Keeping one foot on the floor, he rested a bent knee on the garish gold cushions patterned with willow trees and scarlet peonies. This close, his radiating heat lured her. The hoarse susurration of his breath was harsh in her ears. His face was stark with longing. He looked like a man at the end of his endurance.
She didn’t know who reached out first but in an instant, she was in his arms. Shamelessly she rose on her knees to press herself against him. For a fraught moment, he stared down into her face as if it offered the answer to every question. Then his mouth crashed onto hers. She tasted passion and hunger and power. His arms crushed her as the blazing open-mouthed kiss sent her spinning into dazzling passion.
He tasted wonderful, nourishment for her soul. She’d pined for this for a year. Frantically, she arched up. She only lived when he was near. Without him, her world was gray, cold oblivion.
She curl
ed her tongue around his in ardent welcome. His teeth scraped over her lips. His breath filled her lungs. She lost herself in his savage heat. This was more war than seduction. She didn’t care. He touched her. She wanted nothing else.
“Christ, I’ve missed you,” he grated out, lifting his head and staring at her out of glazed eyes.
“And I’ve missed you. So much.”
He pressed his mouth to hers again. Eager. Ruthless. He shook with unfettered desperation. She ran her hands up his flanks, feeling the shirt bunch under her touch. Beneath the material, the muscles of his back flexed as he kissed her face, her eyes, her neck in a fever of caresses. Soon, soon, he’d slide her skirts up and part her legs and take her. She couldn’t wait.
She shivered with delight as he nipped at her throat. She made a low sound and rubbed herself against his erection. He seemed larger, hotter, more powerful than ever.
His hand slid across the slope of her chest, tormenting her with its slow progress. The delay built her need until she trembled with sensual anticipation. He teased the embroidered edge of her bodice. Then he slipped under the loose curve of the neckline to palm one nipple. The crest immediately tightened.
She hissed with pleasure as he rolled the nub in his fingers, pulled it, squeezed it. Each touch sent a spike of arousal to her loins. By the time his attention moved to her other breast, she writhed on the silk like a trapped animal.
Leaning over her, he parted her thighs with his knees. His arms supported his weight, encasing her in a space of his making. He was close enough for her to see the wild gold kaleidoscope of his eyes.
Familiar scents of lemon and Matthew surrounded her, made her dizzy with desire. Then she was dizzy indeed as he tumbled her back against the slippery cushions and came down between her legs.
He shoved her skirts to her waist and placed his hand firmly on her center. She bucked under the pressure, flooding with heat and moisture. Within seconds, her drawers were on the ground. Shaking with urgency, he released himself from his breeches.
He was seconds away from taking her. In her father’s summerhouse. The reality of who she was and where she was squeaked vaguely from the back of her passion-soaked mind.
“We shouldn’t,” she forced out, even while she raised her knees to bring him closer to where she wanted him.
“We should,” he said gruffly. He braced his arms on either side of her. “I’ve locked the door. Nobody can see us.”
Then even such few words as those deserted them when he nudged her entrance. For a delicious second, her passage resisted his intrusion. She was slick with arousal but it had been over a year since she’d taken a man into her body and her intimate muscles defied the incursion. He pushed again with a confidence that took her breath away, flexed his hips, and settled into her full length.
She gasped at the joining, so much richer and more intense than her vivid lonely dreams. He groaned her name and buried his head in her shoulder.
Her body took time to adjust to his size and weight after so long without him. He stretched her inner passage and her muscles clenched around him.
Tears sprang to her eyes at the incredible feeling. He was hers again. Even if just for now.
Tentatively, she reached up to stroke his damp hair, pressing his face closer. All the love she didn’t dare speak invested her touch.
Oh, Matthew, never leave me. I love you.
She bit back the pathetic cry before it escaped.
The sweet stasis couldn’t endure. His back tightened, then he began to move deeply, surely, possessively. She moaned and lifted herself to meet him as the glorious rhythm reigned.
She was so ready, the friction quickly pushed her over the edge. Without warning, her body convulsed on a sun-bright peak. For a small eternity, rapture blasted her, turned the air around her incandescent with pleasure.
She tasted the salt of her tears on her lips. Aftershocks still quivered through her. Tenderly, she ran her hands down his lean hips to knead his firm buttocks. Part of her clung to the ecstasy even as the blaze subsided to a gentle glow.
The physical delight hadn’t faded. If anything, it was sharper, deeper, more profound. Matured through suffering and loss and deprivation.
She expected him to finish but he wasn’t satisfied yet. Implacably, he tilted her hips and continued to ravish her. Shocked, she realized he hadn’t found release in that shivering culmination. She’d been too lost in her own pleasure to register his responses.
Before her last climax subsided, another more shattering crisis ripped through her. She raised her hand to her mouth and bit down hard to muffle a scream. Uncontrollable ecstasy gripped her in claws of flame. It was as though the dragons on the doors had breathed their fire into her lover.