“May I kiss you again?” he asked.
Her lips were parted, her eyelids heavy with welcome. Her inviting gaze did not leave his, not for a heartbeat, as she whispered her answer.
“Butterfly says Yes.”
But he did not kiss her. Not immediately. He did not want to rush this. He wanted every precious second to last forever.
Thea’s gaze dipped to his mouth, and she moistened her lips, her innocent dart of tongue shooting a heated invitation to his groin.
With an unsteady hand, Rafe caught that errant curl and slid his fingers down its length, transferring from the silk of her hair to the satin of her throat. He fancied he could feel her pulse, racing, too fast, for him. At least as fast as his own, which skittered with the frenzy of a dragonfly. Lowering his head, he brushed a kiss over her temple. She made a sound like velvet, and his heart skittered some more.
Next, his lips grazed her cheekbone, the sweet scent of her skin snaring him like an intoxicant. He crossed to kiss her ear on the other side. Once more, she made that velvet sound.
“Are you teasing me?” she whispered.
“Why would you say that?”
He let his lips hover against her jaw and she tilted her head back in an offering. He trailed kisses down her throat, lingering to taste her skin, to sense her pulse. She buried her fingers in his hair, summoning from his throat a matching velvet moan.
“Your wish didn’t say where you meant to kiss me,” she murmured, breathily.
He could barely pause between kisses to reply. “I did not speak my full wish, for I did not want to upset the butterfly’s delicate sensibilities.”
“If butterflies hear people’s deepest wishes, they cannot be too delicate or they would fall from the sky in shock.”
“Would it be shocked if I said I wished to kiss you everywhere?” He planted a kiss in the hollow under her throat and dragged his mouth away, just enough to look right into her eyes. “Everywhere.”
She inhaled on a gasp. Her fingers slid out of his hair and feathered over his cheeks.
“No need,” she breathed. “When you kiss me in one place, I feel it everywhere.”
“Do you like that?”
“I always want more. I am greedy for your kisses, the way I’m greedy for syllabub.”
Rafe chuckled. “This is better than syllabub.”
“I find that hard to believe. Syllabub is the very pinnacle of pleasure.”
“I promise, this is better.”
“Um. I’m not sure about that.”
Her teasing tone danced through his veins, firing his own need for more. More teasing, more touching.
More Thea.
He slid his fingers under the edge of her bodice and over her satiny skin. The cotton yielded only enough to reveal the first enticing swell of her breasts.
Rafe pressed his hungry mouth to that glorious skin, tasted her perfection with his lips, his tongue, his teeth. With another gasp, she tangled her fingers once more in his hair, tugging at his scalp. Longing and need cascaded through him.
“And that?” He glanced up, desperate to learn everything she liked. “Do you feel that everywhere?”
She seemed fascinated by this. “As though your kisses slide under my skin and into my blood, and then they bounce around inside me, showing up in…” Her boldness failed. “Unexpected places.”
“I assure you, it is not unexpected. It is extremely expected.”
He had barely kissed her, and already he was almost undone, his imagination firing at the thought of her unexpected places, at the thought of planting his kisses there. Not to mention his own unexpected places, which were behaving exactly as expected.
Staggering a few steps, Rafe propped himself on a low stone wall to level their faces. When he parted his legs, she glided unhesitatingly between them. He held her steady at her waist, and almost immediately her hands moved over him, those irrepressible hands with their need to touch. Closing his eyes, Rafe surrendered to the warmth of the sun, and the lazy buzzing of bees, and Thea’s explorations, tormenting his throat, his shoulders, his chest.
Where she stilled, her palm pressed against his muscles. “I can feel your heart beating. Hard and fast. You have a strong heart.”
“You do that.” He did not know if he meant that she made his heart beat fast and hard, or if she made it strong. It needed to be strong, because of the way it beat near her. “Because I want you.”
“Um.”
She fisted her hand in his shirt. Her breathing came jaggedly, and he opened his eyes to see her looming over him, her expression fierce.
“You like that,” he growled, her ardor turning his desire savage. “You like knowing how much I want you.”
“Who doesn’t want to be wanted, when it’s someone they want too? Someone one would pursue to the ends of the earth.” Still her hands roamed, haphazardly, fighting his shirt to travel over his skin. “I liked it when you kissed my throat.”