The Lady By His Side(70)

Of a need to claim. To brand her as his and no other’s.

With a woman, a lady—a noblewoman—like her, thinking in terms of ownership was as futile as it was archaic.

That said…

As he bent his head and took one rosy, tightly puckered nipple into his mouth, licked, laved, then suckled—and she clutched his head and moaned—he was acutely aware of an impulse to mark her, but reined himself back.

He reminded himself she was new to this, and this time, her pleasure would be his first reward.

He set out to claim it—to distract himself from that surging, underlying emotion by reducing her to gasping surrender.

Beneath his expert ministrations, she writhed and clutched. He achieved the gasps, but instead of surrender, those gasps came with increasingly insistent, increasingly explicit demands.

She seemed intent on pushing him, on testing his control. With her hands, with her lips and tongue, with the untutored undulations of her body beneath his, she persisted in driving him on.

Driving him just a little insane.

He didn’t realize just how truly enthralling the web of desire she’d cast over him was, not until her greedy, grasping hands slid evocatively down his back, long fingers reaching for the waistband of his silk trousers, but lying as they were, she couldn’t quite reach—something he’d made sure of—yet in instinctive response to that unvoiced demand, he rolled to his side and whipped off the offending garment, even as she eagerly thrust aside the sheet, the last barrier screening their hips and legs.

Only then did he remember that they were supposed to be going slowly.

Too late. Even as the thought bloomed in his brain, she hooked a hand around his nape and hauled him into a searing kiss—as she twisted and brought her body and long legs flush against his.

The sudden contact, burning skin to burning skin, sent fire leaping down every vein.

Then their legs were tangling along with their twining tongues, and with blatant provocation and flagrant invitation, she arched against him.

Something in him broke, shattered, then her other hand slid between their hips, and she cradled his erection in her hot palm, then closed her fingers—in incendiary possessiveness and unadulterated demand—about him.

And her conquest was complete.

Not a single thought—not a single glimmer of self-protectiveness, of any need for caution or restraint—remained to deflect the driving need to be inside her. To join with her and ride with her into ecstasy.

He couldn’t breathe other than in shallow drafts, and he didn’t think she was any better.

Need consumed them, hot and demanding, and they fumbled and shifted and rolled and writhed.

Fire burned wherever they touched; their bodies flamed with near-incandescent passion.

With their lips locked, he raced his hands over her one last time, then he gripped her upper arms, rolled her onto her back, and came up on his elbows over her.

His hips pressed hers to the bed; he had to use his weight to corral her. But her hand hadn’t released his erection, and with every caress, she stole his breath, his wits, his very will.

Roughly, he caught first one hand, then the other, then drew back from the kiss long enough to haul her hands over her head and, with one hand, anchor them in the pillows.

Her black hair a silken mass cast over the white pillows, she lifted beneath him, twisting to see.

With his free hand, he caught her chin, drew it down, bent his head, and took her mouth—this time, without the slightest finesse.

Not that she seemed to care; every ounce of demand, of command and scorching hunger he poured into the kiss, into her, she returned in full measure.

Further heating them both.

He’d never in his life felt so consumed, so driven.

But they both needed this, it seemed.

Plundering her mouth, holding her to the kiss, he released her chin and skated his hand over her breast—paused to knead and claim again, first one mound, then the other—then he sent his palm gliding over her desire-dewed skin, tracing a path downward to where a patch of black curls hid the delicate folds of her sex.

He wasn’t surprised when she gasped at his first touch, or that she shifted and squirmed as he wedged her thighs open, parted her folds, and learned her secrets.

Antonia’s mind felt overwhelmed. So many sensations—so many startlingly new. So much to absorb. But this, this intimate exploration, was something she’d heard of, but had never fully comprehended; she’d never grasped how intensely pleasurable it would be.

His lips remained on hers, languidly supping, and while all but instinctively, she returned the slow caresses, her focus had shifted, registering and recording each glide of his fingers, each stroke, each intimate probing.

Then he circled the nub of flesh at the apex of her thighs, and her nerves sparked, and heightened tension shivered through her.