Page 74 of The Time for Love
His hands, splayed, swept over her back, down over the swell of her hips, urging her impossibly closer. She felt the heated bulge of his erection press, rigid, hard, and hot, against the soft swell of her belly, and a surge of giddy wanting nearly sent her to her knees.
He must have sensed her reaction, for he bent and swept her into his arms. She refused to release him from the heated kiss, but that didn’t stop him from carrying her across the room.
And then they were rolling on the bed.
Her breath hitched, then left her entirely as his weight settled over her and his hands—those wicked hands—closed over her breasts. Then a wave of heat, of flame and desire, rolled over her, through her, and she let go and surrendered to passion’s tide.
Martin recognized that moment; he felt it in his bones. She and what they’d conjured together, what their combined desires and passions had evoked and unleashed, had blindsided him and, given his experience, well-nigh unbelievably reduced him to reacting like a lovemaking amateur, entirely driven by uncontrollable desires, yet instinct nevertheless remained, and he saw, seized, and clung.
Control as he usually wielded it—absolute and definite—might be beyond him, but it was still in his power to channel, guide, and steer. In doing so, he had only one aim—to shower her with the breadth, the depth, and every iota of the reality of his feelings for her.
Feelings he couldn’t explain, even to himself, but that here, in this arena, were, to him, abundantly plain.
She was his all, and it behooved him to make that ineradicably clear.
That was his goal, his agenda, and he devoted himself to achieving it using every means at his disposal.
His hands roved her still fully clothed body, hunger and need thrumming in every touch, in every subtle pressure. She hummed in her throat and, through the kiss and with the greedy insistence of her small hands, urged him on.
Soon, she grew desperate to rid them of the layers that kept their bodies apart, and he was only too ready to assist.
Long practice guided him in efficiently stripping her, but when he would have paused to admire and glory, she fell on him with her own greedy demands.
Her touch, her determination, her drive that clearly matched his own impelled him, temporarily, to share the reins—such reins as they were.
Only to realize, minutes later, that given her inexperience, that wasn’t actually the wisest choice.
Too soon, they were locked in a naked tussle, with him wanting to slow their proceedings enough to lavish all possible pleasure on her, and her pressing to race ahead in a manner that would reach the end but miss all the subtler delights along the way.
It was an argument without words, a battle only his years of experience and greater strength and weight allowed him to win.
She slumped back on the pillows and huffed, then through bright aqua eyes peeking from beneath the fringe of her lashes, boldly studied him.
Crouched over her, he grinned his most wicked grin. “Not just ten minutes, remember?”
Her eyes widened slightly, then he bent his head and pressed a hot open-mouthed kiss to her belly, and her lids fell. A second later, her hips lifted and twisted between his restraining hands, and she moaned.
The sound was pure ambrosia to his rapacious soul. Unrelentingly greedy, he set about eliciting further evocative avowals of her delight.
Deliberately and increasingly sure of his path, he showered her with passion. He took his time exploring her body, feeding and teasing her senses and his and expanding her knowledge of earthly pleasure. Attuned to her at a level he never had been with any woman before, he was aware of the reverence investing his caresses, the worshipful hunger imbuing every touch, and let the feelings that fed those emotions flow and spread through him and on, into her.
For the first time in his life, he consciously used the act of making love to communicate, to impress on her what drove his passion, his desires, his needs.
Heated and awash with hunger though he was, he was yet aware enough to see and recognize all those changes, those revelations, for what they were. To comprehend from whence they sprang and acknowledge what that meant.
There was only one real difference between her and all the rest—all who, for him, had come before. She was the lady he wanted and needed by his side for the rest of his days.
He wanted her to be his wife, and that changed everything.
And when, ultimately surrendering to her desperate urgings, he rose over her and, on one long thrust, entered her, that was different, too. More charged, more meaningful, and so much more elementally powerful that it rocked him to his core.
Eyes closed, desperately holding against the impulse to plunder, he dragged in a huge breath, then forced up his lids enough to look at her.
She’d gasped in pain—unavoidable given she’d been a virgin—and her nails had sunk into his forearms, but even as he took in the frown tangling her brows, the tense line eased, then smoothed away. She drew in a deep breath, too, then her grip on his forearms loosened, and she shifted, experimentally lifted.
The instinctive invitation snapped the remnants of his reins, yet as he drew back and thrust deep again, she was with him, eagerly rising to the beat he set, joining him in the age-old dance of passion and desire and heated wanting.
What followed was a journey through a landscape he’d thought he’d known, but hadn’t. This sensual wonderland was new, novel, the sensations here more intense, more powerful and potent. The primal compulsion built swiftly, inexorably, until it caught them and swept them on. Unrelenting and unstoppable, that compulsion transformed to an irresistible tide that drove them in a plundering, racing ride over ever-escalating peaks of sensation until, inevitably, tense and tight, they reached passion’s pinnacle, and with a last desperate thrust, he sent them soaring.
