CHAPTER TWENTY #3
She struggled for some control over her battering heart, over this madness. “And what might that be?”
“Keeping my hands away from you.”
His hand glided lightly between her exposed breasts, over her stomach.
Her lungs collapsed, and her muscles responded to his touch as if they were his to own.
His fingers lingered just below her navel, and he looked at her, waiting for her permission.
His amber eyes flecked with gold, owl’s eyes, lingered on hers. Searching, studying. And…
And pleading.
Raw desire cracked through what remained of her reserve like lightning.
It came out in a rough breath. “Then don’t.”
His own breath hitched, and his hand slid lower. With it, heat crawled up her body, and her parted lips drew to his.
He kissed her, played her like an instrument with his lips, with his tongue. With his fingers in her hair, on her breasts, inside her. She let him, reveling in the sensation of being played; of the softest parts of her pried open and caressed.
She wanted more.
She pulled back and shrugged out of her jerkin, her open shirt.
She kissed him ravenously on his neck, on his ears.
Each taste of his skin stirred a new, dangerous sensation in her.
She wanted to see the flowers of his imagination.
She wanted to see him when he hadn’t been worked ill, when he wasn’t desperate.
She wanted to see him when he was.
She pulled away, gasping; and at her withdrawal, immediately saw her wish granted. There was no other way to read the look on his face, tuneless and true; he was desperate for her.
It frightened her. It elated her. What were they doing? What had she done? “I shouldn’t–”
Abruptly, he leaned back. “Should we stop?” he asked, trying, and failing, to hide the fervor in his voice.
The thrum in her body – like lightning, like magic – answered for her, and took her speech. She shook her head.
Brow furrowed, he didn’t immediately reach for her, and she knew she’d ruined everything.
But then, with a painter’s grace, he reached around her neck and pulled forward her braid. He removed the cord holding it taut and unwound her hair, fanning it over her bare shoulders, tracing her collarbone. She felt newly exposed. Admired. Adored.
He took her hands in his. Slowly, he peeled away the gloves. He touched the tips of his fingers to hers. Hers didn’t stick to his skin. His electrified her.
Then he wrapped her hands around his waist, pulling her closer as he did, and graced small, tasting, exploratory kisses up her shoulder, along her neck.
This was worse than before. No longer a headlong rush into a desperate mistake, but a careful stroll, a conscious choice to linger, to become familiar. She did not know what she would see. She did not know what would be seen of her.
But it was too late to go back; she was caught, and she wanted to be.
As he continued kissing her, she pulled his shirt over his head, admired him as she had been admired.
Her fingers explored his chest, then his arms, feeling the fine, light hair, taking extra care when they drifted over his bruised, bandaged inner elbow.
She put one hand in his hair, ran the other along his back, his thigh, his erection.
With a short, hot release of breath through his nose, he laid her gently down into the flowers, then slowly stroked his fingers along her stomach, her waist, her ribs; every touch purposeful and perfect and never where she wanted it.
All the while, he planted soft, lingering kisses up and down her body. Careful, but not hesitant or restrained; alert and alarmingly attentive, as if memorizing the feel of her, making a map of her every single inch.
It drove her wild. He drove her wild. Being with him, the sex, yes, but him.
Impossible, rotten, perfect, necessary. And if she thought about it a second longer, she was going to scream or cry, and she didn’t know which was more humiliating, and she should turn back, run away, but there was no world, no sky under which she could.
So she stopped thinking. She gripped him by the shoulders and pushed him to the ground, into the spongy bed of flowers, and rolled on top of him, straddling his waist in her thighs.
A startled smile slipped past his lips. Her own lips turned into a grin before she smothered his with a breath-stealing kiss, all thought fleeing at the helpless sound he made as she ground her hips against him.
He didn’t want to wait any longer, either.
Quickly and deftly, he maneuvered out of his trousers, then helped her slide out of hers.
When she slid onto him, they both gasped, momentarily halted by the sensation. But only momentarily.
Tomorrow, they must part for the last time.
Tomorrow, she must somehow return to the faded silhouette of life she had accepted before this delicious, excruciating, all-consuming vibrance.
And after this, tomorrow, and all the days after, would be even duller than before.
Worse than dull. Deadened. She only had the night, the one night with him, the one night to know this feeling, to know beauty, to know life.
She made the utter most of it.