Paper Marriage Proposition (Gage Brothers 1)

An anticipatory groan rumbled up from his chest as he whisked her lips again, holding his breath at the tantalizing contact. “Do you want me…Landon…to make love to you?”

He moved his lips over hers, gently attempting to coax them apart. Her hands tightened at his nape as he slid his hands up her back and held her against him. He gave himself a minute to savor the rightness of her body against his, the difference in their forms, and deepened the contact when she opened a little.

“I won’t stop,” he rasped, seizing her plush bottom lip between both of his. “I’m going to touch you, and lick you, and strip you down to your skin, and I won’t stop until morning.”

When she shifted in his arms just slightly, giving him the impression she wanted him even closer, he lost control and slid out his tongue to taste. Once. Side to side, his tongue traced the entry of her lips. “Say it,” he whispered. “Say the words to me.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

His tenuous hold on his control threatened to snap when her lips parted, and her warm, damp tongue curled seductively around his. The coy caress destroyed him. Patience, measure, reason fled. Need flared in his body like a rising tide of lava, and a hunger pent up for years surfaced with a vengeance. He crushed her to him and opened his mouth wide, kissing her like only a man too starved or too desperate could. His initial sampling became a feast. A claiming. His claiming.

He growled when her lips moved with the same frantic eagerness as his, and still he demanded more. He drank of her, letting the sweetness and the honey and the taste of her flood his mouth in a flavor so intoxicating it made his head spin. He’d underestimated the power of her. The temptress in disguise with the worried eyes and the heart of a lion that had driven him insane for weeks.

She moaned into his mouth, and desire ricocheted within the walls of his body, painful in its force. The prenup, the fake wedding, it all vanished from his thoughts. He could only think of his bed. With this woman in it.

He tore his mouth free and slipped his hands around to cup her tight, round bottom, then dragged her flat against him, letting her feel the painful length of his erection straining against the fabric.

He gazed into her surprised eyes, curling his hands to get a handful of soft, willing flesh as he covered her mouth again. They moaned in unison.

He opened his lips over hers, drinking what she gave him, demanding more. He’d thought she was a vision. He’d thought she was a dream. And he couldn’t stop kissing her, touching her, thrusting his tongue inside her depths to taste her. Hot. So hot. So sweet.

He added teeth to the kiss, biting, nibbling at her, and when she tightened her arms around his neck, he thought his chest would implode.

“Landon,” she said in a reverent whisper as her mouth trailed down his chest, quick and hungry. No, voracious. Landon felt dizzy as she peppered warm, moist kisses on his heated flesh and stroked her fingers down the muscles of his abdomen.

Yes, he thought as the blood stormed through his body, yes yes yes.

His every muscle taut with need, he guided her back and urged her down on the bed. She fell there, her skin luminous in the moonlight, every shadow dancing over her body making it clear her nightgown was sheer.

His erection pushed even harder, ready to rip through his pants. “Did you come to my room to seduce me?” He trembled knowing the answer, and leaned over her waiting female body, watching her nod slowly, almost hesitantly.

“Yes.”

She came up to her knees and reach

ed out for his drawstring. But Landon planted a hand on her tummy and forced her onto her back again, in lust, in agony. “Ladies first.” He couldn’t understand his own words. His breathing had morphed into something haggard.

With slow, barely steady hands, he tugged the ends of the ribbons that held her nightgown together. One by one the bows came undone.

“Show me what’s mine,” he said, softly.

Her eyes darkened with hunger as she raised her shaky hands to her throat, keeping the garment closed. Then the fabric slid down one shoulder, then lower, exposing the round globes of her breasts, her flat stomach, and then…

He swallowed the aching lump in his throat. “Put it aside,” he said gruffly.

Every rustle of fabric was audible through the silence—until every inch of her was revealed to him.

His body throbbed painfully but he hesitated before lying over her, unsure of what his hands would do, knowing how he could lose his mind touching her. She had gotten to him. He had wanted her the first day when she came to ask for help, had wanted her every night when he woke up in a wrenching, unfulfilled sweat produced by dreams so vivid and erotic he would remember them even by day. He’d been fantasizing about a family with her, a real family.

He would never let her go.

He grabbed her wrists gently between his hands and guided her arms up over her head, pinning her there, so he could see her in the dim lighting.

She gazed up at him, her eyes shining with need and want.

Holding her wrists trapped in one hand, he slid the other between her heaving breasts, past her navel, to caress the silky curls at the apex of her thighs. “Been waiting to touch you.” He stroked the glistening folds with one finger, then inserted it into her tight sheath and she gasped and arched back in pleasure. “I need to see, Beth…your face…hear the sounds you make.”

Her eyes drifted shut as he inserted a second finger, her face twisting into a grimace of pleasure. “Please,” she said, and tears laced her voice. “Touch me.”