Page 77 of Where the Heart Leads
Once she was caught, the cage of his arms eased. Her new position ruffled her senses, leaving them skittering with unaccustomed awareness. Her skirts had rucked up as they’d turned; while there was still silk between them—between her thighs and the sides of his hard body—at the back her skirts had flared out and now lay spread across his legs, leaving her bottom unshielded from the fabric of his trousers, if she were silly enough—wanton enough—to sit back.
For the moment she was content to allow her senses time to grow used to the unexpected position, to the solid, muscled heat of him between her thighs, to the hardness against which the sensitive inner faces of her thighs were pressed.
Then she felt his fingers swiftly undoing the laces down her back.
Barnaby didn’t stop until the laces were all undone and the back of her gown lay open to her hips. He let his hands cruise beneath the material, easing it aside, once again finding the filmy silk of her chemise screening her body from his touch.
Impatience rose through him; he tamped it down. Drawing back from the kiss, he urged her up. Reaching down, he drew her knees higher, against his sides, so when she placed her hands on his chest and pushed up, she was straddling him.
Given he was lying against the pillows, propped high, not flat, that left her sitting across his waist, her breasts level with his face.
Exactly where he wanted them.
His lips curved in anticipation as he raised his hands and pushed the shoulders of her gown off and down.
As her sleeves slid down her arms, trapping them, Penelope looked down at his face. He wasn’t looking at hers, but at what he’d revealed. His expression was set but rather blank, as if he were holding a great deal within. Controlled. In control. Of himself as well as her. But then she glimpsed his eyes, and the heat—the lust—in them, firing the blue, shocked, delighted, and warmed her.
Some part of her was astonished she didn’t feel the slightest stirring of modesty. Quite the opposite. She wanted this, knew she did, and was determined to savor every moment, no matter how shocking.
As she drank in the qualities blazing in his gaze as it slid over the swells of her still partially screened breasts, over the dips, the hollows, the peaks, she felt a subtle sense of triumph grow.
She’d felt something similar before with him—a sense of power that she, her body, could so ensnare him. So capture and hold his attention to the exclusion of all else. Even when his hands shifted and he caught her wrist to slip loose the tiny buttons closing her sleeves, his gaze didn’t waver.
Swiftly, wordlessly, he completed the task, then drew the sleeves free of her hands. She drew them clear, then returned her palms once more to his shoulders. As her bodice subsided with a soft rustle in loose folds about her waist, she waited, pleasantly tense with anticipation, to see what next he would do.
She wasn’t entirely surprised when he reached for the trailing ends of the bow that held the gathered neckline of her fine chemise closed.
Barnaby tested the tiny cord of flattened silk, rolling it between his fingertips. He’d wondered what she wore beneath her gowns—had fantasized, and she hadn’t disappointed.
The chemise was severely simple in style, not a frill or furbelow in sight. But the material was the most fabulously fine, gossamer-weight silk he’d ever encountered; diaphanous, nearly translucent, it whispered over her skin like a lover’s caress, bold, wanton, seductive.
The innate sensuality he’d sensed in her from the first was clearly real, no fantasy. The observation racked the tension in his muscles, already taut, one notch more, to a higher degree of readiness.
That was something he didn’t truly need; he was already battling impulses more intense, more carnally explicit, than he’d ever experienced. He assumed it was because she was a virgin, that he was the first to see her like this, the first to ever have her, that fueled such rampant, primitive desires.
He drew in a long breath, tightened his grip on a control that was more tenuous than he liked, then raised both hands to her breasts. In worship.
Neither large nor small, they seemed shaped for his palms, for him.
His hands stroked, slowly, over the silk, fondling, caressing. Lightly stroking, circling her peaked nipples until she closed her eyes and shifted, restless, upon him.
He took his time, and savored, noting the rising tension that bowed her spine, that fractured her breathing and had her pressing forward, seeking…just one more tantalizing touch.
Her eyes were closed, a line of concentration etched between her brows as she drank in every tiny sensation. Lips curving in a predatory smile, he leaned forward, and licked.
She gasped, swayed, but didn’t open her eyes.
The sound sank to his soul. He licked again, then laved the tight bud until her fingertips sank deep in desperation. Only then did he lean closer yet and take the throbbing flesh into his mouth, and suckle.
She moaned, the sound half trapped in her throat; again the simple sound drove him on, to both appease and heighten the ache he’d created. To drive her wild.
Gasping, mentally reeling, Penelope wasn’t sure how much more sensation she could bear. He continued feasting at her breasts; screened though they were by her chemise, the lancing pleasure his hot, wet mouth, his raspy tongue pressed on her struck deep, sending heat flaring through her, outward to her fingertips, down to pool low between her thighs.
Until she felt hot, damp, and swollen there, too, until the flesh between her thighs ached and throbbed.
Again, he seemed to know. His hands had left her breasts, fastening about her waist to hold her steady as he gorged on the swollen peaks; now those steadying hands eased their grip, then one after the other pushed up her skirts and petticoats enough to slide beneath.
And grip her bare hips, then slide, slowly, down her naked thighs.
