She abandoned her seductive pose to thread her fingers through his hair, urging him closer. He drew harder on her nipple. Her thighs opened. He felt one slim leg, then the other, rise to encircle his hips. Her boldness pleased him. She’d been so hesitant that first night, as if she’d never taken the initiative in lovemaking before. Perhaps she hadn’t.
He left her breasts, inhaled a ragged breath, and moved lower, painting a trail with his tongue across her creamy skin. He buried his face in her belly and kissed her navel, then drew back and blew a cool stream of air across her wet skin.
She made a sound in her throat like the coo of a dove. He licked lower, lapping, then blowing across the path he’d traced with hot bursts of breath. Rhiannon squirmed, trying to lift her hips. He eased her legs from his waist and opened her completely, holding her thighs and keeping her bottom firmly anchored to the cool stone. He nuzzled her curls and inhaled a scent more intoxicating than wine. She’d guessed where his path was leading, for she clutched his hair in her fingers and tried to guide him lower.
He resisted, drawing another moan from her lips. “Lucius …” She all but tore the hair from his head.
He chuckled. “Have a care, sweet. Unless you prefer a bald lover.” He licked a wet path along the upper edge of her Venus mound. He kissed the hooded place where her pleasure lay—once, twice, then again. “I’ll give a thousand kisses, then another hundred,” he whispered.
Her hips strained against his hands, inviting him in. A magnificent invitation, but one he wasn’t yet ready to accept. He wanted her begging. Delirious. So stricken with need that she would never leave him. She would surrender to him at last, and if he could not quite subdue the niggling voice that told him she would never be completely his own, he could at least pretend he didn’t hear it.
She tossed her head from side to side as he parted her sweet folds and kissed her again. “And yet a thousand kisses more.” Withdrawing, he blew short puffs of air across her sensitized flesh, then turned his attention to the tender ivory skin of her inner thighs.
She groaned in protest, a low throaty growl that hardened his rod almost past bearing.
“Lucius—” Her tone was no longer breathless but demanding.
He laid his cheek against her thigh and circled one finger about her entrance. “Do you like this, I wonder?”
Her answer was a sharp intake of breath.
“No? Perhaps this, then?” He flicked his tongue gently over the exquisitely soft skin covering the swell at the opening of her sheath, then caught the tight bud between his lips and suckled.
Her cry rang off the tiles. Her fingernails dug into his nape. Triumph raced through him. No other before him had made her scream with pleasure; he was certain of it. No other after him would get the opportunity to try.
“Dear Briga. Lucius …”
He drew back until his touch on her was no more than the tantalizing movement of his breath across her swollen folds. “This?”
“No.” She surprised him by slipping out from beneath his hands as easily as a water nymph. Before he could react she was behind him, pressing her breasts to his back and encircling his torso with her arms. She reached beneath his tunic and took hold of his rod. Her fingers stroked his length.
“Do you like this?” she said, giving his words back to him.
“By the gods!”
“No? Then perhaps …” She gripped his flesh in her hand and stroked upward.
“You are a vixen.”
Her laughter fell on his ear like music. She danced away, her golden eyes flashing with mirth. He caught her by the arm, pulled her back to him, and lifted her in his arms. In two long strides he carried her through the door that led to the bathing room.
He descended the tiled steps. Rhiannon let out a sigh as the water lapped at her legs. Lucius lowered her onto the top step and reached for the flask set in a nearby niche.
“So warm,” she murmured. “Like a dream.”
He tipped a generous amount of fragrant oil into his hand and rubbed his palms together, generating heat. He anointed her breasts, tracing circles around her areolas. She melted into his touch with a sigh.
He massaged the balm on her shoulders, stomach, legs. When he would have delved into more intimate places, Rhiannon shook her head and eased the bottle from his hands.
“Let me return your attentions.”
Her fingers fluttered over his biceps, spreading the oil onto his skin. She massaged a trail over his shoulders and chest, a gentle siege before which he lay helpless. The tension of the last few days seeped away. In its place another, more pleasurable tension grew.
Her eyes glinted as she scrutinized his arousal. It crested the water’s surface between her legs, dangerously close to her russet curls. She looked up at him and smiled. “Lie back.”