Ever His Bride (36 page)

“That’s not a wise invitation, sweet.” He
grazed her mouth with a drift of kisses, nothing more—not yet,
though desire surged through him like the highest tide.

“Oh, but I like this, Hunter. Like kissing
you, and tasting you.” She caught his nape with her hand and drew
him closer, to chart a course down his throat with her gentle
kiss.

“If I did as I liked, it would be over before
it began.”

“But you said this took hours. . . .” Her
every breath was excruciatingly warm, spent through the silk of his
robe and broadcast like a storm.

“It will. I promise you.” He closed his eyes
and imagined peonies falling from the clouds, alighting on his
chest, leaving their cool kiss in the fashion of her mouth—he
imagined melodies . . . He caressed her mouth with his, then fit
his palm to the warm underside of her breast, cupped the sweetness
through the linen.

“Ah, yessss.” It was just as he had dared to
remember: a small but weighty handful, a perfect fit for his hand
and no other’s.

And he prayed for strength and guidance.

“Hunter!” Felicity caught a little sob in her
throat as she watched her husband rub his thumb across the peak, an
elemental sensation that bored to the center of her. It rose
against the fabric, and she gasped when he bent his head and kissed
the new rising.

“Sweet perfection,” he whispered against her
gown, leaving the impression of his kiss, and the steamy
dampness.

His hands were heavenly, slow and wondrous,
spreading his fingers like a meadow fire across the flimsy linen.
She strained toward him, toward his mouth as it trailed the aching
rise of her breasts, toward an unknown ecstasy.

He tugged with his mouth, and heated the
linen with his guttural growls, and then he tugged deliciously
harder, and wet her through with his febrile tongue.

And then she wanted his mouth fully against
her skin. But he was taunting her other breast, twirling her nipple
between his fingers, and she could hardly stand for the reeling
sensations. How could she explain what he was doing to her, that he
was handsome and hers, and made her heart sing? His smile was
sumptuous as he kissed her, a sweep-away-the-stars kind of kiss,
which she prayed had come from somewhere near his heart.

A tight, tugging fever was building in her
secret place, and she wished he had another hand, or that his
manhood was freed of his robe and—

“Let me.” He knelt on the carpet, bronze and
dark, his eyes glinting like diamonds. The first button of her
nightgown fell to his touch, and he kissed her there, slipped his
hand inside and lifted her breast slightly, gave a swipe with his
tongue at the underslope.

“So lovely, warm.” He spoke around his kiss,
making her feel lazy and light of limb, spread his broad hands
across her belly and around her waist and worked the next pearly
button free of its fastening with his teeth and his tongue, all the
while shooting fire from his fingertips, clutching her backside and
lifting her so close that her hips were tucked up against his
chin—and, oh, the impossible sensations
that
image
summoned.

“Hunter!” Bursts of lightning and blazing
bedwarmers, thoughts of him doing amazing things to her. She felt
more than a little dizzy, and held tightly to his shoulders for
fear of pitching backward.

He released her and sat back on his heels.
She felt roundly deserted. The last button dangled in the folds of
her gown, just above the patch of curls that craved his hand and
wanted to be pressed against his mouth.

And he was looking just there.

“Hunter. . .”

Hunter heard her breathy little sigh, saw the
shadowy triangle, dark blond and level with his mouth, scented for
him. Her gown cleaved her in two across her shoulders, exquisite
skin set off by linen and the rise of her breathing. It would fall
from her shoulders at the slightest tug.

But he reveled in the anticipation; wanted
her to bloom and cry out his name into his ear. If he could last
that long.

She shrugged, and the gown fell like a shroud
dropped from a stained-glass window. She was lit by flames that
could never hope to match the wild colors of her hair, nor the
sleek sheen of her skin. He stood up and bent his head to kiss
her.

“Dear God, Felicity, you are a wonder.”

Her eyes were glazed emerald and fixed on him
like a brand. And she was fiddling with the front of his robe.

“Felicity, what are you doing?”

She held up his sash, yanked loose from his
robe and displayed like a prize for a foot race. She was a wanton,
but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“Hunter, you—!” She was staring gape-mouthed
at his risen flesh. “You’re so different from the marble kind.”

He’d married a lunatic. “The marble kind?” He
suddenly feared to ask what the hell she was talking about.

“And the painted kind.”

“Painted?” Just where the hell had her
travels taken her?

“And an oversized one enameled onto a Chinese
vase. You are nothing like them!”

“All right, woman.” He took a step forward,
ready to sit her down and discuss the matter. “Where exactly did
you see these?”

“In the British Museum.”

He was stunned. “In the museum? I thought you
went there to read. Not to look at naked men.”

“I don’t go there to look at naked men—not
specifically. But one can’t help but notice them when they’re
fourteen feet tall and standing in a hallway.”

He laughed, could see her in her skewed
bonnet, a notepad in hand, and her mouth agape in curiosity. If
he’d come upon her like that, he’d have probably kissed her. Any
man would have dreamed of doing the same. Any man would want to
keep her.

“I had always wondered what one might look
like in the flesh.” Now she was grinning boldly, staring at him and
leaning back against the bedpost.

“Well, you needn’t wonder any longer,
wife.”

If Hunter hadn’t been so wildly inflamed by
her, the object of her interest would have shrunk away for all her
questions. But that was his wife’s charm, the very part of her he
found irreplaceable—and he burned for her. He dropped his robe off
his shoulders and pulled her against him, pressed himself into her
belly, and covered her mouth with his own.

He ached to plunge inside her, would take his
time, let her encounter the coiling ecstasy. She sighed as he slid
his palm down her belly, watched him and crooned as he spread his
fingers through her curls and played there.

“Oh, Hunter, my knees . . .”

He left a kiss beneath her ear, tucked
another beneath her chin, and then took her mouth in a raging kiss
as he skimmed his fingertips along the splendid curve of her waist
and across her hips and ever downward.

Felicity could hardly stand for the dreamlike
pleasure of it all. Her knees were bent and slightly parted, and
she clung to the bedpost. And all the while Hunter guided his
fingers closer to that throbbing knot of expectation. Her blood
pulsed; her skin ached for him. He was kissing her, filling her
mouth with his tongue, and her thoughts with his intentions.

And then he slipped past the curls and into
the sweltering dampness that had gathered to a fever between her
legs, and made her bend to his caress.

“Felicity, I’ve dreamed of this. Of you.” His
words were a prayer against her ear. His eyes found hers in the
midst of a smile. He played across her breasts with his erotic
tongue, and at the joining of her legs with his fingers, until she
was clutching the bed post and begging for his flame.

His mouth made a pilgrimage down her belly.
He murmured sweet words against her skin, still plucking and
playing his fingers through her damp curls, until he was kneeling
between her knees and she was nearly swooning.

She wondered if a person could die of
pleasure. He slid his hands down her thighs, spreading them
further, and held fast to her bent and trembling knees. He rubbed
his cheek against her wool, and her legs lost more of their
underpinnings.

She ought to be hiding herself from his eyes,
not unveiling her secret place for him to see and to fondle. But he
was a pressure and a deeper presence than she had ever known in her
life. He was fullness and he was everything.

And she loved him for this, too.

And then he kissed her there. “Oh,
Hunter!”

She would have called out his name again, but
her throat had stopped working. His tongue was so sweetly
seductive, and now he was whispering against her.

“Sweet woman!” Tremors shook Hunter to the
core. She was damp with the scent of lavender and salt and her own
beguiling fragrance that he would carry in his nostrils forever.
She would never be another man’s wife. Not ever! She was his
completely and for all time.

She called his name as he lifted her into his
arms; she clung to him and kissed him. “Where are you taking me,
Hunter?”

He settled her back against the pillows, and
knelt in the joining of her legs. “Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere with you, Hunter. Anywhere.”

He groaned and made love to her mouth. “Then
I know just the place.” She sighed as he dipped his fingers into
her honey, and pressed herself into the heel of his hand.

He thought suddenly and irrationally about
the long week gone by. Lying sleeplessly in his lonely bed,
dreading his return, worried that she might turn him out of his own
house?

“You’re very handsome, Hunter.” Her eyes were
smoky as she played untamed hands down his chest, slid her fingers
across his belly, until she reached for the root of him.

“Woman, you—” But he hadn’t been prepared,
and hissed and rocketed to his knees as she wrapped her fingers
around him.

He made some animal growlings in his throat
and clenched his teeth together as she caressed him, blinding him
with her random ecstasies. He fell to his hands on either side of
her head, whispering for her to stop, and kissing her. “Please,
Felicity. I’m too fond of this.”

“You are very large. And very warm.” He took
a sharp breath as she fit the tip of him against her.

There was something seductive about watching,
knowing with certainty where he left off and she began, opened to
him, a spreading flower. Then she was tilting her hips to meet with
that final barrier, the one she’d offered him so boldly.

“Please come to me, Hunter.”

“Oh, yes!” He was at the end of his tether,
could last no longer. “One moment’s suffering,” he said, hoping to
draw off the pain of his entry.

“Never in your arms, Hunter.”

“Oh, sweet!” He thrust firmly and the very
tip of his shaft disappeared just inside her creamy tightness. A
miracle of blending; his heart aching and his muscles cramped.

“Hunter!”

“Are you all right?”

She arched her back and hissed a ‘yes’, then
took him deeper still. Her breasts thrust out to him, to his mouth,
giving him focus against his beleaguering need to thrust and
thrust. His arms quaked as he drew a straining nipple into his
mouth, curling it between his teeth and tongue, until she was
shuddering and calling his name again.

And she was weeping, tears sliding out of the
corners of her eyes and across her temples.

When he started to pull out of her she
grabbed his hips and held him. “No, Hunter.”

“Not painful?”

“A wondrous stretching.” She lifted her hips
an inch, an irresistible invitation and a long throaty growl.

He was lost, propelled himself mindlessly the
rest of the way, till he was joined with her fully. God, how he had
dreaded his homecoming; yet now this rapture, this overwhelming
need to lose himself in her forever! He was seething, muscles
cramped, his groin on fire. She was tightness itself, and he would
have ground into her if he dared.

He suspended himself above her, his mind a
muddle of lavender and sweat and sighing. His wife was staring up
at him with misty sea eyes, and she was tilting her hips in a
quiet, pulsing rhythm.

“The point of no return?” she asked.

“Long past, my sweet.” He kissed her mouth
and her eyelids, riding her hips as his heart rode her pulse. “Long
past.”

Felicity loved this wild, earth-fragrant
dance they were pursuing, the hot pleasure that licked and spiraled
upward between them, like riding the currents in a balloon. She
clutched at her husband’s broad-muscled back, at his backside,
sweat-drenched with his straining. Her breasts had ripened under
his mouth, he’d turned her skin to sunlight, and implanted that
driving urge to thrust her hips to meet him again and again.

Her stiff-collared husband looked the perfect
savage in the hearthlight, his face no longer masked but animated
in exotic elation as he reared and roared, drew himself from her
and returned. He was chanting her name against her ear, ever
lifting her senses toward something that he held in reserve for
her, something that now made her buck and strain against him, and
with him—and because of him.

“Come with me, sweet.” His voice was low and
thick and curled around her mouth. “Look at me, please.”

She found his shining, dark eyes, and
wondered where he meant her to follow. Her husband trembled
violently above her, and the great, heated heaviness between her
thighs spread like a wildfire through her belly and out to her
limbs. A splendidly potent rippling began and built where she was
joined to him, making her gasp. Unrefined, undefinable bliss
pounded through her, and she was launched free of the earth to soar
the skies, to tumble on the clouds and ride the sea.

His name spilled out of her in a prolonged
melody that rose and fell with the waves and waves of impossible
pleasure. He was the cause, and the cure.

“Dear Felicity, I—” Hunter reared up on his
hands, and thrust himself into her till their bones met and she was
moaning, and still she pulled at him and drove him deeper. And then
he finally seemed to let himself go, surged against her like the
violent sea.