Page 66 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
From that point on, there was no him and her, no separate thoughts, no individual agendas. All they knew was one driving need, an overwhelming urgency that flooded them both.
He couldn’t rein it back; he couldn’t contain it. The best he could do was to steer it, and even that much control was tenuous and shaky.
Driven, at the mercy of that urgent need, he stripped her of her nightgown and she urged him from his trousers.
Then she wrapped her fingers about his straining erection, and he thought—for several excruciatingly tense seconds—that he’d died.
Or that he would spend before he got inside her.
His jaw felt as if it might have cracked, but he found the strength to open his eyes andnotfocus on the delight in her face as she explored and traced.
He managed to force his limbs to his bidding. He caught her hands, drew them from him, then, raising her arms, he bore her back down, anchoring her hands in the froth of the pillows on either side of her fiery head.
Their bodies met, naked skin to skin.
He’d forgotten just how potent that first jolt of sensation could be—how momentarily disorienting.
Lucilla’s senses seized. Her eyes remained open, but she couldn’t see. The feel of him, of his skin so hot, of his muscled strength surrounding her, pinning her—covering her in this most primitive of ways—stole her breath.
Stole her senses and claimed her mind.
His hands held hers trapped, the weight of his arms anchoring hers to the bed, the broad sweep of his chest pressing against her breasts, declaring his dominance. His hips lay heavy over hers, immobilizing her; the columns of his thighs felt like steel between hers.
She should have felt fear, or at least wariness. With any other man, she would have.
But with him…gripping his hands, she opened her senses wide—wider—the better to drink in every last scintilla of tactile sensation.
Of the raw intimacy of his naked body lying atop hers, of his skin, hot and rough, firing hers, abrading hers—feeding her passion.
With effort, she drew in a tight—so tight—breath.
As he did the same.
Her breasts rose as his chest expanded; the swollen mounds flattened against his hard planes, her tightly furled nipples pressing into his skin.
She blinked, refocused. For one instant, in the soft shadows of the bed, their eyes met—hers felt impossibly wide. Their gazes locked. Time stood still for just that instant, then he dipped his head.
He found her lips with his. She parted them, welcomed him in, then drew him deeper. The kiss was all liquid heat, desire made manifest, the thrust of his tongue a presaging of the joining and sharing to come.
He angled his head and plunged deeper yet, and their passions rose and whirled again, higher, then higher.
She let go and followed, surrendering again to the compelling beat fashioned of need, of desire and yearning.
When he drew back from the kiss, she let him go without complaint. The kiss had been intense enough to leave her senses reeling. Feeling him draw away, his hands releasing hers as he eased down the bed, she lay with every nerve on high alert, tense and flickering, and waited, expectant, to see what came next.
Slow down, slow down, slow down. Thomas repeated that mantra as he slid down her body. His didn’t want to comply, but it was obvious a little finesse was required. He was large, distinctly so, and she…wasn’t.
No matter how experienced she might be—and of that he really had no idea—given he didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to, hurt her, he needed to find the strength to slow them down….
The only way he could think of to do so was to spread her legs, wedge his shoulders between, and dip his tongue in her nectar.
Predictably, she shrieked, but as she’d earlier proved, no one would hear her. Only him—and, he discovered, he liked hearing her scream with pleasure. So very different from her screaming with fear.
Those delectable screams grew increasingly breathy; she grew increasingly breathless as he ministered to her senses and his. Her tartness was ambrosia on his tongue; the restless, needy, almost mewling sounds he eventually drew from her were exactly what he’d hoped to achieve.
With calculated expertise, he drew the nubbin of her pleasure between his lips and flicked it with the tip of his tongue.
And sent her flying.
