Slayde growled deep in his throat, swinging Courtney into his arms and carrying her to the bed. He dispensed with her gown and chemise in several sharp, urgent motions, lowering her to the waiting sheets and stepping away only long enough to tear off his own clothes, his restless gaze raking every bare inch of her as he did.
Unashamedly, Courtney drank in his magnificent nudity, reaching her arms out to him and whispering, “Slayde—hurry.”
It was all he needed.
With a wracking shudder, he covered her nakedness with his, tangling his fingers in her hair and angling her mouth to receive his kiss.
“Yes,” she said against his lips, her fingers caressing the powerful muscles of his shoulders and back, stroking down to his buttocks, which went taut at her touch.
“God, you drive me crazy,” he muttered, devouring her mouth with hot, hungry kisses, melding her tongue with his.
“I can tell.” Experimentally, she arched, feeling the answering pulse of his body, his rigid length throbbing against her belly in its desperate need to be one with her.
“Do that again and I’ll be inside you in a heartbeat,” he rasped, lowering his head to her breast. Slowly, deliberately, he drew her nipple into his mouth, licking maddening circles about the aching tip until Courtney thought she’d die. Abruptly, he gave her what she craved, his lips enveloping the peak, tugging powerfully—once, twice, then in a hard, steady rhythm, punctuating each motion with a lash of his tongue.
“Oh…God.” Courtney bit her lip against the scream threatening to erupt. Lightening shot from her breasts to her loins, her womb clenching as liquid heat pooled between her thighs.
Wildly aroused by her response, Slayde shifted to her other breast, inflicting the same torture, gently holding her hips to prevent their undulating motion. “Not yet,” he answered her unspoken plea. “Not yet.” He reached down, slipped his fingers between her thighs—and was nearly undone by the satiny wetness that greeted his touch. “Perfect,” he said thickly, his fingers gliding inside, his thumb finding and stroking the tiny bud that begged for his touch. “So…utterly…perfect.”
Courtney sobbed his name, arching against his hand, begging him to stop, each roll of her hips wilder, more abandoned.
“You’re so beautiful.” Feeling her inner muscles quiver against his fingertips, Slayde quickened his motions, shuddering as he battled back his own release, which clawed at his loins despite the fact that he had yet to enter her. “So close,” he rasped. “You’re so close. Let me feel you.”
“No…Slayde, no.” Courtney shook her head, her hair a glorious tangle on the pillows. “I…no.” Blindly, she reached between them, her fingers finding and surrounding his turgid shaft, caressing skin too achingly sensitized by nerves too raw to breaking.
“God…Courtney.” Slayde went utterly still, gritting his teeth against the feral shout exploding in his chest, flames igniting in his loins. Of its own accord, his body moved against her palm, seeking a more erotic contact, desperate to know the effects of her touch.
Taking full advantage of the moment, Courtney squirmed away, wriggling down the bed until she could worship him with her mouth, love him in the same magnificent way he had her.
She’d scarcely begun when Slayde dragged her back up.
“Stop!” he commanded, lifting her hips and plunging deep, deep inside her. “Courtney…”
He poured into her even as he roared her name, throwing back his head and succumbing to the shout he’d fought to suppress. Unendurable pleasure screamed along his nerve endings as Courtney convulsed around him, cried out his name, hard spasms of completion overtaking her, clasping at his length and intensifying his climax beyond bearing. He gripped her thighs, opening them wider, lifting her into him to give her every iota of sensation, every drop of his essence.
Courtney cried out again, clutching Slayde with arms and legs and inner muscles that contracted around him in what had to be the most exquisite of tortures.
They collapsed in a joined heap, dragging air into their lungs, shuddering with the lingering tremors of their release.
Minutes drifted by, melded into a blissful stretch of timelessness, a bone-deep contentment—of their bodies, yes, but more profoundly, of their souls.
An eternity later, Slayde raised his head, kissed Courtney’s closed eyelids, her flushed cheeks. “I love you.” Tenderly, he framed her face between his palms, brushing her lips with all the soft kisses he’d intended, but which their urgency had earlier precluded.
Courtney’s arms came up to encircle his neck. “Am I still alive?” she murmured.
A chuckle. “If not, then neither am I. In which case, I don’t give a damn. So long as I’m with you, I don’t care where I am.”
“Either way, it’s heaven.” Courtney’s lashes lifted and she smiled. “Utter, eternal heaven.” She kissed the damp column of Slayde’s throat. “I love you, Lord Pembourne.”
Fierce emotion darkened his gaze. “And I adore you, soon-to-be Lady Pembourne.”
That caused a pucker to form between Courtney’s brows. “Lady Pembourne—I hadn’t considered that. In marrying an earl, I become a countess.”
Slayde rolled them to one side, wrapping his arms securely about his future bride. “Is that approval or disapproval I detect?”
“Would it matter?”
“No. You’re marrying me anyway.”