Page 64 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
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—sheneededhim.
Needed to hold him, to feel his hard body against hers, and feelalive. 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.
