Page 32 of Loving Graystoke's Heir

She rubbed her cheek against his chest and breathed in the warm, spicy heat of his skin through the thin cotton shirt. “What’s that?”

“This,” his nose lightly trailed along the side of her cheek until his lips brushed against the lobe of her ear, “is our house.”

Tamsin turned toward him and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was gentle and tentative for a moment as she tried to avoid comparing it to their last kiss years ago.

She didn’t want to think about that kiss, given to him as she fell asleep in his arms. The last kiss she gave him before he left her behind to go to Africa.

But it wasn’t that he left her, she had to remind herself. He did it for her. For her safety.

While her mind understood the thought, and admired him for what he thought he was doing, she could still feel the ghost of pain in her chest.

“I can hear you thinking, Tam.”

“I don’t want to think,” she confided in him, “I want to remember what it feels like to touch you. To feel you touch me.”

“Good,” she heard the deep, rumbling tone of his voice, “because that’s what I want to do, Tam.” She felt his hands smooth down her back and slide down over the rounded curve of her backside. His fingers dug into the fold where her thighs began. “I want to touch every inch of you again and again before I bury myself inside you.”

She clung to him. She had to.

If she didn’t wrap her arms around him and squeeze tight, she might have fallen to the floor at that very moment.

“I’d never let you fall, Tam. Not you. Not now that you’re here.”

And then, as if to prove his point, Donal swept her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs as if she weighed no more than air.

Was he that strong?

He looked human, but the strength she felt under his skin, warming her in his arms, made it feel like she was being held by Superman.

“This is our room, Tamsin.” He nudged the door open with his shoulder and walked inside. “You can see some of what it looks like because the moon gives us plenty of light.”

She followed his gaze up toward the ceiling and understood what he was saying. A long, narrow window followed along one wall and let in the light from the moon overhead.

“Perfect timing.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips before he set her down. “The moon doesn’t always bless us with her light, but it feels like the whole world knew you were coming and decided to welcome you.”

When he fell silent, she heard the night come alive with sound. Closing her eyes, it seemed like she could hear for miles. Sounds she couldn’t even identify cut through the darkness and soothed away the last remnants of her worries.

“It’s so beautiful here.”

His laughter was a caress adding to the sensations of his hands on her body. Donal’s hands peeled her clothing away, dropping each piece gently to the floor near their feet.

When he released the clasp at the front of her bra, she heard his deep intake of breath. “I agree, Tam. So beautiful.”

She swallowed, trying not to let herself fall apart as he bared her body to his eyes.

“Yes.”

To his hands.

“So beautiful.”

He held her breasts in his hands, testing their weight and size against his palms. Tamsin couldn’t begin to know how to hold back her instinctive reaction.

She stood there and felt his heat against her bare skin. Felt the tingling caress of his callused hands and the way her nipples tightened as her blood flushed her skin, chasing away any last reservations.

“I dreamed of this, you know.” She lifted her hands and covered his as he closed his fingers around the tender points of her nipples. Tamsin held him there as he pinched and pulled at her flesh, learning how to tease her skin and draw her breath from her lungs.

“I imagined you late at night, coming into my room, laying me down on my bed and showing me again and again that you loved me. That what we had was more than just a night. That it wasn’t a mistake.”

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