The hand rubbing over her leg didn’t hurry, didn’t rush, but glided over her skin from thigh to knee, venturing toward her waist a time or two, occasionally shifting to brush her breasts…rousing desire and firing need every bit as much as his ever-deepening kisses.
When her pelvis started shifting forward of its own accord, he pulled back and whispered, “You’re ready now.”
She whimpered her agreement, trusting. Yearning.
With strong, gentle hands, Nicholas guided her to her back and settled himself over her. His weight was divine.
His staff, lying hot and heavy between her thighs, wicked.
And wanted.
So very wanted.
Her hands roved restlessly over his back. His lips worshiped at her breasts.
Nicholas positioned his knees between her legs and spread them wide. Then he meandered his fingers down her stomach and delivered lazy, spiraling caresses through her curls.
He was going so slowly, moving against her body with such grace and control. She didn’t want to flail against him like a madwoman, had been fighting the urge to slant her pelvis, to encourage him to move faster, farther…
But oh, the sensations he brought forth with his tender touch. A giant wave threatened to cascade through her, only something held it back. As though an invisible dam stopped the tide from flowing freely.
The wet glide of his fingers edging her open was more intimate than anything she could imagine.
“Uh…” She licked her lips, her mouth so dry and stomach so fluttery, it was a wonder she still possessed a command of English. “Uh…”
Well, perhaps she no longer did.
He stilled his hand and bestowed a fervent kiss to the base of her neck. “Aye?”
“Those are your fingers, right?”
“For now.”
“Uhm…for how long?”
He shifted and withdrew from her slick core, kissed her lips and assured, “For as long as you like.”
“What if I’d like to feel the other?”
He froze. Then kissed her deeper before pulling back to ask against her mouth, “The other?”
Isabella scratched her fingernails lightly over the barely perceptible bristle shading one cheek—thoughtful man, he must’ve shaved just before coming for her. “The other as in that impossibly long and stiff part of you I’ve felt through our clothes for weeks now. I—”
She said no more. It wasn’t necessary.
Not when Nicholas scooted his body a few inches down hers and a slight shuffle between her spread thighs brought his fingers back to her sex, this time with a blunt-tipped offering in hand. “Do you feel me, Isabella?” he breathed against the sloping mound of one breast. “I’m holding myself back, keeping the bawdy parts of me in check, but, darling—”
“But I’m sure I want to meet those parts too.”
“My bawdy parts? Well then…” He echoed her gasp as something warm and thick, much thicker than his fingers, slid up her cleft then back down. “This is me, knocking at your entrance—”
“Knocking?” She laughed on a moan. “Feels more like nudging—”
His arm jerked between her thighs, bringing the head of his staff ever closer to her inner depths. “Blast it, woman, this is love talk. I’ve not had much practice so I’m not any good—”
She reached down and took hold of his wrist. “You’re good,” she corrected breathlessly, “great, in fact, so—ah—” Tugging on his arm and canting her hips, she rubbed herself along his shaft a few more times. Her knees lifted until her feet were flat on the bed, toes curled into the silky counterpane. “So wonderful I—I think the dam is about to burst—”
“The what?”
And then she was bucking wildly against his body as he brought his head to her breast and licked a narrowing circle around her areola until he scaled the summit. He drew the impossibly tight point of her nipple into his mouth and Isabella forgot how to breathe.
All she could do was feel. Feel the tugging on her breast as it traveled through her stomach to her core where the waves were building, cresting…
“I see it!” she whispered fervently as sensations streaked through her, illuminating every corner of her darkened past. “See the sun shining on the ocean—” She gasped. “The beautiful, unending ocean. I see us there…” The waves were crashing through her now, growing ever more insistent. “Hand in hand, we are…walking along the shore, cool water beneath our feet, wet sand between our toes…”
The waves pounded her insides, seeking a way out. And as she continued thrusting herself against the stimulating strokes Nicholas delivered, the dam did break, the tight coil of passion reaching a pinnacle on a heartfelt sigh of pure bliss…pure release…