Chapter 34 #2
They banged into the coach house and shoved the giant doors shut behind them before dissolving into uncontrollable laughter. Kendra felt like a sixteen-year-old sneaking out to attend a forbidden ball.
Until Trick grabbed her with one arm, still holding the torch with the other, and met her lips for a desperate kiss.
Then she felt like a long-married woman.
A deprived long-married woman.
She wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself close. With calculated skill, he kissed her breathless. When he broke the kiss, she stared at him helplessly. Her lips tingled. She fought to catch her breath, making white puffs in the coach house’s chilly air.
Without a word between them, they made their way to the ducal carriage. Trick leaned inside to light both lamps, then secured the torch to the coach house wall while she climbed up and dropped bonelessly to one of the wide, plush seats.
He sat himself across from her, pulling the door closed to hold in their warmth. They tugged off their shoes and shucked off their cloaks. Then they just gazed at each other for a long, tension-filled moment, until he offered a hand to draw her over to him.
Facing him, she straddled his legs. His lips went to hers immediately, the kiss deepening while he reached beneath her nightgown to arrange her knees on the soft, thickly padded bench, then tucked the carriage’s velvet pillows around them.
Her heart beat double-time in the cushioned stillness. His fingers were warm, and so was his breath, flavored with the faintest trace of the mulled wine he’d sipped earlier. A dizzying cloud of his sandalwood scent surrounded her. She found herself stunned by how much she’d missed him.
By how much she’d missed this.
When he broke the kiss, she burrowed into his neck. “I forbid you to ever leave me again,” she murmured against his skin.
“God forbid I ever have to.” He took her face between his hands. “I wanted you every day, leannan, every hour, sometimes every minute.”
He kissed her again, gently, strengthening the stirrings in her belly that had begun in the twins’ room.
As she strained closer, a low hum of satisfaction vibrated from his throat and spread all through her.
The kiss turned hot and needy, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, meeting hers with a thrilling urgency.
She ran her own tongue across the tiny chipped corner of his front tooth.
Craving his solid warmth, she fought with the tie on his robe until she managed to open it and slip her hands inside, reveling in the feel of his skin and hard muscles against her questing palms.
When at last they came up for air, she leaned back in his embrace, gazing up into his seductive amber eyes. The faint golden stubble on his chin glistened in the lamplight. She rested her hands against his chest. Beneath her fingertips, the beat of his heart matched hers.
He was the center of her world. The only man she had ever loved.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and threaded her fingers in his silky, straight hair.
He leaned closer to plant little kisses on her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, the sensitive hollow of her neck.
He lingered there, suckling gently while his hands went to work lifting her nightgown.
He yanked it over her head, releasing a frustrated laugh when her arms tangled in the full-blown sleeves.
Finally it was gone, and she plastered herself against him, skin to skin. Closing her eyes, she threw back her head and surrendered herself to the sensations. Ah, the give and the take, the heat and the scent, the pure pleasure of his bareness touching hers. She’d missed this.
She’d so missed this.
Her senses were spinning, and an urgency was building deep inside her, more swiftly than ever before in her memory. Her eyes still shut, she inched closer, feeling a hot stab of desire where her body nearly met his.
“Oh, God, Trick.” Dear heavens, he was right there, almost inside her. She wanted him there, filling her where she ached. When he ran his hands down her shoulders and around to cup her breasts, she placed her own hands over them. “Next time,” she murmured blindly against his lips. “I cannot wait.”
He hesitated. Her heart pounded, her breath coming ragged and uneven. Every fiber of her being ached for him inside her, screamed for release.
“Now,” she demanded breathlessly.
“Look at me, lass.”
Her eyes fluttered open. Beneath his shining gold hair, his eyes caught and held her gaze. She’d never seen anything so intense and compelling in her life. “I want you,” she breathed.
“God,” he said huskily, “how I dreamed of this, all the time I was gone.”
“Now,” she demanded again.
Finally, finally, his hands moved to her waist. Finally, finally he lifted her, then guided her back down, slowly, slowly, still holding her gaze captive as his hands held her steady. She felt herself opening, welcoming his warmth into hers.
As she settled against him, she felt a jolt, a flood of excitement that made her tremble, and when they moved together, a heavenly friction that made her gasp. Had anything ever felt so good as physical love long denied?
She’d done this more than a thousand times.
But this time felt new. As their tempo quickened, she felt a delicious throbbing, and she couldn’t tell if it was hers or his.
Then it grew, until she knew it belonged to them both.
Until she felt him pulsing within her and responded in a burst of exquisite glory.
It seemed a long while before she could think straight, before Trick placed one last cherishing kiss on her lips.
“Welcome home,” she whispered.