He was also warm and strong and solid, and she had no idea that was what she craved until she leaned her head on his shoulder and felt that click of rightness, that instant recognition of what she needed and wanted.
Then she’d had to struggle against the urge to bite him. Because she wanted to drag his shirt aside and bite his shoulder which was probably pretty bad dinner party etiquette.
Marj tried to slow her pounding heart, tried to bite her lip and take slow breaths on a four count like she learned in a Pilates class. Nothing calmed her. Her whole body was flushed and throbbing for him. Her chest felt tight. Her palms and scalp tingled. Her nipples were hard, and it was all she could do to keep her legs together. They wanted to open for him. Six months be damned. Common sense be damned. She wanted him.
And Marj was many things but shy wasn’t one of those. So she leaned in and said, “I want you now,” in her breathiest whispered voice.
That was all it took to ignite her new husband into action. Her words must have been the spark that kindled him, for his mouth was on hers, his warm hand sliding up her thigh, pushing the hem of her snug dress up to her hips.
“Ah...” she moaned as his tongue flicked into her mouth.
Brandon was rubbing her neck, lifting her long hair aside so he could kiss her throat. Marj framed his face with her hands and drew back to look at him. That was a mistake since he looked in her eyes and felt a stab of something worse than lust. Affection, closeness—intimacy. There was that word that had become the women’s magazine slang for sex but which meant something entirely different in real life.
She felt a connection with him. The kind of connection that made her feel sappy in a rush of roses and champagne and diamonds. Like the diamonds on her hand already. She kissed his lips softly, gently, trying to make light of it. But she felt something for him beyond their initial attraction and it hadn’t even been forty-eight hours. Six months on and she’d have lost her heart completely.
But Marj couldn’t worry about that now. Not with his shirt unbuttoning beneath her questing fingers, his smooth chest exposed. Trailing her fingers down his muscular chest, she paused and drew back, her fingertips inches from that wire, that white bandage—so small but so troubling.
“Does it hurt?”
“No,” he said, “but wanting you does.”
Brandon took her mouth in a kiss that she felt down to her curling toes. Even if every word he’d said to her had been calculated to secure her cooperation, she didn’t think he was good enough—or bad enough right to the core to lie with a kiss like that. There was something deep and staggering about that kiss, so that she blended together with Brandon in some primal way. She wanted to join with him, wanted to lose herself in him forever.
Her shoulders pressed against the thick rug beside the couch. Last night we only made it to the sofa before we were all over each other, and tonight we didn’t even make it past the floor! She thought with a surge of excitement. Being with Brandon was thrilling, this knowledge that, if only for this moment, he needed her just as badly as she needed him. He was above her, and she reached for him, pushing his sleeves down his arms and then reveling in Brandon’s smooth skin, his strong arms, those undeniably accurate thick wrists!
When he nudged her legs apart, she felt the full force of his desire swelling against her. Marj wrapped her legs around his narrow hips, urging him on even as he entered her completely. Buried within her, his lips drawn back from his teeth in iron control, Brandon moved gently at first, letting her catch her breath and stretch to accommodate his size. Everything was more real, more vivid than the night before when she had been drunk and dreamy. This time, she felt every push and thrust, rocking her hips to the rhythm he had set.
“Yes, more!” she moaned as Brandon lowered his face to hers, his tongue stroking into her mouth sensuously as he moved within her, brushing maddeningly against that place that made her see stars and pant for breath.
Brandon drove her over the edge, her fingertips digging into the rug for purchase so she didn’t go spinning out into the void. Her breathing was hard and a cold chill gripped her as she tumbled back down from her climax. He gripped her calves and pushed her knees to her chest so he could penetrate her more deeply. It took her breath away, the long, thick slide of him as she trembled helplessly in the aftershocks of her own pleasure. Relentlessly he pounded into her until she saw his expression change and he seemed to freeze, perfectly still as the pleasure took him. Marj reached up and gripped his face, pulling him down until his lips met hers. She kissed him then, with every bit of affection she was afraid to feel, everything she wouldn’t admit even to herself.