Chapter 14 #2
When she reached to cup his impressive and quite aroused equipage, he stayed her hand.
“Not until you’re as naked as I,” he murmured.
With a few deft tugs of her gown, he had the shimmering, soft fabric off her body.
It landed in a heap with his to one side of the pallet.
“Do you know how many nights I dreamed of you like this, tortured myself with such an image, knowing I could have had you, but our quarrel and my pride lost you forever?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion.
Her chin wobbled as she helped remove her petticoat, stays, and shift until she waited unashamedly bared for his perusal. “I was at fault as much as you.” They’d wasted so much time, years they could have been together, lived with each other, built very different memories than they shared now.
“Tonight, we start again, wiser this time, and ready.” Then he kissed her, gently claimed her mouth as he laid her down on the pallet, his body over hers.
Lucy sighed. She explored him as much as he did her, covering his skin with nips and feather-weighted kisses, tracing his body with the intent of memorizing every bit of him.
When she closed her fingers around his engorged length, her sigh blended with his moan, and he wrapped his hand around hers to show her how he liked being pleasured.
She smiled with pure feminine satisfaction, for she needed no help—men were all the same—and hadn’t she felt this part of him years ago through the fabric of his breeches?
Soon, kisses and caresses gave way to lips and mouths on sensitive parts, and when he drew a hand between her legs and found that all-important swollen button at her center, she cried out with wonder and need.
Over and over, he rubbed that piece of flesh, and all too soon she fell into her first release for at least five years.
Shaking, as waves of pleasure rolled over her, she grabbed hold of Colin’s shoulders and tugged him close. “I need you in me,” she whispered and followed the command with a light bite to his earlobe.
“I live to serve,” he said and once more kissed her until her head spun and her world tilted.
He encouraged her thighs wider and then he fit his hips within the cradle of her legs, the wide tip of his length flirting with her opening.
“Damn, Lucy, never in my dreams could I know just how good you feel.” With a gentle flex, he impaled her and didn’t stop until he was fully seated.
“Oh, yes…” Sensations raced through her, and she wanted to stretch from the grand pleasure of them, of him.
She looped her arms about his shoulders, and lifting her legs, she wrapped them about his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back.
Every thrust scraped the coarse hair on his chest over her sensitized nipples, which loosed an avalanche of awareness over her.
“This feels right,” he said in a low voice as he paused, their bodies joined. “It’s as it should have been long ago.” Colin shifted. He laid her out flat on the pallet, grabbed her hands in his and shoved them above her head, pinning them to the quilts. “I love you, Lucy.”
Oh, to hear those words again after so much time!
And then he stroked into her body, joining them further, irrevocably—forever. There was no returning to the people they’d been before.
She clasped his fingers, stared into his eyes that were dark with desire and shining with the love he spoke of. The rest of her heart he didn’t already own flew into his keeping, and she moved with him until they discovered a rhythm all their own, and the winter world outside dissolved.
All too soon, the pressure building inside broke, and Lucy shattered.
A keening cry left her throat. She clung to Colin’s hands as if she’d suddenly vanish or wake up from this wonderful dream.
As waves of bliss rushed over her and her inner walls contracted about his member, he grunted, whispered her name and ultimately collapsed on top of her, his hard angles pressing into her softer curves as his ragged breathing rang in her ear.
Tears stung her eyes. She didn’t stop them when they spilled onto her cheeks, but she did hide her face in the crook of his shoulder as she cried.
All the pent-up longing, joy, grief, anxiety and every other emotion she’d cycled through over the course of the journey north of London poured from her, pulled loose by the physical joining.
“Are you well?” Colin whispered, but he held her tight without moving.
“Yes.” She reveled in the heat of his body, BayRum and cloves with a hint of citrus of him blended with sweat, the simple happiness of holding him after all these years.
“I love you too, Colin. I’ve never stopped, even when life took us away from each other.
” Then she sighed and rested her cheek on his chest. Being here with him now after everything, was like opening the best and most wondrous Christmas gift.
Yet… She held her bottom lip between her teeth. He’d said nothing of how their future would play out.