Page 94 of Where the Heart Leads
He settled to taste her—to fill his senses with the arousing taste of her after he’d already had her once. Twice would come, but only after he’d had his fill and satisfied his craving to explore every fascinating inch of her.
With his eyes, his tongue, his hands.
A subtle branding that she would allow because she’d never experienced it before. A branding he fully intended to deepen and reinforce the sensual link between them, making her even more unquestionably his in her mind as well as his own.
Her skin was impossibly white and fine. When cool, it felt like the most delicate alabaster, smooth yet warming to the touch; flushed as it now was, her breasts swollen and peaked, the evidence of his claiming apparent, it felt like peach silk.
Satisfied he’d adequately explored one breast, he edged the covers lower and moved on to the other. She trembled as he took possession—interesting considering how intimate they’d already been. When, after a thorough study, he suckled her fiercely, she gasped, spine bowing, her head pressing back into the pillows.
The hand holding the sherry glass wavered; reaching up, he slipped the stem from her weakening grasp; reaching farther, he set the glass down on the bedside table. The click of the base on the wood echoed in the room, an unequivocal statement of intent.
One Penelope heard. As he drew back from her breast, she reached for him. To her surprise he caught her hand; without shifting his gaze from her flushed and swollen breasts, he drew her hand up over her head, setting it alongside the other in the pillows.
“Leave them there.” His voice was a raspy growl, deep and dictatorial. “Just lie back and let me…worship you.”
She hesitated, studying his face, trying to determine what it was she saw there—something harder, more powerful than she’d yet encountered. Curious, she acquiesced. And tried—unsuccessfully—to cling to her earlier calm as he—with a species of deliberation that was peculiarly exciting—continued his study of her, of her body and how she responded to his caresses.
When a particularly artful drift of his fingertips down her belly made her quiver, he murmured, “You like that.”
She didn’t bother to nod. He didn’t even check for her answer—his words had been a statement of fact. Being passive for any length of time felt strange, yet in this case…worship, he’d said, and in a curious way there was reverence involved, even if he could have said “take you,” or “claim you,” and been equally accurate.
The way he interacted with her fascinated and intrigued her.
He worked his way steadily down her body. Initially he would reach beneath the bedclothes to caress and fondle, then he would push the covers down, revealing the area on which he was presently concentrating to his gaze. He would study, examine, assess—then he would lower his head and taste.
The covers fell progressively lower, exposing more and more of her to his detailed examination. He didn’t ask permission, not even wordlessly, just continued his exploration as if he had an unquestioned right.
As if she’d ceded it to him.
Had she?
She honestly wasn’t sure—and was even less sure that she cared.
His hands…she’d earlier labeled his touch magic. Closing her eyes as beneath the covers one hard palm swept down over her hip, she struggled against a shiver. She wasn’t cold—in the aftermath of his attentions, her flesh glowed—but the drift of sensations his fingers sent spreading beneath her skin was exquisite, sliding over her nerves, leaving them sensitized and eager—so eager—for more.
To feel more.
It was a type of tactile stimulation she’d never experienced before, one that seemed to open her pores to absorbing so much more, to heightening her senses so that his next touch, however light, registered as so much more.
So much more laden with feeling, with meaning. With intent.
She drank it all in as beneath the covers his hand moved down and his fingers flirted teasingly with the curls at the apex of her thighs. A moment later, his fingers slid lower still, and pressed between her thighs to stroke, fondle, caress.
Eventually the covers slid to her knees.
What followed was rather more than she’d bargained for—more intense, progressively more intimate—but she was unable to call a halt, not even demand a pause to catch her breath…because she didn’t have breath left to do so, not once her tightening lungs had seized.
As they did when, the covers long gone, he parted her thighs, setting her legs well apart so he could, as he had everywhere else, examine her, then with his fingers explore, stroking, caressing—noting in a gravelly rumble what she liked, distracting her with the sound, then focusing her mind with his words—just as he demonstrated again.
She was long beyond protesting when he bent his head to sample her. To taste her, to lick and lightly suckle, until she was wild.
Until, writhing and heated, she sobbed and begged. And this time, she knew what for.
Like an emperor granting a slave her wish, he gave it to her, his wicked tongue sending her soaring over that bright edge and into pleasured oblivion.
An oblivion more pleasured, more deeply sated, than she’d previously known. She sank beneath the wave of satiation, welcomed it, and let it wash through her.
Barnaby watched her face—watched as her climax washed through her and wiped all her tension away. With a sigh she let go, sank back against the pillows, her tensed muscles unraveling, her expression relaxed, her features blank, except for her lips, which, as he watched, lightly curved.
