His Suitable Bride(102)

With an urgent movement and a guttural moan dredged up from somewhere deep inside, Isandro put two hands around Rowan’s head, cupping it, and jammed their bodies together. Then he lifted her face and met her mouth with his.

His kiss was passionate, and everything Rowan had ever dreamt of. She sank into his body, her arms wrapped around his lean waist, her breasts crushed to his torso. She couldn’t believe this was really happening, but the rain and the storm had added a magical, other-worldly element to everything.

Isandro was still cradling her head, his hands around her face, not letting her move an inch as he plundered her mouth. His tongue sought hers, tangled and danced. Rowan could feel the heat rise from a pool low in her belly. She was oblivious to the wet clothes clinging to her body, could feel only the hard evidence of Isandro’s arousal against her. A fierce exulting force moved through her.

When Isandro drew back she opened eyes that felt heavy-lidded. His were dark blue, stained with desire. Without a word he bent and caught her up against him, an arm under her legs. He turned and walked swiftly to his own room, and Rowan had a quick impression of dark colours and a huge bed before he put her down in front of him. Her legs felt weak.

She looked up at him, acutely conscious now of her clinging wet nightdress, and suddenly awful reality wanted to intrude.

As if Isandro read her doubt he swiftly put out a hand and tipped her face to his, shaking his head. A hard smile touched his mouth. ‘There’s no going back from here.’

And before she knew what he was doing, he’d brought his hands to the top of her flimsy cotton nightdress and ripped it from neck to hem. Rowan gasped. He slipped the garment from her shoulders so that it fell behind her, and had pulled off his own briefs in a second.

They stood naked, facing each other. Before, Rowan would have been cringing from her toes upwards—but now … she was gone beyond that. For any number of reasons. Not least of which was that her desire and the memory of how he could make her feel was burning through her, making a mockery of any show of embarrassment.

She could feel raindrops from the ends of her hair falling onto her skin and shivered slightly, breaking into goose-bumps. Her breasts felt tight, aching. Her breath stalled in her throat as she watched Isandro’s eyes drop, his hand come and cup one breast. Rowan’s breath returned jerkily.

Isandro lazily took the weight of her breast in his hand. All of Rowan’s nerve-endings were stretched and pulled, the centre of her breast screaming for his touch. He bent his head, his breath feathered, and Rowan’s eyelids fluttered closed. But then, instead of taking that straining peak into his hot mouth, she felt his tongue come out and lick where a drop of rain had fallen on the upper slope.

She put her hands on his wide shoulders to steady herself. Past and present were meshed. All that remained constant were the sensations and the way he was making her feel. Rowan gave herself up to it, and deep down thanked whatever God had given her a second chance.

She opened her eyes and speared his wet hair with her hands, lifting his head and stepped right up against him. His erection was heavy, trapped between their bodies, and then she stretched up to kiss him.

Passion gripped them, overtook them. They kissed furiously. Isandro’s hands roamed over Rowan’s back down to her buttocks, which he cupped in his two big hands. He pulled her up and into him, so that the aching jut of his arousal was right there. Rowan responded, her own hands searching, seeking to touch him all over, and then she inserted a hand between them and let her fingers close enticingly along his length.

Isandro broke away, breathing harshly, eyes glittering. ‘Enough.’

Rowan felt a moment of pure fear that he meant to bring her to this point only to reject her, but then he was carrying her over to the bed and laying her down. Relief swamped her. She watched as he reached for something in a drawer nearby and sheathed himself with protection. As she watched him, something inside her fell. It didn’t feel right to have that barrier between them, but she couldn’t speak up—not with the weight of history heavy around them. She said nothing.

Isandro, totally oblivious to the turmoil in her head, lay beside her and ran the palm of his hand down over her breasts, their tight peaks, her belly, and down farther. She opened her legs instinctively and saw something dark cross Isandro’s face for an instant. Then it was gone again.

He bent and licked around the aureole of her breast for a second, his hand delving in between her legs to find that moist heat. In the same instant that he finally took one turgid nipple fully into his mouth two fingers thrust into her slickness, his thumb instantly finding the sensitive swollen bud of her desire. Rowan nearly jumped off the bed. She’d never been so aroused, so sensitive.