“I’ve changed my mind.” But he made no effort to pull his hand away from her cheek. Instead, she was almost certain that the long fingers made an abortive caressing movement before being abruptly stilled. “You don’t know what you’re asking for, Amanda.” These last words were almost desperate.
“No, I don’t, do I?” Her eyes met his again, their expression soft and seductive beneath the long lashes that half veiled them. “But you could teach me, Matt.”
And she turned her mouth into his palm.
The touch of her soft little mouth against his palm seemed to scorch his flesh. Matt could feel the heat of it shoot along his veins like an explosion of molten fire. The desire he had been battling for days threatened to consume him in its flames. Gritting his teeth, he fought the impulse to pull his hand away from her lips and replace it with his mouth, to drop down on the bed beside her and take her in his arms and never let her go. She wanted him, he knew. He could clearly read the passionate invitation in her huge purple eyes. But she had no more idea than a baby what it was she was inviting; it would be criminal of him to take advantage of her innocence and her affection for him. She was just a child, despite her heart-stirring beauty and the enticing, womanly shape of her.
“Teach me, Matt,” she repeated huskily. Her mouth slid from his palm to the inside of his wrist just above the loose cuff of his shirt. Matt felt the moist heat of her mouth against his drumming pulse, and was so tempted he could have screamed. He wanted to, oh, he wanted to …
“Amanda,” he said unsteadily, knowing he should leave her now, this instant, but unable to force himself to take what his mind told him was the only rational action. She silenced him by the simple expedient of placing her fingers against his mouth. To make the gesture she had loosed his hand; without his volition it lay feather light on the blanket just over her breast. With every fiber of his being, Matt was conscious of those slender fingers against his mouth and the soft female shape of her beneath his hand. Desire rose in him like a raging demon, screaming to be fulfilled. But still he fought it, grimly.
“Hold me, Matt,” she whispered. “Please—won’t you just hold me?” She met his eyes beseechingly. Matt thought that her eyes looked both pleading and bewildered, like those of a child who has been punished for something she cannot understand and is being denied comfort for an equally incomprehensible reason. A rush of tenderness for her accompanied the thought; Matt welcomed it, thinking it would provide a shield against the passion that threatened to overwhelm him at any instant. He looked down into her face, so small and defenseless on the white pillow, his eyes unconsciously absorbing the perfection of each feature and the loveliness of the whole. Her hair was the color of fine old wine in the moonlight, providing an exquisite frame for the pale serenity of her brow, the smooth curve of her cheeks, the elegant little chin. Her eyes beneath the silky black brows gleamed up at him with soft fire in their depths, like amethysts caught in the sun. Her nose was small and delicate, like the rest of her, and beneath it her mouth swelled, lushly red like a rose …
Matt stared at that mouth, unable to help himself as he remembered how it had felt to kiss those sweetly curved lips—and remembered, too, her response. She had gone up in flames in his arms … To his dismay Matt felt the tenderness he had counted on for salvation turn tail and join forces with the desire he found so difficult to control. Together, they tortured him with a hot, throbbing need that was almost impossible to resist.
Amanda’s fingers slid from his mouth to caress his cheek, her hand cool and soft against the whisker-roughened hardness of his skin. Matt stood rigid beneath her touch, fighting a passion that was almost crippling in its intensity. And he might have won—if she had not chosen that moment to run her fingers lightly, oh, so lightly, along the narrow, raised outline of the scar that twisted across his cheek, memento of a childhood beating with a riding crop administered by one of his mother’s gentleman friends. The gentleness of Amanda’s touch soothed a pain that had seared its way from his cheek to his heart years ago, and which he had thought long since forgotten. Suddenly Matt realized that he needed Amanda’s gentleness desperately, craved it, had to have more of it or perish …
With a muffled groan he gave up the fight, lowering himself to the bed beside her and enfolding her in his arms in a single violent movement. He sought her lips with his, finding them readily as she lifted her mouth to him without fear or restraint.
“Darling,” he murmured hoarsely before he began to kiss her with a savagery born of desperation. She should have shrunk from the barely controlled violence of his embrace, but, to his wonder, he felt her arms slide around his neck—and she was kissing him back.
After that his kisses gentled. Amanda gloried in the feel of his lips against hers, hard, hot, masculine lips that promised and demanded, stroked and caressed, took and gave. She gave herself up to their expert tuition, returning kiss for kiss. No longer shy when she felt his tongue invade her mouth, she met it with her own, and discovered to her delight that exploring his mouth was as deliciously dizzying as having him explore hers. When at last his mouth left hers to trace a hot pattern along her cheek to her ear, she trembled at the exquisite sensation his teeth aroused as they nibbled lightly on her lobe. Then his lips left her ear to slide hotly down the slim column below it. Amanda arched her throat against the moist heat of his mouth, feeling her toes curl as his lips rested finally on the throbbing pulse at its base. Her hands were in his hair, pressing against his scalp through the thick black strands as she held him to her. He rested against her for a moment, his breath hot against the skin of her throat, and then he lifted his head to look at her.
“Amanda, you’re going to have to stop me,” he said, the words so indistinct she could barely understand him. “Because, before God, I can’t stop myself.”
She smiled at him, a small curving of her lips barely visible through the silvered darkness, and allowed her hands to caress his silken black head.
“I don’t want to stop you,” she told him softly. His eyes smoldered and then blazed in response; then his mouth was on hers again, hard and hot and devastating in its impact on her senses, while his hands moved to the ribbon that secured her night rail at the throat.
Amanda trembled as she felt the brush of his fingers against the soft skin of her throat. This was what she wanted, she told herself, this man, this moment. She so desperately wanted him to kiss her and hold her and love her that she thought she would die if he were to draw back now. But she didn’t think he would—not this time. The fine tremor that shook his hands, the dark flush straining his cheeks, the hoarse, uneven sounds of his breathing, told her that he was as much under her spell as she was under his.
She watched the intense concentration on that hard face as he slowly and methodically worked his way down the dozen tiny buttons on the front of her night rail. With each button that he freed, he pressed a tiny, stinging kiss to the sensitive flesh thus exposed. Amanda felt the hardness and heat of his mouth, the rasp of his unshaven chin, the touch of his hands against her, and thought that her bones would melt from the sheer ecstasy. Her hands never left the black head as he worked his way down between her breasts to just above her navel, barely parting the material of her night rail so that a long, triangular section of her skin was exposed. When the last button slid out of its hole, unfastening the nightdress to the waist, his hands slid up her rib cage and then flattened just below her breasts.
Amanda felt the heat and strength of those hands burning through the thin linen to her skin, and instinctively pressed closer against him. She could feel the muscular length of his body burning her as he lay stretched on the bed beside her; the bedcoverings twisted around her hips prevented her from fully feeling the urgent pressure of his thighs as he moved them closer against her. But only the thin linen of her night rail shielded her breasts from his touch—and then, moving very slowly as if he feared to frighten her, his hands folded back the unfastened edges of her night rail to expose her breasts.
As she felt the cool night air against her bare skin, Amanda quivered and shut her eyes. Nothing happened, not a movement, not a sound except the stentorian rasp of his breathing. When eventually she dared to peep up at Matt from beneath the thick veil of her lashes, she saw that he was propped up on his elbow beside her, one hand supporting his head while his other rested with disturbing weight and heat against the bare skin just below her breast. His eyes were fixed on her breasts, his silver gaze darkened to smoke by a hunger that she, even in her innocence, had no trouble recognizing. A dark flush stained the flesh high on his cheekbones, and a leaping nerve in one corner called attention to the long, straight line of that beautiful mouth. As if he felt her gaze upon him, Matt looked up then; Amanda felt her own mouth quiver as she met his eyes.
“You have beautiful breasts, Amanda,” he said, his voice hoarse. He lifted the hand beneath her breast to run a gentle finger over the flesh he praised. Amanda drew in her breath sharply at his touch. Her eyes dropped from his face to the hand that caressed her; the contrast between the milky skin of her small, pointed breasts and the swarthiness of his large hand made her heart pound. Then he lifted his hand again to touch her nipple with that same seducing finger. Amanda could not stop the small moan that escaped her as her nipple quivered to life beneath his touch. She watched, half shamed, half fascinated, as her breasts swelled beneath his caress, seeming to beg for more. As if in answer, his hand moved to her other breast, and his palm rasped lightly against her second nipple. The sensation of mingled pain and pleasure thus aroused quivered down to her belly, where it curled in a tight, pulsating ball. She gasped at its intensity.
“So beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes on her breasts again as he traced concentric circles from her nipple to the outer edge of her breast and then back before cupping the whole in his palm. “Your skin is so soft, like gleaming white satin. I could touch it forever.” He drew in his breath on a ragged sigh; his hand tightened possessively over the breast it entrapped. His eyes came up to meet hers. Amanda thought she would be consumed by the smoldering heat she saw in their depths.
“If you have any sense at all, you’ll tell me to remove my hands and get out of your bed and leave you the hell alone,” he muttered roughly, the growling timbre of his voice telling her how difficult he was finding it to give her that advice. “But if you’re going to do so, for God’s sake, do it now. In another minute it will be too late. I won’t be able to stop if you begged me on your knees.”
Amanda looked up at him, her eyes moving over the hard, handsome face so near her own, thinking again how incredibly beautiful he was, beautiful in a purely masculine sense that left her devastated. The silver-smoke eyes, the hard planes of his face, the chiseled mouth, and even the profusion of thick black curls stirred her profoundly. Her hands came up to cradle his face. The gesture was shy at first, but as she felt the sandpaper roughness of his cheeks under her palms she lost every last scrap of her shyness in a blinding rush of emotion.
“I love you,” she said, wondering, knowing it was true even as she said it. He tensed, and then his eyes began to blaze with a fire so intense it all but liquefied her bones.
“Dear God, Amanda, you just sealed your fate,” he groaned, his voice strangled, and then he was bending down to her, his arms going tight around her as his mouth found hers again.
He kissed her desperately, his mouth devouring hers, as if he could never have enough of her, could never let her go. His arms around her locked her so closely to him that she could feel every hard muscle of his body through his clothes and even the entangling bedclothes. He was lying on top of her, his big body completely enveloping hers, his weight crushing her into the mattress while his hips moved in odd little thrusts against hers that seemed to increase in force and urgency as she caressed his broad shoulders with her hands. Even through his shirt, the feel of those sinewy shoulders intoxicated her. She wondered how it would feel to touch him without the barrier of his shirt to impede her hands. She wanted to touch his bare skin, as he had touched, was touching, hers … Her hands moved of their own volition until they found the V opening of his shirt and slid within. The feel of his chest hair against her fingers intoxicated her. She ran her nails over the soft mat of hair, loving the crispness of it against her fingers, loving, too, the moist heat of the flesh beneath. He stiffened at her touch, his mouth leaving hers to rest hotly against her neck, and then he was pulling away from her, his hands on her wrists restraining her as she tried frantically to hold him.
“
Matt
…” There was a world of anguish in the sound. He bent down to kiss her quickly, his hard lips reassuring her without words, and then he was impatiently freeing her from the covers that shrouded her from the hips down like a mummy. He threw the offending covers on the floor, leaving her lying defenseless on the white-sheeted mattress.
“Let’s get your nightdress off,” he said, his voice hoarse, and bent to catch the hem of her night rail and draw it up over her head. The night rail joined the covers on the floor. Amanda was left lying on the bed with only her hair to hide her body from his eyes. She had not guessed that he would want her naked; her hands came up in an instinctive movement to cover herself.
“Don’t be shy with me.” He was kneeling beside her, his eyes both tender and passionate as he brushed aside first her hands and then the clinging strands of hair so that her body was totally exposed to him. Amanda flushed but made no other move to shield herself as his eyes traveled from her slender shoulders to the high, firm breasts whose rosy nipples seemed to ache as his eyes caressed them, to her narrow waist and flat stomach, on down to her long legs and the dark triangle of hair between them. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he stared down at her, and then he was standing beside the bed, his movements clumsy with haste as he shed his own clothes. Amanda watched, quivering with fear and anticipation as he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, then sat down on the bed beside her to remove his shoes and hose. His broad, bare back was turned to her, and the fear she had briefly felt died and was replaced with an aching tenderness as she saw the mass of scars. She sat up, her arms sliding around his waist as she pressed her lips softly against the ridged flesh. Matt’s breath caught on a ragged groan; Amanda felt the strong body tremble against her. Then he was turning, lying on top of her as he pinned her to the bed, his mouth shaking as it slanted across hers. Amanda’s arms slid around his neck. She clung to him shamelessly, trembling as violently as he.