“And I’ll never be the woman you lost, so we’re even.” Pulling away from him, she took a step back toward the camp, but he caught her.
He took her in his arms, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him. For a moment he looked into her eyes, searching them to see if she was sure of this. In the next second, his mouth came down on hers in a way that she’d never felt before. She’d had chaste kisses with each of her suitors, and she’d exchanged two kisses with Alex, but she’d never felt anything like what she did now.
His hands slid down her back, and went over her, touching her arms, the back of her neck, her hair. “Do you know how you’ve driven me crazy since the day I met you?” he murmured as he kissed her neck.
Cay put her head back and her chin up to give him better access. “You hated me.”
“You looked like an angel in that dress. I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t died and you were there to welcome me to Heaven.”
“Alex, that feels so good.”
He put little biting kisses along the sensitive cord of her neck, and when he felt her knees begin to give way, he bent and picked her up, his arms under her legs. Carefully, he put her on the soft grass and began to unbutton her shirt. Under it, she had the tight binding cloth over her breasts, but Alex lifted her and soon had removed her shirt and the cloth.
When his lips touched her br
east, she gasped. “I had no idea . . . ,” she murmured. His hands and his mouth seemed to be everywhere, and her clothes came off her body in one smooth motion. When she was naked, she tried to pull him down to her, but he drew back. “I want to look at you, to see the flesh I’ve lusted after for so long.”
She was small, and her body was firm from her many days of exercise. He ran his hands over her thighs, over her stomach, and up again to her neck.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful woman,” he said.
“I don’t look like a boy?” Her hands were at the back of his neck, clasped, her eyes on his.
Alex merely chuckled in answer.
Tentatively, she ran her hand over his chest. “May I touch you?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice husky. “Touch me all you want, wherever you want.”
Smiling, she began to unbutton his shirt, and when it was open, she slipped her hand inside. There was much more muscle on him than she’d thought, and it occurred to her that she’d made up her mind about his looks on that first night and hadn’t changed it. She’d seen him as a thin old man, and they’d been too busy since then for her to notice that he’d filled out a great deal.
She pushed the shirt off his shoulders, and ran her hands over the hair on his chest, and went down to his waist.
“Ah, lass,” he whispered. “You are truly beautiful.”
All she could do was smile as he began to unfasten the buttons at the sides of his breeches.
When he was naked and beside her, she kept her eyes on his face and stroked his beard. “Is your face scarred under there?”
“Only my heart bears the scars of my life,” he said and began kissing her some more. He nibbled at her ears, and went down her neck again. He kept on, his lips so soft and warm on her skin that she arched against him. “Please,” she said. “Please make love to me.”
His hand went lower and she gasped when he touched her between her legs. Slowly, he moved on top of her, his hands on her thighs, as he parted them and moved between them.
When he entered her, she instinctively drew back, and he started to move away, but she pulled him back down to her.
“I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
“‘But what about passion?’” she quoted to him. The words and the tone were exactly what he’d once said to her.
“Is it passion you want, lass?” His eyes were sparkling.
“Yes, oh, yes.”
“Then I won’t hold myself back any longer.” In a second, Alex went from being a kind and thoughtful lover to a man who was nearly overcome with desire for the woman beneath him. His kisses changed to being demanding, and taking from her what he needed. His hands held on to her with a fierceness Cay had never felt before—and she met him in kind.
When his tongue sought hers, she opened to him and she replied thrust for thrust. It was as though something had been trapped inside her all her life, and Alex’s hands and lips were releasing it. Somewhere in her mind, she thought, So this is what he meant by passion. And she knew that none of the men she’d ever before met could have made her feel what Alex was sending through her veins. Heaven help her, but it was as though her blood actually was boiling.
When he entered her, he stopped her cry of pain with his lips, and the pain soon gave way to the pleasant feeling of his being inside her. Pleasant soon turned to something different as her body began to feel as though it needed something. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt as though she might die if she didn’t have it.