Echoes in the Mist (Kingsleys in Love 1)

“In the barn.” He was already unbuttoning her gown, his fingers shaking violently. “With nothing surrounding us but the animals and flowers you adore. With nothing under you but hay. With nothing under me but you.” He lowered his head, opening his mouth over the hardened outline of her nipples, tugging at them through the confines of her chemise.

Ariana cried out, her legs buckling beneath her. She clutched Trenton’s strong forearms for support, feeling the world tilt askew as he lowered her to their rough-soft mattress. Her nostrils filled with the powerful aroma of hay, and she lay mesmerized by the fires banking in her husband’s eyes, by the erotic images of what he intended.

Trenton unfastened the final button of her chemise, baring her to the waist, arching her into his mouth. The pleasure of his demanding lips and tongue was so acute Ariana thought she might faint. She cried out, again and again, twisting frantically in his arms.

When he released her, she was beyond modesty or thought. For the first time the aggressor, she dragged open his shirt, then stroked his flat male nipples with her thumbs. The already taut muscles of Trenton’s abdomen went rigid, a wordless hiss erupting from his chest.

Ariana didn’t pause. Shocking herself, she boldly reached down to press her palm to the hard ridge of flesh that pulsed beneath her husband’s trousers.

He caught her wrist. “I won’t get my clothes off in time,” he rasped.

“I’ll get them off for you.” She unfastened his trousers, pulling them down his hips.

Trenton shoved her inexperienced hands away long enough to shrug his shirt from his shoulders and drag his trousers down his legs. Kneeling over her, magnificently naked, he hauled her gown and undergarments off, following their path with his lips. He paused where her stockings began, nuzzling the bare skin of her thighs for an instant before he savagely tore all the impeding garments away. He lifted her feet to discard the crumpled material, wedging himself into the cradle of her thighs. Raising her legs over his shoulders, he sank his tongue into her sweetness, taking her with relentless, heated strokes, reveling in her cries of ecstasy. This time he didn’t pause at the height of sensation but took her over its shattering brink, holding her captive as she dissolved in his arms.

Ariana felt the world disintegrate, then rematerialize, her body still quivering with unbearable aftershocks. Her lids lifted as Trenton came down beside her, his eyes blazing with unsated passion, unspoken emotion. He moved urgently, reaching forward to drag her into his arms.

But Ariana acted more quickly.

Scrambling to her knees, she leaned over him, her hair a wild tumble of copper fire against his skin. Every bit the seductress, she was shameless this time, raking her nails lightly through the dark hair curling on his chest, bending to tease his nipples as he had hers. She thrilled to the way they tightened beneath her touch, exhilarated in her husband’s groan of pleasure. Avidly, she explored every muscled plane of his body, the coiled force and rough textures. She ran her hands over his powerful thighs, then settled between them, lovingly caressing his painfully rigid erection with soft sweeps of her fingertips.

Trenton went deadly still, his breathing suspended, as he endured the unendurable ecstasy of her touch. Grappling with his voracious hunger, he knew there could be no more exquisite a sensation than Ariana’s i

nnocent hands learning him, touching him, feather-light and gentle.

He learned he was wrong.

When she took him in her mouth, needing to give him the same blinding sensations he’d given her, Trenton nearly exploded. Certain he’d never last, he commanded her to stop, even as his fingers tangled in her hair, urged her closer.

His climax was already upon him when he dragged her to her back, shoved her legs apart, and thrust wildly within her hot, clinging wetness. Like a man possessed, he poured blindly into her, the hard floor of the barn anchoring her to receive the endless flow of his seed.

Fervently, Ariana arched, taking all of her husband’s scorching release, pulling him as deep as her body would allow. She absorbed the tremor that shook his powerful frame, the hot, revealing declarations that were wrenched from his soul and wrapped herself around him, melding their passion, their hunger, their tenderness.

Her own climax shattered through her, unraveling in a series of shimmering convulsions that stole her breath, her heart—and made them even more completely his.

“I love you.”

She whispered the words again, not at the frenzied peak, but in the lulling aftermath, when Trenton would recognize their significance.

He did.

Inhaling shakily, he raised up on his elbows, confronting his wife’s declaration head-on. “Our bodies make magic together,” he admitted, stunned to hear even that revelation from his own lips. “But love? What is love, misty angel? Perhaps you can tell me.” He pressed his loins to hers, his flesh still fully imbedded in hers. “Is this love? This explosion of pleasure you bring me, this insatiable need to make you mine … is that love? Or is love something more? … A fierce commitment that renders you vulnerable, that only results in pain? I don’t know, Ariana. What is love?”

Ariana responded to the anguish in his eyes. “Love is wanting to be with someone, to share his life. It’s wanting to heal his suffering, to understand his past, to join herself to him … and not only with her body,” she returned, her gaze soft and candid.

“I’m not sure I’m capable of an emotion that vast.”

“I am sure.”

For a long moment he was silent, studying her flushed face from beneath hooded lids. “And trust, misty angel?” he asked hoarsely. “Is not trust part of love as well?”

Ariana drew a slow, trembling breath, aware of the crucial nature of this never-before-broached question. “Yes, trust is most definitely part of love.”

“Is it? Well then, do you trust me?” Cynicism darkened his expression.

“Most times … yes.”

“Most times.” Trenton fought the jolt of disappointment that claimed him. Well, what the hell had he expected?