The Legacy (28 page)

“You taste like summer, all hot,” he murmured after a time. “And sweet, like candy.” He glanced up, his gaze dark and riveting. “Woman candy,” he said with a profligate’s smile.

She blushed all over.

He bent his head again, leisurely exploring her while his fingers worked their magic on her as well, the exquisite pleasure he created almost akin to pain. She begged him to stop, then begged him not to even as her joy expanded, her hoarse cries shuddering forth while he stroked her with his clever fingers, his sybaritic tongue. With a twist of his fingers, she flew apart, gasping, endlessly hovering, soaring …

He allowed her to drift back to earth, and then slid himself up her trembling body, kissing every inch of flushed skin along the way while she panted in stunned delight. Finally, he brushed back the tangled hair from her forehead, wrapped his arms around her, and held on, rocking her in a slow caress while his heart beat like a thing possessed against her chest.

She sensed the restraint in his entire body. His staff, impossibly hard and large, burned with a carnal heat between them.

“Wolf, you did not …?” she hesitated. He desired her. It was obvious. Surely, he intended to possess her this night?

“You overwhelm me,” he admitted, his breathing ragged. “But I must go slowly. I know it has been a long time for you. I don’t want to hurt you. In the state I’m in, I can’t promise you I won’t.”

“Wolf, you will not hurt me,” she admonished, longing for his full weight and power within her, echoes of pleasure still racing through her. “You know I am no maiden.”

“Nine years is a long time,” he said solemnly. “You may as well be.”

She felt his length nestled between her thighs, and knew she should have been afraid. She was not. After what he’d just done for her, how could she be? He’d positioned himself just at her entrance—so close not a hairsbreadth of space separated them, so close she could feel the silky tip of his staff, its searing heat. She undulated against him, kissing him with her flesh. She had the satisfaction of watching his eyes go nearly black with desire.

She lifted her hips in invitation. “I want you. All of you.
Now.”

He made a desperate sound and pushed forward, his body claiming hers.

At last.

With a savage thrust, Wolf seated himself deep inside her. He heard her gasp at the unexpected fullness, and he feared the worst. Still, his body refused to obey his command to cease. Reflexively, he ground against her—once, twice—and finally forced himself to hold still. Withdrawing was beyond his power.

“I’m sorry, my sweet! Are you …?” He gazed at her anxiously.

In answer to his unasked question, she pressed her mouth to his, devouring him with her kisses; her breath—sweet and hot—came in sharp little pants. Relief flowed through him. He responded, kissing her back with a desperation he hadn’t felt in years. Sweet lord, her mouth … he feared as long as he lived, he would never get enough of those lush, full lips.

He allowed himself to move within her once more. He held his breath as he did, trying to give her time to adjust. Sweet ecstasy shot through him. Watching her, hearing her, had been nearly unendurable. To be inside her … he slid slowly out and back in again, savoring the blessed slickness, the pull, the glide. A return to heaven after a season in hell.

She lifted up to meet him.

“Show me what to do,” she begged against his mouth and began to move in an uncertain rhythm against him.

Why did she not know what to do? Why had that little cockscomb not shown her what to do? Had he given her
no
chance to experience her own pleasure?

Still, her natural instincts were … quite good. He slid his hands down the curve of her narrow waist and, gently guiding her hips, he allowed her to seek out her own rhythm for a while, to find her own way. As she did, he struggled for control over the raging brute within him demanding instant satisfaction. Despite the cooling water from the bath, sweat covered his brow, and his body grew damp with perspiration. She was so wild, so sweet, he knew he needed to take control again or it would be over for him much too soon.

He didn’t want it to be over. Not yet. Not ever.

When she thrust up against him once more, forcing him deep inside her, so deep he nudged her womb, it nearly did him in.

“Don’t—
move,”
he gasped, and only just managed to restrain the pulsing start of his climax.

She must have heard the desperation in his voice, for she went still. They were frozen in that moment of time, motionless, flooded by an ache so exquisite Wolf would later remember it as a sweet hurting, hotter than fire, a flame that glowed blue and bright at its core while the night grew black around them and water mixed with perspiration steamed upon their flesh.

Finally, Wolf braced himself on his elbows, chest heaving, and rolled, putting her on top of him. He could think of no other way to delay his release.

Sabina’s brow furrowed in startled curiosity at the unfamiliar position, her eyes clouded with passion. Wolf began to move inside her again, lifting her up with the thrusting power of his thighs and buttocks. He grasped her as he let her ride him, his hands on the flare of her hips showing her how to move to achieve the back and forth glide that brought ecstasy. She bit her lip, concentrating hard. Within minutes, she had his cadence.

“That’s the way,” he breathed, encouraging her. Awash in pleasure, he watched the place of their joining until misty spots floated in front of eyes he refused to blink. She suddenly cried out, and he looked up at the blurred oval of her face.

She threw her head back as yet another release crashed into her, her black hair cascading in rivulets down her naked back, her slim neck arched, her nipples tightening into hard little buds.

Appropriate or not, Wolf thanked God for blessing him with a wife of unbelievable responsiveness.

He felt the pull of her inner muscles against him and knew he could wait no longer. He quickly rolled her over onto her back and grasped her face in his hands, forcing her eyes to his.

“Look at me,” he commanded, and she did. The eye contact made it almost unbearably intimate, but he refused to look away. As he drowned in her deep blue gaze, he thrust harder, faster, deeper, taken over by an ancient rhythm he could no longer control. He wanted to bury himself inside her, so deeply they would never be separated, so hard she would feel it until the end of time.

With their gazes locked together, he exploded. He gasped her name and threw back his head, roaring in pleasure as his muscles corded in sharp relief and his climax wiped all coherent thought from his mind.

He was suspended in time for a moment, as though he had taken a sudden step off a very tall cliff, but had not yet begun to fall. She reached out to him, touched him with her very soul, as though their bodies were forgotten, their flesh dissolved, the sinews of their limbs melded together, and they had become, incredibly, one person. Then light turned to liquid joy, heat to gasping pleasure. His climax went on and on, pulsing, pounding, igniting, flinging him into the stars. Like a fiery comet, he streaked across the sky, only coming back to Earth after long, shattering moments in the sun.

Afterward, she held him tightly, as he had her. There were no words, so they didn’t speak. She traced lazy circles on his skin with her fingernails for a while until the gentle strokes faded to stillness. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she drifted off to sleep.

Wolf lay beside her for a long time afterward, a mixture of fear and wonder holding him immobile. What had happened to him? He had been transported, taken completely out of himself to a place he had never been. It had never happened to him before. Not even with Beth, he admitted guiltily.

What did it mean?

He was exhausted. He had to sleep. But while he lay there, his eyes stubbornly open, he paced her breathing with his own, the rhythm of their hearts united by that one small act.

A delicate snore wafted up from the pillow beside him, and he smiled. She slept with her mouth open. He almost laughed, but instead he gathered her to him and hugged her with gentle glee. She was real. Not an angel, but flesh and blood. And she was his. Everything else could wait.

He finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Some time later, Sabina awakened to the feel of Wolf’s rough beard against the smooth skin of her back. He kissed a path down the curve of her spine and murmured against her naked flesh while he fondled her bottom with his strong hands. She smiled into the pillow, feeling decadently voluptuous. He stretched over her and pressed his lean hips to hers, his arousal already heavy between them.

Still half-asleep, she arched indolently against him in the warm pool of firelight streaming over them and turning everything golden. He must have gotten up at some point to stoke the flames in the grate. Now he was stoking hers.

“Again?” she asked teasingly.

“Again,” he said, a thread of determination in his voice. He would not let her turn around. “Let me show you something. Tell me if you like it.”

He raised her hips from behind, searched for a pillow, and stuffed it underneath her.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she looked over her shoulder at him. He brushed her hair to one side with a gentle sweep of his fingers, and smiled against her cheek when he lay full-length on top of her once more.

He pressed his knees against the inside of hers, nudging her legs open, and then slid one hand beneath her to stroke the high part of her mound.

Her hips jerked in reaction, and she moaned in response at the sensations his fingers created. He adjusted her position, then glided into her, sliding halfway in, then out again in a sure, alternating rhythm with his fingertip. She squirmed beneath him, gasping and clutching at the sheets, trying to raise her bottom to take him deeper, but he held her down with his weight, his shallow penetration both maddening and arousing.

“What are you
doing?”
she asked again, the question ending in a long, drawn out moan.

“You’ll see,” he promised.

When he had her twisting beneath him, he suddenly reared back, pulled up her hips, and thrust deeply inside her, his hands grasping her hard, his breathing harsh. She screamed and clawed at the sheets, her body shuddering from the fierce series of climaxes he pushed her through while he drove into her. After endless, shattering moments of pleasure, she could only clutch weakly at the sheets in an effort to remain on the bed as he pounded into her from behind, his own release bursting over him like a waterfall. He collapsed on top of her, resting there for long moments before he finally shifted away with a soft groan.

“Well, wife. Just for curiosity’s sake,” he rumbled, “did you like it?”

She removed the edge of the bedcover, which she had been using to stifle her sharp cries of pleasure, from her mouth.

“It was … pleasant,” she gasped after she regained the use of her tongue.

He slapped her playfully on the bottom and growled.

“Pleasant?”

“Yes. Pleasant,” she giggled, turning over on her back and lacing her fingers around his neck. She almost burst out laughing when she saw the stormy look on his face.

“Humph. What does a man have to do to be memorable around here?”

She tickled his earlobe. “It is what comes from fishing for compliments when the answer is so obvious already.”

“Oh, is it?” He smiled in satisfaction. “I’m glad you enjoy my touch,” he added quietly.

“If I enjoyed it any more, I am afraid I would become a mindless, blithering idiot,” she confessed with a sigh.

“Now that would be worth seeing.” He turned her gently onto her side, facing him, and stroked slowly over her breasts, down her sides, and across her waist, his gaze following the progress of his hand. “I love the curves of your body, the angles, the planes. You are like some mysterious geometry, endlessly fascinating and complex.”

She smiled. “I have never been compared to a mathematical formula before.”

He grinned wryly. “Forgive me. I should compare you to a flower, or springtime, or some other overused cliché, I suppose.”

She shook her head and stroked her fingers over the sculpted ridges of his abdomen. “Nay. You make mathematics sound like poetry.” She moved her leg and stroked his ankle with her toes. “Tell me more.”

He caressed the crease between her hip and her leg and propped his head on his other hand, watching her with quiet intensity. “When I am inside of you, it is like the perfect equation, where everything balances with nothing left over. No negatives, no positives, just… one.”

She sighed, her fingers smoothing over his strong, beating heart. “Yes … I feel it, too.”

A momentary shadow crossed his face, but when she tried to ask him what was wrong, he put a finger to her lips.

“Shhh … no more words,” he said, and gently rolled her over, away from him, so she could no longer see his face. From behind her, he slid his hand between her thighs. He nuzzled the soft down at the back of her neck, kissing and tasting her, nibbling and sucking.

He was insatiable, but she was exhausted. “Oh, Wolf, I do not think I can—”