against him, she had no idea what her wanton response had done to him. She had no idea of the things he wanted to do with her still.
The silk of her slip sighed against his hands as he shifted her slight weight and laid her back on his bed. He wanted far more than satisfaction now. He wanted to ease that gnawing, unfamiliar ache that had been knotting in his chest ever since she’d pledged him her life.
He clenched his jaw against the rush of tenderness her faith in him fostered. He didn’t understand it. And he sure as hell hadn’t earned it. But it was there in a pair of trusting green eyes, now heavy-lidded with latent passion, and a heart riding in full view on her sleeve.
She made him want things that weren’t possible. She made him want to let down his guard. To indulge. Not only in her body, but in her spirit and the warmth of the trust she offered as she lay there, so innocently seductive in the pristine white slip his hands had tangled around her hips.
He’d told her she was pretty. She’d made him feel like he’d given her a gift. A new experience for a man who had always been a taker. An unsettling catharsis for a man who’d never wanted to share anything more complicated than sex with a woman. That’s all he’d ever been capable of sharing—a physical joining, mutual satisfaction the only requirement.
Yet with this woman who was now his wife, he’d found himself wanting to give.
He watched her face as he stripped off the last of his clothes and eased onto his hip beside her.
“You are a beautiful man, Abel Greene.” Her whisper was as soft as the fading remnants of sunlight dappling the pillow where her head lay.
He’d known she had the power to arouse him. He hadn’t known she could embarrass him. He trailed a finger along the deep vee of the white satin skin between her breasts. “I’ve been called a number of things in my life. Beautiful isn’t one of them.”
She smiled, catlike and content. “Then I’m glad the first time you heard it was from me.” Shy suddenly, she raised a hand to his hair. “Will you untie it for me?”
She was a study in contrasts. She gave praise easily but was uncomfortable accepting it. She offered generously but hesitated to ask if she could take.
That would be her first lesson. He’d teach his little bird to take what she wanted in this bed.
“You’ll untie it,” he said, “whenever you decide you want to.”
He brought her hand to his mouth. Her skin was silky soft, like her hair, like the breath that escaped when he eased a finger beneath the strap of her slip and slowly tugged it down her arm.
Heat and hunger arrowed to his groin with each pale inch of flesh he exposed. Her breasts were small, her nipples tight and hard against the fabric that now barely covered a delicate, distended tip.
He was a big man, and he hadn’t been with a woman for a very long time. She was a small woman and she was fragile, despite her determination to show him otherwise.
“Tell me,” he began, his voice raspy with the effort of self-control, “tell me if I go too fast for you.”
She told him instead what she wanted. Not in words. With a sensuous lift of her shoulder that sent the second strap slipping down her arm to bare the lush curve of her other breast; with a flirtatious lift of her hips as she shoved down her panties.
Suppressing a groan, he reminded himself to go easy with her. But looking wasn’t enough anymore. Neither was merely touching. He remembered the taste of her. Remembered the feel of her in his mouth that morning when he’d stolen a sip of a pale, pink breast. The memory demanded. The reality beckoned.
Easing down on an elbow, he lowered his mouth to the hollow of her throat, then lost himself in her fragrance and the entreaty of her throaty sigh.
She smelled of strawberries and cream and innocence. And of the heady scent of a well-pleased woman.
She didn’t know what she was doing to him. She didn’t understand that when she wrapped her arms around his neck and moved against him with a restless urgency, she was blowing his good intentions all to hell.
He’d wanted to make this slow for her.
Slow
was beyond him now. With a hand made rough by anticipation, he stripped the thin barrier of satin to her waist and possessed her breast with his callused palm. She arched into his touch, filling his hand with heat and softness and a delicious quivering anticipation. He brushed his thumb across the velvet peak, sucked in a breath at her trembling response, then took her deep into his mouth.
Sin had never tasted this sweet. Sex had never been this seductive. He told himself it was because of his abstinence. He told himself it was because he’d lived too many years without giving in to his needs.