So she kissed him back, with her lips and tongue teased and taunted, then reveled as he took control, as his tongue found hers and stroked, then arrogantly explored, reclaimed.
As he deepened the kiss and she surrendered, as she felt the rising heat melt her bones.
His arms tightened about her, crushing her breasts, already peaked and tight and aching, to the hard solid planes of his chest. One large palm swept down her back, pressing her to him, then sliding lower, over her hip, to grasp her bottom and angle her hips to his.
So he could move against her, so he could mold her against the rigid length of his erection, let her feel and anticipate having that hard length inside her. Thrusting into her, filling her, taking her….
Her mind reeled. She broke from the kiss on a gasp. “Upstairs.” The word was breathless, weightless. She hauled in a breath and tried again. “We should go up to my room.”
He stared down at her, gray eyes dark with passion—the passion she’d stirred, that had turned every muscle in his large body to hard-edged steel.
Then he blinked, focused—and she realized he’d been so caught up in having her, if she hadn’t spoken he would have had her there—on the rug before the fire or bent over the desk. A shiver of awareness and something more illicit slithered down her spine.
Before she could rethink, he managed a stiff nod. “Yes. Upstairs.” His voice was low and gravelly, already choked with desire. Another shiver threatened, this time one of sheer anticipation.
He had to force his arms to release her. The instant they did, before she could surrender to her baser self she turned and led the way from the room. He followed on her heels, close, close enough when they turned onto the stairs to rest a heavy, possessive hand on her back. Low on her back, on the curve of her bottom. She’d forgotten that—how, in the distant past, when they’d slipped away from balls and parties to be together, he’d always touched her, steered her, like that.
As if he couldn’t wait to touch her even more intimately.
As if he couldn’t wait to have her naked.
He often hadn’t.
But that had been then, when he was younger. Now, as she opened her bedchamber door and led him inside, she was very aware that he, the man at her heels, the male she would give herself to that night, was no callow youth.
Halting in the center of the room, she faced him. Saw him still by the door, watching her. Heard the click as, his gaze on her, he snibbed the lock.
Then he moved.
He walked toward her slowly, shadows and moonlight dappling his large frame.
When he halted before her, less than a foot away, he was all heat and power in the darkness, his very maleness sliding like a hand over her skin, leaving her nerves flickering. Waiting for his touch.
Moments ticked by as he looked into her face. Although she was tall, he was taller, broad and heavy where she was slender and slight, so much stronger she should have felt fear, yet she never had.
His strength was under his absolute control, and hers to command; she’d always known that.
So it wasn’t fear of that sort that sent a tingling lick up her spine.
He seemed to sense it, for he moved. Lifted both large, hard palms and framed her face.
Gently. As if to remind her his strength wasn’t to be feared.
But she felt something else in his touch, sensed it in his gaze. An intent she couldn’t name, that she hadn’t before encountered in him, that she had no experience of to draw on.
His lips curved subtly, as if he could read her sudden wondering in her eyes. He lowered his head—slowly—until his breath washed over her lips.
Making her hungry, making her want—until she tried to stretch up and press her lips to his and take what she needed—
And discovered she couldn’t.
That although his touch was gentle, it was enough to restrain her.
She sank back, would have frowned if desire hadn’t had her in thrall.
His lips curved a touch more and he bent his head—and gave her what she wanted. He took her lips in an achingly slow, devastatingly thorough kiss.
He drew back, lips supping idly at hers, then lifted his head far enough to meet her eyes. To look into them as he murmured, “Tonight, it’ll be my way.” His gaze lowered to her lips; he took them again in a heady, flagrantly explicit caress. “All my way.”
The words were deep, dark, his voice roughened by desire; she wasn’t surprised when he kissed her—even more explicitly, even more suggestively—on their heels.
When next he freed her lips, she breathed back, “I’ll think about it.”
She could imagine handing him the reins, as she’d recently done, but she couldn’t see him taking them from her without her leave, without her explicit consent.
His smile took on an edge. “You might find that difficult.”
His eyes, dark with a promise she couldn’t—didn’t know enough to—read, held hers, then he bent his head and his lips found hers.
In a kiss so scorching it curled her toes. That had her sinking her fingertips into his skull just to hold on to sanity.
His hands released her face, drifted away—for a moment she didn’t know to where—long enough to have her senses stretching, searching….
Long enough to have her nerves tight with anticipation when he closed one hand about her breast. Her breath caught, hitched; he kneaded, claimed, possessive beyond question, and her heart started to race.
As she felt his other hand pass across the back of her waist, then slide slowly down, tracing, claiming, to ultimately splay over her bottom and hold her, press her helplessly to him as he once again shifted against her.
A promise explicit both in intent and unscreened desire.
He kneaded her breast, kneaded her bottom, and filled her mouth, the heavy thrust of his tongue mimicking what he intended—and she wanted—to come. His touch wasn’t gentle, yet neither was it rough; he was far from untutored, knew just how dominant he could be without awakening her resistance.
He knew her too well; her senses reeling, her wits long gone, sensation her only guide, she reveled nonetheless, amazed and eager to engage with him—this male she’d never before encountered.
Older, wiser, and infinitely more knowing.
More threat to her, and her senses—and she knew it.
But she’d always loved playing with fire.
Christian had a plan. He had no idea if it was wise or not, but now he’d taken the first steps, he couldn’t draw back. Couldn’t put the genie of his possessiveness back in its bottle, not without first paying its price.
Not without first indulging it to the full.
So he filled his hands and his senses with her. Gorged on the bounty of her mouth, fully yielded, gloried in the knowledge she was under his hands and would do all he wished, everything he wished, yield every last gasp he wished tonight.
They’d never had barriers between them, not long ago. But long ago he hadn’t spent years believing she’d betrayed him, only to learn that wasn’t the case and he was the one at fault. Only to learn that she wasn’t yet ready to forgive him. To welcome him back into her arms, into her body. Into her heart and soul.
The warrior in him had needs, needs his more civilized self held in check. But tonight she needed distraction—tonight she needed something more than his civilized self could, or would, offer.
So he’d dropped the shields he’d learned to employ, and let the genie of his warrior self free.
Now he had to feed it.
She had to appease it.
To be what he needed, give all he needed.
Surrender as needed.
Everything.
He backed her, steered her, not toward the bed but away from it. To the window, uncurtained, where moonlight spilled in. He halted when they stood within the silvery shaft, hauled her even tighter against him, angled his head and deepened the kiss, until she was gasping. Mentally reeling. Too overwhelmed to deny him.
Lifting his
head, grasping her waist, he turned her. Set her to face the window, then stepped close behind. Slid his hands around her and filled them with her breasts, closed his hands and felt her sway.
He took a moment to savor her struggle to breathe, to sense the thudding of her heart. Then he bent his head and set his lips to the sensitive hollow beneath her ear.
She shuddered, leaned back against him. He kneaded her breasts, already firm and swollen, already peaked, straining beneath her bodice. He listened to her gasps, orchestrated, sensed when the line where pleasure became pain was approaching.
Releasing the taut mounds, he set his fingers to the buttons of her bodice. Set his lips cruising the long line of her throat, set his teeth to score lightly along the same path.
While he laid her breasts bare.
Opened her bodice, pressed the halves wide, loosened her chemise and lowered it. Exposing the flushed ivory skin to the cool night air.
Smiling at the sight, at her nipples ruched tight, he raised his hands and once again closed them on her, this time skin-to-skin.
When she shuddered, dropping her hands to his thighs clutched, he lowered his head and murmured in her ear, “You’re going to stand there and let me love you—let me do whatever I wish to you. Let me have my way with you.”
Rubbish, Letitia’s rational self scoffed.
Why not? her curiosity prompted.
With the steady beat of passion thrumming in her veins, with the fog of desire clouding her brain, she could find no good answer to the question.
Could summon no resistance when he took her silence as agreement, and eased her gown and chemise down, stopped to unlace her petticoats, then pushed gown, petticoats, and chemise over her hips so they fell with a soft swoosh to the floor.
His hands returned to her skin, but his touch was different, lighter, frankly assessing, exploratory. As if he’d never seen her naked, as if she were a prize, a present he’d unwrapped for the first time.
She dragged in a breath past the constriction in her chest, conscious of her breasts rising, her midriff tightening, aware that he saw and watched. Naked but, once again, for her black lace garters and fine black silk stockings, she could all but feel the silvery touch of the moonlight as it bathed her long limbs, caressed the curves and valleys of her body, and illuminated a self she’d all but forgotten existed.
He moved behind her, a large, dark, powerful figure still fully clothed. She felt the cloth of his coat brush the long planes of her back. His hands caught hers, fingers briefly tangling with hers, then he glided his palms slowly up her arms, closed them for an instant over her shoulders, then slowly slid them, palms to her skin, down.
Over her breasts, hot and aching for more than a simple caress, over her midriff, tight with desire, over her waist and her taut belly, over the curve of her hips and down, around; gripping her bottom, he kneaded.
As he bent his head and set his lips over the pulse point at the base of her throat.
She gasped at the heat of that simple contact. Shivered and closed her eyes—only to have her other senses sharpen. To have her skin grow even more sensitive to his touch.
From behind, one trouser-clad knee pressed between hers, forcing her thighs apart. She sucked in a breath as, releasing her bottom, his hands cruised her hips. One splayed across her stomach and held her captive, pressed her back so she was straddling that hard thigh, the cloth of his trousers abrading the delicate skin of her thighs’ inner faces—an unsubtle reminder that he was fully clothed while she was all but naked, impressing a sense of vulnerability heavily on her senses.
His other hand drifted down over her thighs; his fingers briefly flirted with the tiny ribbons securing her garters, then left them for the bare skin above. With cool deliberation, with his fingertips he traced up the inner face of her thigh. Higher, higher…then he reached across and traced up the other side.
As if assessing the fineness of her skin, as if fascinated by it.
She tensed, and waited, breathing all but suspended….
Eventually, with a languid authority that in itself was arousing, he let his fingers rise to the next point on his trail of conquest, lightly stroking, then playing with the crinkly dark hair shielding her mons.
He was patently in no hurry; her whole body was taut—she was ready to scream—before he consented to part her curls and reach farther.
To trace, stroke, and caress the already swollen flesh, to slide his fingers through the slickness his earlier caresses had drawn forth.
He chuckled at how wet she was, a dark rumble of male appreciation deep in his chest.
Her hands rose, locked about his hand where it splayed over her belly. He continued to play, as if learning her anew. She was quivering when, after an excruciatingly slow exploration of her tender flesh, he finally pressed one long finger into her sheath.
One slow, smooth, complete penetration.
The sensation brought her onto her toes.
Head back against his shoulder, eyes tightly closed, she gasped.
He held her there, naked before him, her silk stockings sliding against his trousers, her bottom held against his thighs, his erection a heavy rod against her lower back—and made her writhe.
Although her eyes were closed, her mind still saw—saw herself in his arms, held trapped against him, her flushed skin pearlescent in the steady moonlight, her hair tumbling from its pins, long tresses curling over her shoulders as she—her body—responded, helplessly surrendered to the simple blatant act of possession expertly executed.
She no longer had the will to resist. She was captured, not by him but by her fascination with this different side of him, this other lover who was him, yet not the him she’d once known.
The dark lover who held her before him, and pressed pleasure upon exquisite pleasure on her. He was not just older, but more experienced, a scarred warrior who’d lived through battles and had at last come home to claim…her.
His due, his reward. His bounty.
His without question.
That seemed to be the case, for he asked no permission, waited for no assent when, once the heat within her built, and the fever threatened to consume her, instead of allowing her to shatter and find relief, he withdrew his hand from between her thighs, set her on her feet, waited only a heartbeat to ensure she was steady, then grasped her hand and towed her toward the bed.
Thank God, was her initial thought. She expected him to lay her down, strip off his clothes and join her.
Instead he led her to the nearest corner of the bed, to where the thick post of the four-poster bed was hung with heavy green damask curtains. He reached for the silk cord that held the curtains back, wrenched it free, with one hand pushed the curtains to either side, exposing the post.
Before she could blink, he had her backed against the post. He caught both her hands in one of his, drew them up, then looped the curtain cord about her wrists and lashed them high above her head.
Stunned, she could only stare. He stepped back, leaving her standing with her spine against the post, her arms raised but not stretched; there was enough play in the loop for her to curve her hands down and hang onto the cord. She did, testing, but his handiwork held; the lashing didn’t budge, even under her full weight.
What…? She looked at him, intending to ask.
He met her gaze, his own dark and hard, simply said, “Wait.”
He turned away from her and started to undress.
She wriggled, glared, tested her bonds again. Glared at his broad back as he shrugged out of his shirt. Her body was on fire, the flames he’d stoked so deliberately still burning brightly, hungrily, greedily. All she could think about was having him inside her, having the thick rod of his erection moving within her to quench the flames.
But then he turned back, gloriously naked, fully aroused, and expectant relief flooded her. Heightened her readiness, her waiting, her wanting.
She needed him against her, skin-to-skin, more than she needed to breathe.
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Then he halted before her—face-to-face, eye-to-eye.
And she suddenly remembered that this wasn’t the lover she’d known before, but a hardened warrior intent on claiming his due.
Her.
A shiver raced through her as she looked into his eyes—pure excitement laced with expectation, honed by a sense of dealing with the unknown.
He said nothing, simply raised his hands, framed her face, bent his head and kissed her—as if he would—was fully intending to—devour her.
Her every thought cindered beneath the heat in that kiss.
Her mind was awash with raw scalding need when he lifted his head. He looked down, following his hands as he ran them down her body, heavily, possessively, sculpting her curves, his prize, his reward. He reassessed, caressed, repossessed—then bent his head and set his mouth to her breast.
Treated her swollen flesh, as he had her lips and mouth, to a single-minded ravishment. One that had her hanging in her bonds, the fire within her escalating to an unbearable degree.
She would have writhed but his hands held her steady. She sobbed as he released the nipple he’d tortured to throbbing hardness. Unrelenting, he bent and skated his lips lower, with wet, open-mouthed kisses, with his tongue and his teeth, possessed as he wished.
He went to his knees before her, placed hot kisses over her quivering belly, then set his lips to her curls…then he settled back, his knees wide, grasped her thighs, raised them and placed one over each broad shoulder, grasped her hips with both hands and held her, then set his lips to her core.
She swallowed a shriek, tensed against the bonds, spine arching, her thighs pressing down hard against his shoulders.
To no avail. He possessed her there as he had elsewhere, with slow, thorough deliberation. Reduced her to a state of breathless panting need, consumed by the fire he’d so mercilessly stoked.
She was his beyond doubt or question, his to do with as he wished…she shrieked as his tongue entered her, screamed as he thrust and her senses imploded.
Letting her legs slide from his shoulders, he surged up, grasped the backs of her thighs, lifted her up and to him, and entered her with one long, hard, relentlessly powerful thrust. Impaling her, filling her.