Chapter 8
Rosaline was lost in an enchantment of sensation wreathed in delectable darkness. At first, she’d squirmed from it, awash with shame. She’d truly known nothing of this act but the bare bones of what went where.
And every moment had been one pleasant shock after another.
Not the least of which was the large, virile creature that was her husband.
He stood at the foot of the bed, towering over her prone, exposed body. Her thighs clamped open by his formidable hands.
He looked perfectly savage.
Butterflies danced low in her belly as he gazed down at her like some arrogant god, rapacious as a winter wolf resplendent with lupine grace.
If only her very first climax hadn’t stolen her ability to form coherent sentences.
She might have told him how magnificent he looked just now.
His surplus of muscle locked with tension, the gold of the lantern gilding the fine, crisp fleece on his chest and illuminating the arrow it made down his large torso before disappearing into his waistband.
With all his talk of being rough, she found most of his skin surprisingly smooth.
She’d tell him that someday. Someday when he wasn’t looking down at her as if trying to decide which part of her to devour first.
Instead, she laced their fingers together on her parted thighs, drawing them wider, higher, offering herself as an altar to his abiding lust. Wishing he’d not ceased the magic he wrought with his mouth.
Who knew her body had been capable of such consuming pleasure?
As if reading her mind, he settled back between her legs, spreading the folds of her sex once more with that seeking, probing, oh so skillful tongue of his.
He was slow. Relentless. Teasing and tasting as if he’d no sense of how the little bud of her sex was desperate for this inexorable tension to spill over into release.
His breath was hot, feathery and his movements sinuous and ultimately sensual as she did her best not to squirm and writhe this way and that in order to get him just where she needed. To that place he always seemed unable to find.
Yes. Right there. No. There. No, dammit, if he’d hold his head bloody still, she’d just find it for him and—what had he called it?
Ride my lips like a wild pony.
She couldn’t imagine that she would at the time, but that was before he insisted on making her work this hard to keep him where he ought to stay.
Thus far he’d been a dominant lover, and she’d found that soothed her fears.
Now he seemed intent on driving her mad.
He’d slide through slippery, pliant flesh making strange, possessive noises.
Whispering words against her sex she couldn’t imagine, let alone identify.
But when it seemed he would approach the place that promised to turn this throbbing torment into another soul-searing, earth-shattering climax, he danced away.
If she didn’t know better, she would think he tortured her on purpose.
Upon one such disappointing maneuver, she’d released his hand to clutch at his hair and guide him the minute distance to the left that she needed.
A low, growling chuckle vibrated against her, hiking her demanding need even higher.
“I’m being cruel, aren’t I?” he asked between scintillating licks. “Having my fun with you, forgetting how fevered you are. How fucking easy it is to send you over the edge.”
“It’s not easy,” she panted, the muscles in her belly burning and trembling with strain. Her thighs quivering from the endless tightening and releasing. “I’ve been trying so hard.”
“I know.” He sucked at the little flanges of flesh with a wicked, distressingly wet sound. “Your pussy is just so pretty. So fucking delicate and delicious.” He dipped his tongue low, so low against the place that throbbed and clenched around emptiness.
“Please,” she whispered, hating the plaintive note in the word, though it seemed to ignite an ungodly light in his dark eyes.
“This is why you are dangerous,” he groaned as he traced a sinuous trail up the inside of her thigh. “Because, it seems, I can’t deny you a goddamned thing.”
His mouth returned to the exact crest of flesh he’d been avoiding. Kissing and suckling, balancing her on the edge of a frighteningly tall precipice.
A gentle pressure distracted her from flinging herself over the cliff with wild, willful abandon.
A fingertip. Testing her tensile opening. Probing forward, sliding inside.
Her every muscle tightened at the intrusion, at the foreign nature of the sensation. Dear lord, if his finger felt this big, how was she going to take the girth of what pressed against the fabric of his underthings?
All thoughts of worry evaporated as his tongue found a magical spot, sucking her entire hood into the heat of his mouth. She gave a hoarse cry as her hips left the bed, working his finger deeper. Deeper. Until his knuckle rested against her.
He stroked her from the inside, finding places that made her gasp and writhe, lifting her again toward the precipice.
Right as she spied the edge in the distance, his clever finger pulled out of her, eliciting a sob of frustrated desperation.
Almost immediately the pressure returned, gliding wetly inside. Only this time the intrusion was more insistent, stretching her with patient but relentless pressure.
He’d added another finger.
“Christ, you’re tight,” he rasped.
She opened her mouth to apologize, but then his lips did something so incredible she could only sob his name in absolute wonder. Moaning, she tilted and strained against him, twisted her hips and dug her heels into the bed.
He stayed right there with her, gliding those thick fingers against her most intimate flesh, his tongue flicking and sucking at the place where all nerves seemed to coalesce.
Stars exploded behind her eyes, blinding her with brilliant, white-hot pleasure that flirted with electric pain.
She was catapulted into the cosmos, flung past beloved constellations whose appellations she’d somehow lost. There was only one name she could remember, and it was torn from her tongue in helpless pants and ebullient sobs.
And, finally, in quiet, quivering cries for mercy.
A mercy he granted by abandoning her altogether.
She collapsed to the bed, a boneless puddle of pleasure, still plagued by the occasional thrill and pulse that animated her limbs.
How it was possible to be both empty and replete, she wasn’t certain, but the entrance to her body still felt dilated and demanding.
He left her for only a moment, returning to bend over her and draw the soaking nightgown over her head. She was as limp as that empty gown, limbs heavy with a lovely exhaustion.
“Yes,” he murmured, his big body hovering above her. “Just float there, honey. Stay relaxed if you can.”
He lowered himself with infinite care, freezing at some point as if capable of doing nothing more than working breath in and out of his lungs.
She managed the strength to lift her hand to his shoulder “What is it?”
“I’ve never felt so fucking heavy in my life,” he muttered. “I’m going to crush you.” His arms flexing with a shift in weight, he made to leave. “I should stand,” he gritted out. “Safer.”
“No.” Suddenly she was attached to him, both arms and legs, wrapped around him like a barnacle. “I…I think I need you here,” she said in a small voice. “Close.”
Pressing a gentle kiss to her temple, he settled against her incrementally.
He was heavy. His torso pressing her thighs impossibly wide. His chest abrading hers with crisp hair. The hard planes of his body forcing her soft ones to yield.
It was glorious.
Something the approximate texture and temperature of a branding iron rested against her thigh.
Oh my. He’d left her to relieve himself of the last barrier between them and, apparently, wipe her essence from his lips before returning to kiss her.
He tasted different this time. Heady with a salty musk she recognized as her own. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, this reminder of what he’d just done to her.
For her.
Surely she’d been the only one to succumb to such searing pleasure. And, though he seemed to enjoy himself, he’d not had his own climax yet.
That, she could not abide.
She wanted this. Wanted him to find ease in her body. Wanted to grant him at least a modicum of the pleasure he’d given her.
When he didn’t take it, she broke the kiss to gaze up at him, her husband. Her man of no mean experience. His features etched with an agony she didn’t think he enjoyed any longer.
“I can’t seem to bring myself to hurt you.”
Heart expanding until she felt it might burst out of her chest, she wriggled her body lower, bringing her sex and his in closer proximity.
“It is best, I think, to simply plunge in like one would a cold body of water,” she postulated. “Better than extending any unpleasantness with hesitation.”
He closed his eyes, nodding as if she’d given sage advice, then reached down between their bodies.
What he pressed against the vulnerable opening of her body was big, blunt, and astonishingly smooth. Almost like glass heated in the sun. It slid forward ever so slightly and the pressure was instantly enormous.
Winding her arms around his neck, she pulled him in tight. Not for a kiss, but keen for a spot in which to bury her face. Finding it in the smooth arc where his shoulder met his neck.
“Do please hurry,” she whispered. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
He coughed out something like a laugh. “So. Polite.”
Then he surged forward, scalding her with a stretching, inescapable pain.
She hadn’t realized her teeth had sunk into the meat of his muscle until his raw noise tore through the air, containing every bit as much pain as she felt.
Unclenching her jaw, she released his trapezius, placing a conciliatory kiss on the indentations she’d left. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his ear, soothing a hand down his rippling back.
“Don’t fucking dare apologize,” he croaked. Holding himself as perfectly still as his quivering muscles seemed to allow. “Jesus fucking Christ, woman.”