Chapter Twenty-Four #2
When his mouth found hers again, it was not the consuming fire of before.
This was a slow, deliberate exploration.
His lips moved with a soft, almost reverent pressure, a whisper of sensation that made her ache for the wildness he withheld.
His breath came warm against her throat, his lips scorching the flesh of her neck and collar as he moved up and down.
She arched her neck and laid her hands tentatively against his chiseled chest once more, felt his racing heart under her palms. His lips were a soft, deliberate fire tracing a path up the column of her throat.
When his mouth finally met hers again, Anna parted her lips on a gasp, a raw and yielding surrender to the heat of him.
He would not be hurried, though. He was deliberate in his exploration of her lips, making her pulse pound madly.
His tongue, when again it touched her, was neither insistent nor wild, but teasing, tasting, as arousing as his commanding kiss of moments ago, eliciting a yearning moan from Anna.
Anna melted into him, tipping her face up to him.
He slanted his mouth over hers again. She was aware that they were moving, that he was leading them somewhere, but in truth she cared only about his kiss.
She let him guide her down onto the bed, her arms looped around his neck, unwilling to break the kiss.
Their tongues met and parted and met again.
She felt utterly alive, with no thoughts beyond this moment and this kiss.
When he was lying half atop her, his hand crept down from her neck and over her shoulder, settling on her breast. Anna went still in the heat of his kiss, waiting, her body eager.
Through her linen shift, he caressed her breast with his fingertip, causing her nipple to tighten.
Anna’s mouth gaped at the startling uproar caused within, and she shifted in his arms, instinctively arching against him.
A low, ragged groan tore from his throat—a sound of pure, wanting ache that echoed the small, desperate noise she made against his mouth.
Impatiently, he dug his hand under her shift, sliding his palm and fingers upward with no small amount of fervor.
Anna choked on her breath when his hand cupped her breast, lifting it.
She whimpered when his thumb grazed over her nipple, rough against soft, awakening a thousand sensations inside her.
A low, impatient sound rumbled in his chest. His hands fisted in the linen of her shift and tunic, shoving the fabric up her torso in one rough, urgent motion until he bared her breasts to the cool air and his heated gaze.
He stared only for a moment before cupping her breast again, lifting it to his waiting lips.
His mouth closed around her nipple, sucking and pulling, first gently and then more firmly.
Anna’s breath caught in the back of her throat.
She stared overhead, at the shadowed ceiling, but was aware of only the feeling of his mouth on her.
Sweet Jesus.
He pushed her shift higher, and Anna yanked it over her head, discarding it thoughtlessly.
Her fingers tangled in the coarse dark waves of his hair, holding him fast. There was no thought, only this: the slick heat of his mouth on her skin, the raw shudder that ran through her when he groaned against her breast, the dizzying certainty that she was falling into a fire of her own making.
She felt suddenly that she was fearless Anastasia, seductive even, a notion fueled by Bram’s low groaning as he fondled and tasted her breasts and their sensitive buds.
For a long moment, she was aware only of the slow, deliberate stroke of his fingers.
Then she realized the rhythm had changed.
His other hand had stilled, and his gaze fixed on her face.
She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes. The habitual guarded distance was gone, burned away by a raw focus that held her motionless.
He watched the flush spread across her skin, the way her breath hitched as his thumb circled, and the dark approval in his look told her he liked what he saw.
His gaze drifted lower over her breasts, and she swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.
The hunger in his eyes sent a shudder through her, half-frightened, half-delighted.
A predator, he seemed, yes, but a worshipful one.
Strange, that so much was available for her to see in his striking eyes, when so often he truly was unreadable.
At the same time, she was aware of his bare chest, carved like stone, his blatant masculinity, his arms thick with muscles.
Her gaze, which had so often flitted away from the intensity of his, now rose and lingered.
It traced the hard line of his jaw, the faint scar that bisected one eyebrow, the way a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead.
She wanted to map the whole of him, to commit every angle and shadow to memory.
He bent and kissed her again, savoring her, lingering over her.
Her earlier nervousness had faded, overwhelmed by vibrant desire.
She didn’t know herself at the moment, this woman in his arms, holding him to her kiss.
Her hands slid down the hard planes of his back, over the taut curve of his hips, and around to the front of his body, her palm pressing against the rigid length straining against his breeches.
A soft, craving sound escaped her throat at the undeniable evidence of his arousal.
Bram’s hand skimmed down over her breast, and she whimpered into his mouth when he did not pause there, moving over her belly and lower.
Without hesitation, he slipped his fingers into the silken folds between her thighs, scorching her with his touch.
She opened her mouth, her throat clogged with words, but no sound came forth, and when his finger slid inside her wet heat, Anna came apart.
She gripped his shoulders and found his eyes, dark and consuming, and the hunger in them hit her as hard as the slow drag of his finger inside her.
“Bram...?”
“Aye, lass. Feel it.”
Oh, she did. The flesh beneath his fingers pulsed with the need to be stroked. Her hips rolled against his hand of their own accord, a low moan breaking from her lips as she sought more of him, her body slick and wanting.
He rose over her, and she welcomed his kiss with wild abandon, her tongue stroking his as his fingers stroked her. Her legs fell open, and the hard heat of him pressed against her thigh.
She could not have named what she felt, but she knew she wanted more.
“Bram, please,” she begged.
Bram withdrew his fingers and rose from her, stripping his breeches down his hips with an impatience that matched her own.
She had only a moment to take in the full, unguarded sight of him before he came back to her, his weight settling between her thighs.
She gasped at the coarse hair of his chest grazing her nipples, at the broad heat of him pressing against her center, and then at the slow, inexorable push of him inside her, his mouth finding hers at the same moment, swallowing the sound she made.
He moved inside her, slow and deep, and she felt every inch of him.
His face drew tight, almost anguished, and she felt the rigid restraint in his arms where they bracketed her, holding himself in check.
She felt alive and wild, reckless with longing. “Do not hold back, Bram.”
He withdrew slightly and forged gently ahead. He watched her again, his gaze softening as he thrust inward and pulled out. Heat gathered where he touched her inside. His rhythm deepened, a hard, steady cadence that drove into her with a force that stole her breath.
Something cracked open in her chest, a tenderness so acute it frightened her, for being so connected to him right now.
Pleasure began to spiral inside her, coiling tighter with each deepening thrust. He drove into her with a new, relentless rhythm that made her body sing with a deep, craving ache, her back bowing off the bed to meet each thrust. Instinctively, she squeezed herself around him, eliciting a low growl.
He lunged forward, towering over her, pumping steadily, driving deeper.
Anna hooked her feet onto his back, opening herself to him.
She heard them together, the sounds of their bodies meeting, and felt a deep, animal heat move through her.
Pleasure seized her, sharp and merciless, and she shattered—undone by the exquisite beauty of it.
She covered her mouth with her hand, attempting to stifle her cries.
Bram pulled her hand away. “Nae. Dinna cover your mouth. That is mine, every sound I draw from ye.”
She gave herself up wholly, and the world narrowed to the heat of him, the weight of him, the sound of her own voice saying his name.
Nothing else mattered.
He claimed her mouth in a slow, thorough kiss, swallowing the small, breathless sounds she made as he drove into her.
His body went rigid above her, every corded muscle straining.
He thrust once more, deep and hard, and a long, low groan tore from him as he spilled his warmth inside her.
His head dropped heavily to her chest, his breath hot against her skin.
“Well, God bless America,” tumbled from her lips in her exhausted astonishment.
For several moments neither moved, save for the gradual slowing of Bram’s breath against her breast and Anna’s fingers passing restlessly through the damp hair at the back of his neck.
His weight was considerable, but she welcomed it, holding him close when he might otherwise have shifted away, one hand moving slowly over the broad expanse of his back.