Page 132 of The Pirate and the Pagan
Sometimes they played on the floor with him or sometimes all three romped on the great bed, with Ruark only pretending to be fierce. He was as gentle with Summer as he was with their baby, his heart almost bursting in his chest with the love he felt for them.
Tonight Summer lay stretched upon their bed in her nightgown, watching Ryan raptly as he sat on the floor playing with her jewels. Ruark knelt on the bed behind her and, wrapping one possessive arm about her, drew her back to lean against him. With gentle hands he lifted her hair so that his lips could feather kisses from her nape down her back. He glanced at Ryan. “Apparently he is particularly partial to rubies, like his mother.”
Summer laughed softly. “Jewels aren’t as important to me as they used to be.”
“Mmm, that’s too bad,” he said, his mouth against her back, “for I have a waterfall of diamonds I’ve been waiting an eternity to give you.”
She slanted him a glance over her shoulder. “Well, perhaps you can persuade me to take them, if you bribe me.”
His hands began to caress her gently and his voice became low and husky in anticipation of their bed play. “Let’s put Ryan to bed and then I’ll do my utmost to make you model the diamonds for me.”
Ryan made the usual protest, so they allowed him to keep the rubies to play with until he was tucked into the sturdy cradle in his own chamber. Mrs. Bishop shook her head in wonder as Lord Helford swept his scantily clad wife in his arms and carried her to bed. Oh, they might be all lovely-dovey for a while since they’d been parted so long, but she knew them well enough to know that one of these days the sparks would fly and they’d have another fight to end all fights, and she’d lead him a merry chase all over England or God-knows-which country. There would be the threats and the jealousies and the screaming matches at the top of their lungs, then he’d take her to bed and bend her to his will and tame her again. A calm, peaceful life wasn’t the Helfords style at all.
Alone in their bedroom, Ruark dangled the waterfall of diamonds in his fingers, playfully tempting and seducing her to let him make love to her in return for them.
“That would be wicked of me,” she protested innocently.
“Didn’t they teach you in church that the devil makes wickedness attractive for the sole purpose of corrupting the virtuous?”
She looked at him from beneath half-closed lids. He was a reckless breed of man who had taught her to commit her sins in the grand manner, disdaining pettiness.
“I’ve decided to have them after all,” she said, reaching out a hand.
“Uh-uh—you have to be completely naked before I’ll let you wear them.”
“Unfair! If I’m to be naked, so are you,” she decreed.
He grinned his wolf’s grin and wasted no time in throwing off his garments. Freed from the confines of his tight breeches, his great manroot sprang up, filling, expanding, hardening, and quivering with anticipation. He drew her so close against his body she could see the tiny image of her face reflected in the black pupils of his eyes. With reverent hands he drew off her nightgown and gently clasped the diamond waterfall about her slender throat. Then his lips touched hers in a gentle kiss.
She slid against him provocatively and whispered, “Ru, I’m tired of you touching me with gentleness.”
He drew back and looked down into her face. Suddenly his emerald eyes were stained black with passion as he took her meaning.
Her lips half parted beneath his. “Lord God, I think I’ll die if you don’t take me, take me!”
Her language acted like an aphrodisiac on him. She’d seemed too fragile both in body and spirit for him to be savagely demanding in his lovemaking, but now she was making demands of her own and he couldn’t wait to satisfy those demands. He swept her up and carried her in front of the great mirrored wardrobe so she could watch his body make love to hers. He set her down in front of him and turned her to the glass. “See how lovely your breasts look adorned with a waterfall of diamonds?”
“Mmmm,” she said, deliberately moving her bum against his erection. She smiled as she heard his great intake of breath above her ear. Then her eyes widened as she saw his hand come between her legs from behind to cup her whole sensitive mound of Venus. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched his hands, capable of such brutal strength, toy and play upon her body so intimately. In that moment she learned what women had learned down through the ages … that a man wasn’t devastatingly attractive and irresistible unless he was dangerous.
Ruark applied a strong, delicious pressure as he cupped her, and ground his palm in a slow rotating motion until she thought she might climax into his hand, but he was a superbly skilled lover and withdrew his hand, trailing the pads of his fingertips across her hot center. The peaks of sensation receded and he immediately set to work rebuilding them. He knew that one of the most pleasurable parts of making love was penetration and so he showed her all the different ways to go about the sensual business.
At first her cheeks and throat were suffused with blushes at his boldness, but she soon lost her ability to think clearly. She could only feel and she let herself go and gave herself up totally, absorbing his masculinity to the full, high up inside her. Each time he withdrew totally and each time her body mourned the loss. He penetrated her over and over again, burying himself to the hilt, then his tongue filled her mouth with the same dominant insistence before withdrawing completely.
Finally she could bear the torture of separation no longer and her body closed over him, tightening, squeezing, not permitting him to withdraw. She did the same with his delicious tongue, sucking hard so that he couldn’t bear to withdraw it from her honey-drenched mouth. He pressed her up against the mirrored wardrobe, thrusting up into her so savagely that her feet no longer touched the floor.
Their gyrations became so frenzied that suddenly her waterfall of diamonds broke and showered down over their fused nakedness. “I’ll buy you more diamonds … emeralds … rubies,” he vowed.
“Ru, I don’t want jewels,” she whispered huskily.
“What do you want?” He knew he would give her anything.
“Fill me with another babe,” she said simply.
His hands slipped beneath her buttocks and she wrapped her legs about his back, then he walked to the bed and spread her beneath him. They wanted it to last all night, but they were both out of control and in a few minutes they were both shuddering as he began flooding into her.
Later, as they lay talking in the privacy of the great curtained bed, her hand absently cupping and fondling him so that he remained aroused, he murmured, “Will you miss London?”
“Of course I shall miss it. But every year you will take me back so that I can shop, see all the plays, and have a flirtation with the King.”
