The Lady By His Side(87)

He looked disgusted, but at her insistent tugging, got to his feet. “It was worth a try.”

She threw him a look—disapproving but resigned—as she drew him around, then, backing toward the bed, she allowed thoughts of a completely different nature to infuse her gaze. “We can’t do anything more until tomorrow.”

The atmosphere between them changed in just a heartbeat to one of leaping senses and tightening nerves. She smiled, confidence and self-assurance rising. “Come to bed.” Her voice had grown sultry. “I guarantee you’ll see matters in a more positive light come morning.”

His gaze remained locked with hers. His brows slowly rose.

And he allowed her to tow him toward the bed.

Mentally, Sebastian threw up his hands—surrendering, even if he wasn’t entirely sure to what.

To compulsion, yes. To hunger, definitely.

To need?

As she halted by the bed, grabbed the sides of his coat in both fists and hauled him to her as she stretched up, and he bent his head, it certainly felt like that.

Their lips met—and that swelling need ignited. No tentative dipping of toes into desire’s sea—not for them. The tide raged, and they plunged in, and it swept them, swirled them, then dragged them under.

And they went. Gladly jettisoning all vestige of restraint and all pretense of rational decision, with blatant abandon, they let passion have them.

Their lips meshed and melded, their mouths devoured, greedy and needy, then she parted her lips, and he thrust his tongue past and claimed every lush inch of her mouth. He possessed and branded in flagrant mimicry of what was to come, then her tongue boldly tangled with his, and they fell into a duel of wills and wants, and he lost his last anchor to the world.

She pushed, she challenged, and he instinctively met her, on this plane as on all others.

Ardor burned brightly within them both, a near-incandescent flame. It heated, it lured—it drew and drove them on.

Into ever-escalating hungers, into turbulent seas of passions unleashed.

Desire burned, a fire in their blood, and hunger and need thudded in their veins.

And compulsion reigned.

Her small hands were everywhere, tugging at his clothes.

He finished unbuttoning her gown, then acquiesced to her insistence and shrugged off his coat and waistcoat, both of which she’d already undone.

An errant thought whisked through his mind; one day, they might manage to take this slowly, to draw the moments out, but that day was not today. Driven by something that was close to desperation, an increasingly urgent need to feel the other close—that close—they shed clothes like leaves swept away by the gale of their need.

Until they came together, skin to skin, senses to achingly yearning senses, bodies flush and limbs embracing in the space beside her bed.

Hands—hers and his—reached, stroked, and caressed. On a panting breath, he broke from the kiss and sent his lips cruising—over the delicate curve of her jaw, down the long column of her throat, following the sculpted line of her shoulder wide, before swooping down to pay homage to one breast. He filled his hand with her other breast, kneaded the already swollen mound as he suckled, and she cried out, her fingers digging into his scalp as she arched in his arms.

As her naked hips pressed tight, then provocatively ground against his bare thighs.

They stilled, all breathing suspended. Their eyes met for a fleeting instant, then they tumbled onto the coverlet, landing in a tangle of long limbs and searching, grasping, greedy hands. He seized the moment of unscripted wrestling to catch his breath, physically and mentally, and reached for what, in that sphere, passed for patience. For some lever—anything—that would slow them down; control might be beyond him, but surely experience would afford him some ability to at least guide…

She wasn’t of a mind to allow it. She caught his head between her hands and yanked him back into a searing kiss—one that cindered all restraint. Then she undulated beneath him, her body sinuously tempting in a move as old as time.

He reacted—it was impossible not to, to keep his body from answering her call.

From covering her, settling heavily into the cradle of her hips, into the embrace of her slender, welcoming thighs—and then, with one thrust, he was inside her.

Pleasure, laced by something far more profound, more acute, infinitely more heady, lanced through him.

The jolt was a sensual shock potent enough, glorious enough, to make him draw back from the kiss simply to better savor it.

From beneath his lashes, he looked into her face. Shadowed though it was, he saw her eyes gleam from beneath her weighted lids. For an instant, their gazes locked, held.

And an ineluctable sense of togetherness welled—clicked, locked, and bound them.