They both groaned. A shiver of pleasure ran through her, a ghost of what she’d found before, and she wiggled her hips, trying to find it again. He dropped to his elbows and made an impassioned sound into her neck.
“Harriet, I’mdying. Please, let me move.”
He lifted his head, so close she could see the gray flecks in his green eyes, and she raised her hand to his face. His jaw was scratchy with late-night stubble.
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes as if he’d received a benediction. And then he rocked his hips, joining them more fully, and withdrew. He did it again, and the abrasive friction gave way to a wicked, pervasive slickness that made her blood thrum in her veins.
Harriet closed her eyes in delight.
So this was what it was all about.Shuddering darkness and aching need. Desperate, glorious possession.
She clasped his shoulders as he drove deeper, loving the weight of him, the sheer animal strength. He was so much larger than her, surging and pulling at her body like a tide, but she felt sheltered in his arms. He was both the port and the storm, the safe haven and the treacherous deep.
And God, she was drowning.
“Never. Going to. Stop.” He punctuated each word with a roll of his hips, and each time he hit a spot somewhere inside her that promised the heaven he’d shown her with his tongue.
She arched her hips, urging him on, and the pleasure built like a bank of great billowing clouds on the horizon, rolling in with a speed to take her breath away.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in the muscled curve of his shoulder, straining upward, taking his every thrust with a feeling of pure joy.
Close! So close! So—
She tensed, straining for the peak like a ship at the very crest of a wave, teetering on the edge. And then the wave broke. Pleasure crashed over her like surf, wringing hersoul and squeezing her heart so she could hardly breathe for pleasure. Ripples of release radiated outward, flooding her with warmth.
Morgan cursed, still moving within her, and then, with one final thrust, he withdrew from her body and pressed himself hard against her stomach. He stiffened, then let out a tortured groan as great shudders wracked his body.
He collapsed on top of her, full weight, as if all the life had been drained out of him. And then he gave a sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his lungs.
“Bloody hell, Harriet. What a dare!”
He rolled off her, onto his side. The weight of him depressed the mattress so she rolled onto her side too, toward him. He pushed a strand of her hair away from her flushed cheek and pressed a gentle kiss to her eyebrow, then another to the top of her nose.
Such unexpected sweetness after the near violence of before clutched at her heart. He pressed another featherlight kiss to her lips, his thumb stroking her jaw in the lightest of caresses, then one to her chin.
Her lips curved upward. She felt breathless, shaky, as if she’d run a race. The sheen of sweat on her back was cooling rapidly in the night air, but the heat of Morgan’s body at her front was keeping her warm.
She stared up at him, still dazed by the magnitude of what they’d just done.
“Stop,” she whispered, half laughing. “Now you can stop.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Morgan’s mouth curved, and he gave her that crooked smile of his, that pirate smile, secret and swift. He propped himself up on his bent arm, his biceps curling most impressively, and sent a leisurely glance down her front.
Harriet tensed, still a little anxious for his verdict. She hadn’t felt truly naked until now. Before, it had all been a blur of limbs and heat and passion.
“Beautiful,” he growled. “Like the first sight of land after a month at sea.” He reached out and traced the curve of her breast and she shivered at its new sensitivity. “You’d make a lovely ship’s figurehead.”
She snorted. “Do you say that to all the ladies of your acquaintance?”
“Only the ones with spectacular breasts.”
She hadn’t thought she’d ever blush again, but she was wrong. A pink flush warmed her chest.
It deepened as he gathered a handful of the sheets and gently wiped the wetness he’d left on her stomach. His seed, she realized dazedly. Thank God one of them had retained some semblance of sanity and self-preservation. She hadn’t given a thought to the fact that he might make her pregnant.