Page 217 of Once an Angel
in all the places bone and muscle tempered him to hardness.
She quivered at his touch but did not shrink from him, not even when his thumbs curled around to graze the delicate fleece that sheltered the feminine heart of her. Not yet, he warned himself. Too soon. He lay his burning cheek between her breasts and let the sea breeze wash over him, praying it might soothe the desperate tide of desire in his groin. She had known enough of the hasty, selfish fumbles of boys.
Tonight she would go where only the restraint of a man could take her.
His mouth captured her breast, sucking the tender bud with a fierceness that made her arch against him and whimper his name.
It was all the invitation he needed. He lifted her and carried her to a sandy haven between two low-slung dunes. As he laid her in the sugary bed, the endless throb of the sea taunted him with the vain hope that this night might last forever. Without a word he eased her skirt down over her hips and cast it away.
He gazed down at her as he had on that first night, enchanted by the hint of a dimple in her cheek, her luminous eyes. Tonight she seemed more angel than nymph. Her nakedness stirred in him a fierce possessiveness centuries of civilized breeding should have exorcised. He had blunted his emotions for
too long. This rush of lust and tenderness and primitive jealousy exhilarated him, making him feel
reckless and drunk.
Emily drew in a shaky breath as Justin's hungry gaze raked her from head to toe, lingering at the nest of curls between her legs. "Justin?"
His gaze flew back to hers with a guilty haste she might have found amusing if she weren't petrified
with fear. "Mmmm?" he said dreamily.
"Are you sure you haven't any Maori blood in you?"
His slow, wicked smile curled her toes. He reached down and popped open the first button of his dungarees in a gesture so totally out of character and so full of masculine swagger that she had to choke back a frantic giggle.
"Perhaps the Maori know something we don't. Why should I be denied the pleasures of your succulent flesh?"
His shadow blocked the moonlight as he came down over her, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. She could taste the salt of the sea on him. Her hands toyed with his hair, wrapping it around her fists as he moved lower to scrape his teeth against the peak of her breast and dip his tongue into the shy dimple of her navel. She moaned as he filled her, even as a void opened lower, making her clamp her thighs together against the blinding need.
As he slid his elegant fingers into the coarse silk between her legs, Emily felt the shock of it all the way
to her soul. She knew it was wrong to let him touch her there— scandalous, forbidden. But he stroked her with agonizing tenderness and infinite patience, consuming her not in flesh, but in flame. Pleasure coursed hot and thick through her veins, drugging her, weighting her legs until they fell apart at the gentle insistence of his hands.
She had thought to use her body to enslave him, and here she lay, a chattel to his touch, writhing and begging for a fulfillment she couldn't even name. The stars blurred to glimmering shards before her eyes. Her fingers knotted over the sleek muscles of his shoulders.
Justin parted the slick petals of Emily's body as if she were the most fragile of tropical flowers. He
rubbed his nose tenderly over her belly, basking in the intoxicating fragrance released by his exploration. Driven by the soft whimpers escaping her throat and the dig of her fingernails into his back, he smeared her dew over the delicate bud nestled in her curls, then pressed his finger deep into the very heart of her bloom.
She cried out.
Her tautness was irresistible. Justin had never felt such a thing, not even in the woman he had once planned to wed. It made his whole body shudder in anticipation even as it birthed a terrible suspicion in his sluggish brain. Lifting his head so he could watch her face, he slipped his finger out of her, then gently eased it back in. She winced and bit her lip to muffle a cry.
His spirits hovered somewhere dangerously between plummeting and soaring. With lumbering reluctance he relinquished his prize and straddled her, crawling up until he could flatten his palms in the sand on
both sides of her head.
"Emily?"
Her eyes flew open and she started to find his face only inches from hers. An enchanting mask of pleasure flushed her cheekbones. "Yes?"
"You're not nearly as bad a girl as you've led me to believe, are you?"
Her words tumbled out in nervous spurts. "Of course I am! All my teachers said I was horrid."
He sighed. "Let me phrase that a different way. That compromising position you were found in with the gardener's son—would you care to describe it?"
"Could we talk about this later?"
