Chapter Twenty-Five
“What do you want?” Gabriel whispered into her ear.
“I beg your pardon?” Ryan breathed.
“Que veux-tu que je te fasse, Princesse?” What do you want done to you, Princess?
Ryan opened her eyes. He’d never referred to her as “princess.” If he called her princess, he acknowledged not only his own title, but their union, as well.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I want what you did before. On the first night. In your cave.”
He kissed her. “So you do know what you want.”
“Well, is there more?”
He made a grumbling noise and dropped his lips to her neck. His beard tickled her cheek, and her jaw, and her throat. Oh, how she adored his beard.
“I would have your beard on me,” she said. “Everywhere. And I would touch you.”
“Is that all?” He’d draped himself against her, but now he stretched, aligning the long, muscled heft of him squarely on her body.
She moaned at the delicious pressure. “I don’t know.”
Try everything,she thought. And, It’s only for tonight. And, Remember it, cherish it.
“Don’t think,” he whispered in her ear. “We’ll not survive this if we think.”
She nodded, reaching for mindlessness. Now she would only feel.
“When you were in my cave,” he said, “which, allow me to reveal to you, felt at the time like the most unbelievable good fortune that could befall any man. In case you couldn’t tell. A beautiful woman knocking about my cave half-dressed? Imploring me to lie with her, to touch her? I wanted every inch of you. From your smallest toe to the hair on top of your head. I wanted to memorize you.”
“Perhaps I might do that to you?”
He chuckled against her neck. “My good fortune does not run to that. Surely.”
“That’s what I want, Gabriel,” she said. “Will you lie back? Will you let me touch you? All of you? From your smallest toe to the top of your head?”
He let out a half laugh, have moan, squeezed her, but rolled to the side, flopping on the mattress next to the wall.
“Oh lovely,” she said, pressing up from the bed. She scooted to her knees and shimmied backward, working her way to his feet. The room was dim, only one candle and a low fire in the stove, but she could see him and she looked her fill. He was a large, thick man but with no fat; each muscle defined. His arms were like ropes; his abdomen a cluster of taut plates.
And then she saw his erection. She blinked, unprepared for the size and rigidity of it. It rose from a nest of dark hair, straining toward her, lifting off his belly. Ryan sucked in a little breath; she felt a rush of heat flood to her face.
“If your goal is to kill me, Ryan,” he grunted, “you’re very close. Very close.”
She glanced at him, licked her lips, and moved farther down his body. In the cave, he’d started at her feet, and so would she.
“Can you move to the center of the bed, so I have room?”
He nudged sideways and the movement caused his erection to bob. Ryan narrowed her eyes, studying him, determined to miss nothing. She would savor, and test, and remember all of it.
She rose on her knees, dragging both palms down his hard thighs to the tops of his feet. She explored the arch, the round bone of his ankle, the space between each toe. She glanced up. He’d tucked his hands behind his head, the posture of a man in repose. He gazed down at her with half-lidded eyes.
Reposed are you? she thought, biting her lip. I accept that challenge. Her hands reversed and felt upward, savoring the scrape of the hair on his legs, cupping the long muscle of his calf.
Gabriel let out a noise, half moan, half sigh. She smiled and dusted her hands to the tops of his legs to rest on his knees. His thighs were powerful, bulging with muscle; his calves tight and hard. His knees commanded all of these, and she could feel the strength there, the flexibility, the parts he used to ride a horse or climb a hill. It was breathtaking to roam freely over the broad expanses, now naked and relaxed, twitching under her touch.
After she’d tickled the area behind each knee and elicited another groan, she moved upward to massage the hard muscle of his massive thighs.
“But do you ride, Mr. Rein?” she asked idly, trying to be clever. But her voice came out broken and a little trembly; she sounded like a bird. Coincidentally, Ryan felt as if an entire flock flapped inside of her. Her heart had taken flight; swallows did loops in her belly, and a thousand wings fanned the burn between her legs.
Above his thighs strained the obvious—his jutting erection, and she remembered what he’d done to her that night in the dark cave. He hadn’t explored her so much as covered her body with his hand and pressed. He’d made her warm and alive and burn with little more than the heel of his hand. Dare she endeavor this? She wanted to make him burn, but she wasn’t certain that she was finished exploring him—really, thoroughly, exploring him.
Shyly, she glanced up. He watched her still, but his expression was less languid; darker, more heated. He’d pulled his arms from behind the pillow and rested his palms on either side of his hips. She raised her eyebrows and licked her lips, a question. He slowly hissed one word: “Yes.”
“Yes?” She wanted to be sure.
“Ryan,” he growled, and his hands closed on the bedsheets, squeezing them in balled fists.
Taking a deep breath, Ryan closed her eyes and slowly lowered her face against him. She felt the prickle of his body hair; she felt the hot, smooth steel of his erection, she felt his pulse pounding in his groin.
“Actually,” he grunted, reaching for her shoulders, “I’ll not last. Sorry, love, if we’re meant to carry on longer than five seconds more, I’ll not survive that.”
She raised her head, and blinked at him.
“In fact,” he rasped, “I may not survive the vision of you, hovering over me, naked and innocent—Oh God. Will you touch me? Please? A hand? Hell, a wrist? A lock of hair?”
Ryan had never before seen him so agonized. His eyes were now closed, he breathed in and out in heavy puffs. Ryan licked her lips and carefully, delicately, settled her hand on his erection. It felt soft to the touch, but also solid. The skin was loose but the density was hardness and thickness.
“Is this alright?” she whispered.
His only reply was a whimper.
Ryan was intrigued and excited and she couldn’t believe she’d devoted so much time to toes and knees and ankles when there was this. She knelt over him, bobbing her hand, testing the feel of him. She checked his expression, watched it shift from agony to bliss and back again. His moans and sighs fluttered across her like a caress.
The burn and need in her own body were rising; too demanding to ignore. Had he burned for her when he’d touched her that night in the cave? Had he wanted her as much as she wanted him now?
“Enough,” he rasped, reaching for her wrist. “I can’t endure. Mercy, please, Ryan. Leave it. If you carry on with this torture, I cannot torture you in return.”
She liked the sound of this, so she released him. She massaged her hands over his flat belly, nudging fingertips into the seams of muscles, tracing the broad planes of his chest. She kneed forward and straddled his hips to properly reach farther up. When her body settled on his erection, the folds of her sex grazed his hot, smooth skin, and she let out a sigh.
This, she thought, this was the answer to the heat currently burning her up. She allowed herself an experimental nudge and yes—exactly, perfectly this. She snapped her head up, checking for his reaction. He stared back, his hazel eyes blazing with intensity and lust. She pushed against him once more, reveling in the blast of sensation that sparkled from her core.
“Careful,” he warned. His hands found her hips. “I’d hate for you to become too distracted to properly complete this long, slow killing. Of me. You’re killing me, Ryan.”
Ryan ignored him and returned her attention to the muscles of his chest. Every few minutes, she thrust again, riding another blast of pleasure. Between the feast of muscles beneath her hands, and the hard, insistent erection between her legs, Ryan was rapidly losing her ability to navigate. She was distracted; she wanted to play, and ride, and touch, and taste. She’d paused to explore the hair on his chest, running her fingers back and forth, flicking his nipples, shaping her hands over his pectorals.
“I’m going to touch you now,” Gabriel whispered.
Ryan blinked and looked up.
“Forget I was here, did you?” he asked.
“You are all that is here,” she whispered.
“Let me touch you?”
“Yes.”
His hands slid from her hips and found her swaying breasts. When his calloused fingers brushed her nipples, Ryan’s hands went still, her eyes dropped closed, and her mind went white.
“That’s right,” he hissed. “It’s ever so fun when one of us explores, but it’s the very best when we both...”
And now his words dropped off, because Ryan had begun to thrust more steadily, harder; she was riding him. Maybe he finished the sentence and maybe he didn’t, because she’d stopped hearing.
“Enough,” he growled and he rolled to the side, tipping her to the mattress. She whimpered, hating the loss of contact, but then he pinned her down, straddling her, rubbing his hands across her belly and over her breasts, and cupping her face in his hands.
“Enough,” he soothed, dropping his mouth to her neck, nuzzling her with his beard.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Ready?”
“Will you have all of me?” he growled.
“Yes,” she breathed, “all.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, I’m certain. Please. Before the end of our time together. Give me this.”
“We will regr—”
“Don’t say it,” she begged. “Don’t say it, don’t say it—don’t you dare ruin this by saying that.” She clawed at his shoulders, pulling him down.
“I’ll pull from your body before I spill my seed. We mustn’t get you with child, above all else.”
“I don’t care,” she cried. “I would bear your baby. I would raise it and love it. Do what you want—I know I cannot ask that of you, above all—but I don’t care.”
After that, he ceased talking. He kissed her. He nudged her thighs apart with his knee, he took his erection in his hand and slowly, smoothly, slid into her.
“Oh,” she cried, unprepared for the tightness, the fullness.
“Are you alright?” he gasped. His voice was choked, struggling.
“Yes.”
He nodded, sniffed, and sank all the way on a long, slow moan. When their bellies touched, he leveled himself on top of her and lowered his head, breathing into her neck.
“Still alright?” he huffed.
“I think so,” she said. The pleasure was gone, but the new sensation wasn’t terrible. It was intimate and heavy and tight.
“Give me a moment,” he huffed. “You’ve cast the most sensual experience like a spell, and I need a moment to recover my control.”
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
He laughed. “Oh no—not hurt. The opposite. My God, you’re tight.”
“But what comes next?” she asked.
“We kiss,” he breathed, moving to her mouth.
Ryan’s eyes were open, but she saw only shapes and shadows. The whole of her consciousness was focused on the wedge of his body inside her. It was tight, and slippery, and full. In her periphery, she saw him draw closer to her lips; she felt him nibble at the corner of her mouth.
“Breathe, Ryan,” he whispered as he kissed her. “Breathe.”
Ryan drew in a shaky breath. Gabriel added his tongue to the kiss, licking her, teasing the seam of her lips. She laughed a little, licking him back, and her eyes fell shut. The kiss grew deeper, more sensual; and slowly, magically, the tightness between her legs gave way to a restless need to not keep still. She wanted to move. She felt the familiar burn that wanted satiation, that wanted to press, that wanted him.
“Oh,” she gasped, kissing harder, giving her hips an upward, testing lift.
Gabriel groaned. The sound only heightened the burn and she lifted again.
“That’s it,” he hissed against her mouth. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” A breath. “Yes.”
And then they were off. Ryan moved freely, rocking her hips against him. She had the sense that Gabriel held back, that he wanted her to set the rhythm. When she raised her knees on either side of his hips and dug her heels into the mattress, he finally, let go.
Devouring her mouth, crushing her against him, he matched the movement of her hips, thrusting, rocking, leading them in a dance that was both new to Ryan but also somehow known.
She clung to him, met him thrust for thrust, kissed him with all of the love in her heart. When the hot, wet, burning sensation began to build, when she felt the demanding sizzle to her very core—when her only thought was satiating it—she knew what was coming. She’d experienced this on their first night. This was the glorious bit, the undoing, the moment where he took her to the edge of the world and swung her round and round over open air.
She cried out when it hit her, repeating his name, again and again.
He held himself still, allowing her to explode around him, kissing her all the while. Eventually, her breathing slowed to a shallow pant; and she opened her eyes, blinking at the ceiling. Slowly but deeply, he began to move.
“Alright?” he grunted.
She nodded, grasping his shoulders, holding on.
“Alright?” he asked again, his body rocking faster, harder.
“Yes, Gabriel. I am alright.”
And then he let out a guttural sort of roar and pulled from inside her. Ryan flinched, unprepared for the loss of contact. He fell on top of her, spilling his seed on the sheets.
“Gabriel,” she said. Not a request, not a call, not a question. She simply said his name.
He lay across her, panting.
She settled one hand on his back. His skin was wet with perspiration. She dipped another into his hair. She hooked an ankle over his leg. He slid an arm beneath her back and scooped her tightly to him. He buried his face in her hair.
Ryan’s mind floated in a shimmery pleasure haze; but questions, a million questions, crowded in. Why had they waited so long? Why would he not want this for always? When could they do it again?
She would ask this—she would ask all of this—but at the moment she was so very sleepy—exhausted, even. And he felt so good; damp and heavy and languid on top of her. She allowed her eyes to fall closed; sleep had just begun to drip down the corners of her brain, when they were startled by a knock on the door.
“Gabriel?” came an insistent voice, from outside. “Gabriel, it’s Killian, are you there?”
Gabriel tightened his hold with one hand and took up the sheet with the other, draping it over her.
“We’re in search of Lady Ryan,” Killian continued, “and we cannot find her.”
And now Elise’s voice came through the door. “We’ve an urgent letter by messenger from her aunt in London. Her sisters at Winscombe have written that Maurice has returned to Guernsey. He did not wait until October; he is already there.”