Page 90 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
His hands, large and strong, were splayed on her back, his touch burning through the fine silk of her chemise.
She’d broken the kiss, but their faces remained only inches apart. They were both breathing rapidly, heated breaths mingling. Their gazes met and locked—his glinted, gold in amber, from beneath the thick lashes of his lowered lids. She flicked the tip of her tongue over her lips. “How’s your leg?” The one restriction still hovering in her mind.
Thomas blinked. For an instant, he didn’t know what she meant…then he remembered and inwardly checked, but it wasn’t his leg that was aching. “It’s not hurting.” The words came out in a low growl.
“Good.” She shifted closer and, with calculated deliberation, pressed herself to him like a cat, rubbing her barely clad breasts against his lower chest, the warm, curvaceous mounds impressing his skin, his senses.
His jaw locked as he battled vainly to ignore the provocation—in the movement, in her intensely green eyes.
With his arms trapped, he was at her mercy, but to free himself, he would have to take his hands from her—lose the last vestige of control over her.
Her eyes on his, she swayed, the tight peaks of her breasts dragging across his skin; the sensation made the muscles of his abdomen quiver, then lock even harder than before.
He muttered a curse and drew his hands from her. Lowering his arms, he pulled and shook the constricting garments down and free of his hands.
But she was on him the instant he moved. Small hands bracing, fingers spread, on the heavy muscles on either side of his chest, she placed a hot, wet, open-mouthed kiss in the small hollow in the center of his chest—and branded him.
Scalded him; the heat from that claiming touch raced through him and spread, igniting a need he had to assuage.
He reached for the laces anchoring her skirt.
Lucilla pressed her lips once more to the beckoning hollow, then she licked, laved. Closing her eyes, she gave her senses over to tasting him as he had her—to savoring the slightly salty tang of him and drawing the arousing scent of pure male deep, to her bones.
He filled her senses to overflowing, and she welcomed and embraced the knowing. Then she set about tasting him some more. She found the flat discs of his nipples hidden beneath the fine mat of curly dark hair. She fingered them—learning them by touch, by feel—then she closed her lips about them and tasted, closed her teeth and lightly scraped, then with her lips tugged.
She read his response in the flickering of his skin, in the tensing of iron-hard muscles, in his increasingly harried breathing.
Her own breaths were shallow; if she thought of it, she’d feel giddy, but in that moment, she was focused on only one thing.
Him.
On claiming him.
She felt the frantic tugs at her waist and knew she was on the right road. Recognizing the opportunity, she used the moment to let her hands slide down, fingers lightly gripping, tracing over the tensed ridges of his abdomen to his waist.
To the buttons securing the waistband of his trousers.
Two flicks and she had the buttons undone.
He cursed and yanked her skirt down, pushing it down in a profusion of silk folds, then he set about unraveling the laces of her petticoats.
It fascinated her that he could unknot the laces without seeing, yet he seemed quite adept; she left him to it.
Left him worrying at that while she peeled back the front placket of his trousers, sought and found the slit in his linen underpants, and slid her hand within.
She palmed his erection and his breath hitched, then halted. She closed her fingers about the rock-hard length, heavy as marble, corded with thick veins, the skin unbelievably delicate and fine. And sensitive. His breath stuttered and shook when she brushed her fingertips over the smoothness of the broad head. Her fingers dallied on the moistness of the slit—and he came at her again.
He yanked the laces loose, shoved her petticoats down to join her skirt.
Before he could seize her and lift her—and break her hold on him—she stepped out of her skirts and kicked them aside. Closing her hand more firmly about his erection, she reached with the other for his nape. She caught him and hauled him into another kiss.
This time, he dove into the exchange—as determined as she, as ravenous for control, but even more for the outcome. No reluctance, no resistance. Just need and raw desire.
She moved into him, and he hauled her closer. For a protracted moment, they caught each other, seized each other’s senses and held them immersed in the scorching duel of their tongues, the blatantly sexual mating of their mouths.
She was no longer thinking—she didn’t need to; she reacted and stroked the hard hot length in her palm, then sent her other hand skating down from his nape, tracing down the side of his chest to slide around to his back and splay over the center, holding him to her as with her other hand she played.
He groaned through the kiss. The guttural sound was music to her ears.
