Page 65 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Muscles bunched, flexed, then hardened.
Through their kiss, she felt the fracturing of his attention—could all but see, watch, as he battled to restrain the impulses she’d provoked.
Deliberately, she slid her hand around the curve of his hip, sweeping forward to capture—
He caught her wrist in a viselike grip.
Broke from the kiss enough to growl, “Not yet.”
“No” she wouldn’t have accepted, but “not yet” she could live with. At least for another minute.
Perhaps two.
She gave him the moment, twisted her wrist, and when, his senses alert and watchful, he eased his hold, she drew her hand from his and slowly skimmed it upward between them. Knowing that, with their lips still parted by a breath, almost brushing but not, he was following the movement of her wayward hand, she walked her fingers up the placket of her nightgown. Halting at the top button, she slid it free.
On a tortured groan, he closed his eyes and dropped his forehead to hers. “You are going to be the death of me.”
She debated being offended. Instead, she tipped her head enough to trace the soft upper edge of his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “Not true.”
Her whispered words washed like fire over the flesh she’d just slicked. Thomas felt his entire body clench, as if she’d licked him elsewhere.
But she wasn’t finished. “To you, I will always bring life. This—you and me like this—is as things should be. Life for us as it needs to be.”
There was so much certainty in her tone; with those simple words, she pushed aside the doubts and questions his more rational, cautious side had been piling up in his brain.
This—her and him together in her bed—didn’t fit with his plan for his life. He didn’t know—had no idea—how it might fit with hers. But here and now, none of that mattered; as her words had confirmed, this was what needed to be.
That undeniable need—to have her beneath him, her long, slender legs wrapped about his hips as he drove deep within her—still thrummed, an irresistibly compelling beat in his blood.
A beat that, through the last minutes, had only grown more insistent.
And with every prompt, every push from her, that need only grew. Escalated.
He opened his eyes—in time to see her slide another of the tiny buttons free. Her white nightgown, the placket edged with delicate lace, gaped enough to expose the swell of one surprisingly plump breast.
The sight transfixed him. She was so slender, he’d thought…
His mouth watered.
On a half-smothered groan, he tipped her chin up, recaptured her mouth—anchored them both for one fleeting moment, long enough to submerge their senses in the kiss. Then he brushed her hand aside and, with expert flicks of his fingers, rapidly undid button after button.
Then with the back of his hand, he brushed one side of her nightgown wide and set his hand to the taut mound of her breast.
Just that one touch, silken skin to his palm, and he knew there could be no going back.
Her heart leapt at his touch; as his fingers closed about the tight peak, he felt her senses soar.
His did the same.
Her flesh firmed beneath his hand, heated and with skin unimaginably delicate and fine; her nipple, already puckered, ruched tight as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, a pearl just begging him to caress it with his lips, to taste it with his tongue. To lick.
Deserting her lips, he bent his head and did. He licked, laved, then drew the tight bud into his mouth and suckled.
Her fingers clenched tight in his hair as she swallowed a small scream. He licked again, and she arched beneath him, her body undulating beneath his in a provocative, infinitely arousing surge…
Any lingering possibility of somehow bringing this engagement to some end other than total intimacy vaporized. The last shreds of his resistance fell, fled.
Blown apart, blown away by the tide of sheer need—his and hers combined—that erupted and raced through them both.
