Chapter Twelve #5
Dear God, she couldn’t have imagined …
For a moment he paused, his breathing fast and ragged, then he bent his head and took her mouth in a deep, tongue-thrusting kiss. Carly arched upward at the same moment Ramon drove forward. Something tore loose, she gasped at the pain that shot through her, and Ramon’s whole body went still.
“I am sorry, Cara. In a moment your first time will be over.”
She could feel his powerful muscles straining, shaking with his effort at control. “But I don’t want it to be over. I want…”
A corner of his sensuous mouth curved up.
“Si, I know what you want, Cara. I was worried that I might have hurt you.” He started to move very slowly.
“Let us see if I can give you what you want.” His hardness slid in, then gently eased out, rubbing against the part of her that he had touched before.
He started moving faster, thrusting deeper, setting up a rhythm that made her trembling grow more fierce.
The small house shuddered with a heavy gust of wind, the storm’s fury building like the fires that raged inside her.
The driving rhythm increased, his narrow buttocks flexing, forcing him deeper, pounding faster and harder, matching the tempest outside.
The tightness sprang to life, the coil of tension that had been there before, knotting low in her belly. Her nails dug into the muscles across his shoulders as the spiral of heat coiled tighter, making the blood roar through her veins. The tension mounted; a sheen of perspiration covered her skin.
Then the hot, tight coil snapped free, flinging her violently out of control. She was soaring, soaring, gliding on silver wings to a place of incredible sweetness, a world of pleasure unlike anything she had known.
“Ramon!” she cried out, her body arching upward, taking him deeper inside while golden pin dots flashed behind her eyes. Pleasure rushed through her, liquid heat and spirals of delight so sweet she could taste them on her tongue.
Ramon’s body tensed. Pumping into her hard and deep, he threw back his head and groaned out his release, telling her he traveled to the same place she had been. Carly clung to him as if she might not find her way back without him.
She felt his lips on her forehead. He kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Outside the wind seemed to have lessened. The rain on the roof became a steady patter, the wind a soothing rush among the trees. Rolling onto his side, he pulled her against his chest, his body still melded with hers.
Gently he smoothed back locks of her hair. “I am sorry I hurt you. But the pain comes only once.”
She smiled at him softly. “You didn’t hurt me. There was just one instant of discomfort. I would gladly pay the cost again.”
A flicker of movement where his body still joined hers. His eyes turned dark and his hand returned to her breast, skimming over the roundness, urging her nipple to life. The hardness returned to the length of him still inside her, and a fresh round of heat slid through her limbs.
“Ramon…?” she whispered.
He eased her onto her back and came up over her, their bodies still deeply joined. “I will not take you again if you are sore.”
She smiled into his handsome dark face. “I feel wonderful.”
He nodded. “Good. I am in need of you again. I have been too long without a woman.”
A flicker of hurt rolled through her. He had made her feel so special, so cared for. But he would have been the same with someone else. Carly blinked against the sudden sting of tears at the back of her throat.
It was only that he needed a woman.
And now he had a wife.
Then Ramon was kissing her again, beginning to move inside her, and the sadness slipped away. In seconds she was writhing beneath him, gripping his shoulders, crying out in passion. Again she reached the sweet place he had taken her before, then Ramon’s hard body shuddered and stilled.
He moved off her, pulled her against him, cocooning her in his warmth, his long dark fingers sliding gently through her hair.
“Ramon?”
“Go to sleep, Cara. The day has been a long one and tomorrow you will be sore.”
She flushed a little at that. For the first time it occurred to her exactly what they had done and how boldly she had behaved.
She wanted to ask if he was pleased, but his eyes were closed and he seemed to be thinking of something else.
Perhaps men were always that way after they made love. She knew so little about it.
Carly closed her eyes, but she couldn’t fall asleep.
Instead she listened to the rain and the wind and tried not to think of all that had happened.
Still, again and again, her thoughts returned to the wedding she had forced, the unwanted bride she was—and that her husband was an outlaw, a man whose life was in constant peril.
Lying in the darkness, she wondered what Ramon was thinking, but she didn’t dare disturb him. She had caused him enough grief already.
Curling against his side, she finally drifted to sleep.
In the morning when she awakened, she found Ramon had gone.