Perilous Risk (31 page)

She turned slowly, displaying herself. When she had come full circle, she stopped, keeping her eyes downcast.

“God, you are something special.”

Her smile tugged at her lips and widened. She glanced up through her lashes, stealing a look at him.

He was staring at her as though she were the last woman on earth.

“You are incomparable.” His voice rang with passion.

Warmth blazed through her and she let herself devour his form with her eyes. He was so gorgeous, so perfectly lean and tall and utterly masculine. And he found her to be special.

Incomparable.

A surge of desire stabbed through her loins, making her nub throb painfully. She bit her lip and pressed her thighs together tightly.

He made a sound like a cross between a groan and a growl.

The sound sent renewed sparks of fire surging through her. Wetness seeped down between her legs. She could feel her flesh swelling, swelling. Growing ever more needy. She pressed her thighs together harder and writhed.

He put his hands into the curve of her waist and with one move, jerked her wet, naked body to his clothed one.

She cried out, the sound cut short by his open mouth coming over hers, hungry. She clung to his shoulders, pressing herself, her breasts, her belly against his solid form. There was nothing then but the taste of his tongue, sliding against hers, the pounding of her heart in her ears and his heart’s beat against her body.

He was bending a little and she strained up on her toes and she was aware, more than ever, of his tallness and just how petite she really was in comparison. How delicate she felt pressed against his hard muscled yet lean frame. She clung to him and clung to him as he devoured her, plundered her.

Starved for air, she grew a little light-headed and pushed against his chest.

He tore his mouth from hers. The harsh sounding of their panting, air-gulping breaths drowned out the distant sounds of laughter and ribald singing from downstairs.

“Stephen…” she said the word breathlessly against his ear.

He groaned then pulled her down, bending her backwards, tipping her off her feet and put his mouth on hers again, a harsh, urgent kiss.

The hardness of his erection pressed against her. She straightened, pulled back a little and began to fumble with the buttons on his fall. But her eagerness made her fingers clumsy and his growing size strained against the cloth, making it difficult to manipulate the buttons. She paused in her struggles with his fall to caress his length through the velveteen. Oh, God, she wanted to touch that bare, throbbing heat so badly! She wanted it now! She released her breath in a low, lengthy exhalation that was a cross between a wail and a moan.

He swept her hands away and wrenched the fastenings undone himself.

In the next moment, his cock sprang free into her waiting hands. She stroked him, closing her eyes at the deliciousness feel of silk over steel, the heat of him.

He took her hands, prying them off with hasty, impatient motions.

She gasped with loss.

He grasped her buttocks and pulled her tight against himself until his erection throbbed against her stomach. A gush of wet warmth spilled over her bare flesh. He groaned and thrust his hips. The slick slide of his rod against her sent fire sparking directly to her nub. She grasped his shoulders. “Stephen, oh Stephen.”

He pressed her harder. “I love your arse, Rebecca. You surely have the most gorgeous, perfect little arse in the whole world.”

He said this with such reverence in his tone, it made her laugh.

She wiggled against him, sliding herself on his throbbing heat.

“Christ,” he said and the groan in his voice sent a surge of satisfaction through her. Anticipation.

A sense of being young, free, of having regained something lost.

She tossed her head back and laughed.

He bent over her, his breath tickling her throat. His lips traced the line from her collarbone to her ear. He took her earlobe into his mouth and sucked gently.

Wicked fire lit her from head to foot but centred in her sex. She shuddered. “Stephen, Stephen.” She arched into him, trying to increase the friction. “Oh God, Stephen.”

“Here, here,” he said, disengaging from her and taking her hands and looking down.

She stepped out of the tub and then allowed him to lead her to the table.

He turned her. “Put your hands flat on the table.”

She obeyed him.

He grasped her hips. His crown touched her entrance.

She moaned and pressed backwards. She was so wet that on one quick thrust, he slid all the way inside, filling her, stretching her.

With closed eyes, she tossed her head back and moaned.

He reached around and touched the little nub at the crest of her sex and caressed it with a steady, firm circular motion even as he moved within her.

“Oh, oh, oh I shall c-come.” She gasped. “I shall come immediately.”

“Come then, I want you to.” He redoubled his efforts.

She closed her eyes, drew her breath in and let herself be swept into the cascade of shuddering, clenching pleasure.

Oh, it was all so sweet and swift!

It left her panting.

He withdrew.

She whimpered. A soft protest, a sound of loss.

He stepped away from her and began shedding his clothes. When he stood in his breeches and boots, he sat in the nearby chair and motioned for her. “Come, girl, help me with my boots.”

She gave a gasping laugh. No one had called her ‘girl’ in a very long time, except maybe for Father but that was entirely different and even thinking of it had no place here! She laughed again. Tension that she hadn’t even been aware of, tension that she now knew had been with her a good, long while, lifted from her chest and belly.

She felt freer and lighter than air.

Her feet seemed to glide on the floor as she approached him with downcast eyes and knelt and then helped him remove his footwear. When his feet were bared, she put her hands on her cheeks then bent forward and kissed the top of each of his feet.

He touched her shoulders, silently urged her to rise back to her knees.

She obeyed but kept her eyes lowered.

He widened his legs and pulled her closer until her breasts were touching his spread inner thighs, sliding along the soft rasp of velveteen as he pulled her even closer.

Sparks of sensation made her grit her teeth.

He caressed her head. “You have such lovely hair. All golden and red threads, as soft as a September sunset.”

She couldn’t help a smile.

He removed what remained of her hairpins. Her curls fell to her shoulders in tangled disarray. He threaded his hands into her hair, sliding them along her scalp until he had the whole mass of her loose curls lifted off her neck. He tightened his hold, pulling gently. The dull pressure was pleasurable. It relaxed her further, made her rag-doll limp, leaning against his legs.

“Unfasten my fall.”

She felt almost drunk. Dizzy with anticipation. Like one in a trance, she moved to obey him. He had only refastened the outer buttons and it was quick work free his erection once more.

“May I touch you?”

“Yes, touch me.”

She stroked her hand up and down his thick length.

His cock jerked violently within her grasp. It was hard to keep her hold firm. He was leaking and leaking, the hot sticky fluid wetting her hand.

He drew his breath in sharply and his hands tightened on her hair, pulling her head back. A little painfully.

Her nipples grew more rigid than ever and wetness gushed between her legs.

“That’s enough of that,” he said, with amusement in his voice.

She moaned. He was always denying her.

He released her hair and urged her to move aside and allow him to stand.

She watched as he shed his breeches. As she knelt there, he seemed to tower above her and she couldn’t stop admiring his lean, hard muscled body.

God, he was so damned beautiful. So masculine.

She wished their situation were different, and that she had done something rather naughty and that he would use his crop on her. That he would strike her hard enough to leave a few marks.

But he had said he never would.

And they would never, ever be together like this again.

No, stop, don’t think about anything beyond just this moment.

Watching as he walked naked, moving with such artless grace, every long line of his body a testament to power and elegance, she pushed all disquieting thoughts away with a ruthless hedonism that reminded her of her younger days.

He stopped at the tub and stepped into it. Her stare became fixated on his erection. He grasped it and stroked his fist up and down upon it several times. Unhurried indulgence.

“Come, girl, bathe me.”

She tried to keep her expression serious but she couldn’t hold back a smile and she hurried to comply, taking up the washcloth. Trying to ignore the way the soap stung her wrists, she lathered the cloth. Then she slid it over the planes and angles of his body, letting her hands linger in the luxuriant suds, trailing them over the dusting of coal-black hair on his hard-as-boards stomach. But his tightening hold on her neck warned her and she knew better than to linger in the act of washing his cock.

After she had used her discarded wineglass to sluice water over him to chase away the suds, he stepped from the tub and waited for her to dry him.

“Go lay on the bed,” he said when she had finished.

She jerked her gaze to his and frowned. “But don’t you want—”

“Go lay on the bed,” he repeated, more firmly.

She released her breath in a long sigh but obeyed.

“On your back, sweeting,” he added when she reached the bed.

She stretched out over the slightly worn medium blue and rose coloured quilt.

“Spread your yourself wide for me.”

She parted her thighs then took her hand and spread her outer lips open.

With his gaze still riveted between her legs, he approached the bed, his huge erection bobbing as he moved.

“God help me, you are so beautiful,” he said, his voice a little more hoarse than normal. “More beautiful than I dared imagine…and I did imagine quite a bit.”

She swept her lashes over her eyes and let a smile slowly stretch her lips. “Did you?”

“Oh, yes. You were my ideal, Rebecca.” He trailed his fingertips over her belly, causing a faint ticklish sensation to flirt over her skin. Her stomach muscles tightened as fluttering butterflies chased each other around her navel. “You still are.”

Pleasure warmed her from head to foot, increasing the burn of her desire, increasing the fluttering anticipation that tingled through her, making her curl her toes.

Oh, my. That was such a heady thing for a man like him to tell her.

Men like him will tell you anything they think you want to hear—

No, no! Stop it. Don’t ruin it.

She forced the warning down, ruthlessly.

He crawled on top of her, the fine hairs on his abdomen tickled her. She arched up, seeking greater contact with that long, lean, magnificent body. He cupped her face, his gaze intent. He lowered his head and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her jaw line. Each touch of his lips on her was gentle, reverent.

No man had ever kissed her like that. As though he were committing her whole face to memory.

For her, sexual relations had always been playful. An exciting way to seek distraction from the more unpleasant or frightening sides of life that were always encroaching in her mind. Men had treated her playfully too.

But Stephen was making love to her.

And it was so intoxicating to be touched as though she were the most precious thing in the whole world to him. To be so special to one man.

Alarm pulsed in her blood. It was too intimate, too close. He would see her too fully. He would uncover all her imperfections.

She would become dependent on his ardour.

And he would eventually know her too well and become repulsed. He would reject her just as all the others had—

He ran a trail of kisses down her neck and over her collarbone, his mouth becoming open, hungry as he kissed her breasts.

The extraordinary sensations that he created in her swept the disquieting thoughts away. Her nipples grew rigid, aching. She moaned, the sound like a gasping catch in her breathing and she arched her back.

But he did not hurry.

“Your nipples are so petite, so delicious looking, bright as cherries.”

She laughed, softly. “Are you fond of cherries, Stephen?”

“Yes, exceedingly so.” He cupped his hand over her breast.

She peeked through barely opened lashes and saw how large his hand was and how diminutive her breast appeared in comparison.