Forever His(62)

Chapter 11


Without warning, he took her mouth in a kiss that was as slow as it was deep. A ravishment that had naught to do with so childish a notion as love. An embrace meant to disabuse her of that naive idea and replace it with a woman’s experience of unmistakable pleasure.

He moved his mouth over hers with relentless purpose, urgent, demanding. Christiane stiffened, making a sound of protest in the back of her throat, but her efforts to push him away were futile. He held her locked against him, and her arms were wrapped in his cloak.

And her resistance was as brief as it was useless. After only a moment, the ice in her melted away and she began to respond, kissing him back.

He felt a surge of triumph, of pure male satisfaction. She obviously remembered as well as he every fiery moment of the kiss they had shared in his bedchamber, the sudden, overpowering joining ... like this.

God’s breath, like this.

He uttered a low groan and fastened one arm around her shoulders, bending her backward, deepening the kiss.

He had proved his point. The lesson was ended. Women—at least women like Christiane—had just as much fire and passion as any man. They required only the right man to teach them about physical pleasure and their surrender was assured.

He had won. He could release her at any time.

But her lips ... those soft, sweet petals were parting tremulously at the touch of his tongue, and she was granting him entry to the warmth of her mouth. He thrust boldly inside, wanting but one taste of her. Only one.

With feinting little strokes that left her moaning, he explored her fully, intimately. She tasted of silken heat and the most delicate, enticing innocence he had ever known. The scents of earth and water and the softer notes of thyme and lavender and roses that clung to her skin spun around him like a heady mist, drawing him in.

Deeper, closer. Until he was nearly drunk with it. With the satiny play of her tongue against his ... so tentative, but so willing. Untutored, but ready to learn. A tremor shuddered through his body, wrenched a hungering sound from deep within his chest.

He moved, rested his weight on one elbow, shifted her to the bed of evergreens. Holding her closer, he continued the hot mating of their mouths, pressing his lower body against hers until she could not mistake the forcefulness of his desire for her. Through it all, she shivered against him.

Not with cold or with outrage, but with unmistakable wanting ... wanting for him.

He finally tore his mouth from hers. Their breaths rasped together in the darkness, louder than the roar of the fire two paces away that bathed them in heat and light. He stared down into her once-stormy gaze, found it now dark with passion.

“Pleasure, my lady wife,” he said roughly. “The word is pleasure.”

He did not give her a chance to respond before his lips captured hers once again. He needed the taste of her, more than he needed life, more than he needed reason. Before either of them knew what was happening, he had slipped a hand inside the folds of the cloak, his cloak, that concealed her nakedness.

Swallowing her murmur of surprise, Gaston kept his eyes closed and kept kissing her deeply. Her slender body, hidden in the folds of the dark mantle like a secret treasure, felt cool to the touch. Smooth as ivory. A tantalizing contrast to the warm, rich fur that concealed her.

He must not do this ... yet he could not deny himself the pleasure of a touch, one touch. A moment of pure sensation that he would never forget. He was in control. He wanted only to teach her the true depth of her own passions. He could stop as soon as he wished.

His thumb whisked over the taut peak of one breast, back and forth, slowly, until a small cry broke from her. The feminine sound of wonder and desire struck him like a lash. He could feel his body straining, sheened with sweat caused not by the blaze that crackled and leaped beside them.

He released her mouth, left a trail of lingering kisses over her chin and jaw, nipping her neck. He took the delicate skin between his teeth and bit her, so very gently that he left no marks. His hold on her shifted, enough that she might pull away if she wished. But she did not.

Her passion-bruised lips offered no protest, no outrage, naught but broken breath and wordless moans as he moved lower. He nudged open the fur at her throat, unable to resist the temptation to see the full, soft roundness that so tenderly filled his hand. A single glimpse, and then he would stop.

He moved the mantle aside, exposing that one perfect breast until it was bathed in the golden glow of the firelight: the pale curves, the taut crown, his hand resting there, so broad and dark and male against that exquisitely feminine part of her.

The sight left him breathless, raked his body with reckless demands, shredded all logic and reason. She was a maiden unmatched, an ivory goddess arching against him, pale innocence wrapped in his black cloak. Lips parted, eyes closed, she waited, quivering and wanting, trusting him with her untried body, sweet purity and raw passion all in one. All his.