The Tempting of Thomas Carrick (25 page)

“Wait.”

The command brought him up short. He glanced back and watched her open her eyes and sit up, reaching, stretching, trying to place the glass on the small table beside the bed.

He stalked back to the bed, took the glass from her, and set it on the table.

Her fingers locked in the silk of his robe.

He wasn’t wearing a nightshirt; the brush of her thumb against his skin sent desire lancing through him.

He looked down at her hand, at the knuckles white beneath her fine skin. As declarations went, it was fairly clear. “Lucilla…”

He couldn’t look at her face, not while standing at the side of her bed, with her en déshabillé a mere foot away, with her skin warm and her hair sleep-tousled—the whole made even more compelling by the inevitable consequence of shock and fear he knew he would see in her wide green eyes.

He knew he shouldn’t look, not if he wished to save himself, and her, from what raged inside him.

From the primal, primitive urges that her scream and the need swimming in her eyes had sent rocketing through him.

Possession had never felt so desperately
needful
.

Desire had never ripped at him so powerfully, with such sharp claws.

“Stay.”

The single word had him meeting her eyes. They captured his soul.

“Stay.” Her lips moved again, a siren whispering in the night. “Stay and be my protector until dawn.”

He swallowed, fighting, battling his own urges as well as her. “The armchair,” he croaked. He felt amazed he’d managed even that much.

Without easing her grip, she shifted and swung around, then smoothly rose onto her knees. Fisting her free hand in the other side of his robe, she held him. Anchored him.

She held him even more tightly with her eyes.

The green was deeply shadowed, but he could still feel her power, the heated caress of that passionate fire that was such an intrinsic part of her.

“Here,” she said. “With me. In this bed.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Her lips curved; intent and more burned in her eyes. “That isn’t a request.” She tugged with both hands, hauling him to her. “You’re mine, and I need you.”

She pulled him the last inch and pressed her lips to his.

CHAPTER 10

He was hers—he
could
be hers—for tonight.

For just one night.

He told himself that even while he closed one hand over hers, clamped it against his chest and fought her for control—of the kiss, of the engagement that was already spiraling out of control, either hers or his.

Dangerous.
Beyond
dangerous.

But oh, so very needed.

So necessary.

For them both.

Some part of him recognized that. The rest didn’t care—not about anything but having her in his arms.

Her lips holding his captive, hands clenched in his robe, she tipped backward. He started to topple, realized, and sank one knee onto the edge of the mattress, held back, held fast, and caught her against him.

Not a wise move, yet the alternative would have been much worse. He could feel passion’s fire licking over his skin, heat flaring everywhere her lithe body pressed to his. Then, leaning back against his hold, she hauled his robe wide, released the sides, and her hands were on him.

On his skin, palms like hot silk sweeping across his chest—burning him.

Branding him.

Alarmed, some part of him tried to pull back; the rest rejoiced and gloried.

Dipping his head, he wrenched control of the kiss fully from her. Pressing her lips wide, he ravaged her mouth. For one finite instant, he caught her full attention and held it—seized her senses and trapped them in the hot melding of their lips. Focused them both on the heated communion, on the evocative plundering—and her hands, those greedy hands, stilled.

He almost caught his mental breath, but temptation whispered. Locking one arm about her waist, he raised his hand, cupped and held her face, angled her head, and took the kiss one step deeper—into the realm of more primitive possession. He held her trapped, his to take from as he wished, and he took—claimed—more.

And wondered if she would take fright and retreat.

Vain hope? Or unwelcome fear?

Regardless, he should have known better. She barely paused to find her feet in the sensual maelstrom he’d unleased before she met him, boldly matched his aggression with her own fire, her tongue dueling wantonly with his.

She plunged them both into a battle for supremacy, one it seemed neither could win. Despite his expertise, whatever move he made, she was there, countering, enticing—forever tempting, challenging, and luring him on.

Deeper into the madness.

He knew he should resist, that he ought to call a halt and draw back.

He didn’t.

Couldn’t…wouldn’t…

The brutal truth was he couldn’t make himself step away from what she offered. Not tonight. Not when her scream still echoed in his ears and all it had called forth still raged through his blood.

Demanding.

Her.

She—here, now, in this way—was exactly the reassurance everything that was male within him hungered for.

And if, even after her entreaty, he harbored any doubts of her desire, she was hell-bent on eradicating them. She remembered her hands and reached again, fingers splaying, gripping, fingertips sinking evocatively—demandingly—into the muscles of his upper chest, kneading like some imperious cat. Splintering his concentration, snagging and fixing his attention on the heat of her touch, the blatant desire burning behind it.

Then she pushed her palms flat to his skin again, ran them up, over his shoulders, now bared, and up to the column of his neck.

His breath caught; his chest tightened.

Cupping his nape, she slid the fingers of her other hand into his hair, slowly, seductively ruffled the dark locks, then she gripped.

She tipped back and succeeded in toppling them onto the bed.

Lucilla landed on her back. He landed half over her, half beside her. She would have grinned triumphantly if she hadn’t been so deeply immersed in their kiss that even breathing no longer seemed worthy of attention. Nothing could possibly compete with this—with the clear and present sense of physical connection. Of unscreened, unrestricted physical communion.

She’d always imagined that a kiss—a true kiss between lovers—would be like this—open, direct, and heated.

With no screens, veils, or polite modesties to mute the power of their burgeoning need, to shield them from the conflagration.

They—he and she—didn’t need shielding.

Even as the thought slid through her mind, they were already reaching, seeking more.

Opportunity had come knocking, as she’d hoped, albeit not in any way she’d imagined. And yes, she’d seized the moment, but she hadn’t been driven by anything so logical or deliberate as tactics or strategy. She’d reached for him and pulled him into her arms because—as she’d admitted—she
needed
him.

Needed to hold him, to feel his hard body against hers, and feel
alive
. Feel as truly, gloriously alive as only he could make her.

She needed this—him, here, now. Them, together, wrestling amid the rumpled covers of her bed, lips locked, mouths melded, body against body, hands on heating flesh as their senses rioted and their hearts surged, and they filled their minds with each other.

With their passion and its inherent power.

She finally succeeded in tugging and pushing his robe far enough down his arms that he softly cursed through the kiss, then drew his hands from her, from where they had held her, as if debating whether to attempt to hold her back, and with swift, jerky movements, he stripped his arms of the sleeves.

Instantly, she whisked the material away, blindly flung the garment off the bed, and immediately returned her hands to him. To the heavy curves of his shoulders, the broad sweep of his chest, created by some master celestial sculptor expressly to make her senses salivate.

Bracing his forearms on the pillows on either side of her, he sank back into the kiss, his tongue stroking heavily over hers. She tipped her head back, hands grasping his sides as she urged him over her—and he obliged. Shifting so she had even greater access to the splendors of his body—his heavy chest, broad and so superbly muscled, his ridged abdomen, and the relative hollow of his stomach.

She touched, traced, caressed all she could reach. His skin burned from within, pulled taut over muscles tense and tight. A smattering of coarse hair teased her fingertips. She brushed her fingers back and forth, and felt him battle a shudder.

Sensed the hunger that rose to that simple touch.

In him, and in her.

He was leaning on his forearms, holding his weight off her. His hands framed her face, his fingers tangling in her hair.

And suddenly the kiss was not enough. Nowhere near enough to appease her rising need.

She traced the sculpted beauty of his back, ran her hands down, reached as far as she could. Slipping her fingers beneath the drawstring waist of his sleeping trousers, she ran greedy, grasping fingers over the upper curves of his buttocks.

Muscles bunched, flexed, then hardened.

Through their kiss, she felt the fracturing of his attention—could all but see, watch, as he battled to restrain the impulses she’d provoked.

Deliberately, she slid her hand around the curve of his hip, sweeping forward to capture—

He caught her wrist in a viselike grip.

Broke from the kiss enough to growl, “Not yet.”

“No” she wouldn’t have accepted, but “not yet” she could live with. At least for another minute.

Perhaps two.

She gave him the moment, twisted her wrist, and when, his senses alert and watchful, he eased his hold, she drew her hand from his and slowly skimmed it upward between them. Knowing that, with their lips still parted by a breath, almost brushing but not, he was following the movement of her wayward hand, she walked her fingers up the placket of her nightgown. Halting at the top button, she slid it free.

On a tortured groan, he closed his eyes and dropped his forehead to hers. “You are going to be the death of me.”

She debated being offended. Instead, she tipped her head enough to trace the soft upper edge of his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “Not true.”

Her whispered words washed like fire over the flesh she’d just slicked. Thomas felt his entire body clench, as if she’d licked him elsewhere.

But she wasn’t finished. “To you, I will always bring life. This—you and me like this—is as things should be. Life for us as it needs to be.”

There was so much certainty in her tone; with those simple words, she pushed aside the doubts and questions his more rational, cautious side had been piling up in his brain.

This—her and him together in her bed—didn’t fit with his plan for his life. He didn’t know—had no idea—how it might fit with hers. But here and now, none of that mattered; as her words had confirmed, this was what needed to be.

That undeniable need—to have her beneath him, her long, slender legs wrapped about his hips as he drove deep within her—still thrummed, an irresistibly compelling beat in his blood.

A beat that, through the last minutes, had only grown more insistent.

And with every prompt, every push from her, that need only grew. Escalated.

He opened his eyes—in time to see her slide another of the tiny buttons free. Her white nightgown, the placket edged with delicate lace, gaped enough to expose the swell of one surprisingly plump breast.

The sight transfixed him. She was so slender, he’d thought…

His mouth watered.

On a half-smothered groan, he tipped her chin up, recaptured her mouth—anchored them both for one fleeting moment, long enough to submerge their senses in the kiss. Then he brushed her hand aside and, with expert flicks of his fingers, rapidly undid button after button.

Then with the back of his hand, he brushed one side of her nightgown wide and set his hand to the taut mound of her breast.

Just that one touch, silken skin to his palm, and he knew there could be no going back.

Her heart leapt at his touch; as his fingers closed about the tight peak, he felt her senses soar.

His did the same.

Her flesh firmed beneath his hand, heated and with skin unimaginably delicate and fine; her nipple, already puckered, ruched tight as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, a pearl just begging him to caress it with his lips, to taste it with his tongue. To lick.

Deserting her lips, he bent his head and did. He licked, laved, then drew the tight bud into his mouth and suckled.

Her fingers clenched tight in his hair as she swallowed a small scream. He licked again, and she arched beneath him, her body undulating beneath his in a provocative, infinitely arousing surge…

Any lingering possibility of somehow bringing this engagement to some end other than total intimacy vaporized. The last shreds of his resistance fell, fled.

Blown apart, blown away by the tide of sheer need—his and hers combined—that erupted and raced through them both.

From that point on, there was no him and her, no separate thoughts, no individual agendas. All they knew was one driving need, an overwhelming urgency that flooded them both.

He couldn’t rein it back; he couldn’t contain it. The best he could do was to steer it, and even that much control was tenuous and shaky.

Driven, at the mercy of that urgent need, he stripped her of her nightgown and she urged him from his trousers.

Then she wrapped her fingers about his straining erection, and he thought—for several excruciatingly tense seconds—that he’d died.

Or that he would spend before he got inside her.

His jaw felt as if it might have cracked, but he found the strength to open his eyes and
not
focus on the delight in her face as she explored and traced.

He managed to force his limbs to his bidding. He caught her hands, drew them from him, then, raising her arms, he bore her back down, anchoring her hands in the froth of the pillows on either side of her fiery head.