Midnight's Wild Passion

Although the temptation was devilish strong.

Instead he tightened his embrace and stared sightlessly into the shadowy room. His eyes were scratchy with lack of sleep and his body was heavy with pleasurable lassitude.

After her confession, he’d taken her again. In a languorous exploration that had spun molten seconds into hours and sensation into an inferno. Tonight had contained one surprise after another. He’d imagined he’d captain this voyage to ecstasy. Swiftly he’d realized Antonia held the key to unknown and dazzling worlds. She certainly ripped restraint to shreds. Once again, at the crucial moment, he’d lost control and pumped into her. It was as though his body wouldn’t forgo that final primitive act of possession.

Much as he prayed no child resulted from his recklessness, how could he regret such transcendent joy? What he shared with Antonia held a dimension that was new, astonishing.

Terrifying . . .

He’d rolled off her, sated, drained to the lees. Then, even though the time allotted was so precious, he’d plummeted into dreamless sleep.

No other lover left him so replete. No other lover swept him to the edge of endurance. No other lover threatened to crack the hard shell he set over his emotions.

Not just when they had sex. And that was the most worrying revelation of all.

Her arm shifted a few inches. The brush of satiny skin on his bare belly heated his blood. Part of him wanted to nudge her awake, to have her again. When she said she could stay until morning, he suspected she meant some uncivilized hour that permitted her to slip unnoticed into Demarest’s house. Ranelaw’s gorge rose at the prospect of her crawling from his bed back under that bastard’s roof.

He wondered with another surge of anger if the cur had ever made advances to her. Demarest was a man of unconstrained appetites and surely he’d long ago recognized Antonia’s beauty. Perhaps he’d decided a quick tumble wasn’t worth risking the convenience of someone taking responsibility for Cassie. Or perhaps Antonia’s connections with her unidentified yet indubitably influential family made him mind his manners. By now, Ranelaw had picked up too many hints to imagine her blood was anything other than blue.

In slumber, her face was calm and beautiful. He battled the impulse to kiss those softly parted lips. The craving to take her set up an urgent throb in his veins, but still he resisted.

Staring at her was a luxury. She lay in profile, her lashes dark blond fans on her cheeks. He dwelled with voluptuous pleasure on details, the slope of her cheekbone, the pink fullness of her mouth. Her skin had a bloom like a ripe peach. A slightly abraded peach where his stubble had chafed her.

Even as satisfaction ripped through him, he knew himself for a barbarian. He’d marked her. There would be traces of his teeth and beard everywhere on her body. On her neck and breasts and thighs. Pleasure flooded him as he remembered tasting her. She’d been delicious. He thirsted to do it again.

Not yet. Although he was achingly aware that every second they lay wrapped in radiant peace was a second closer to parting.

It was unprecedented, disturbing that he wanted a woman to stay. Usually after a conquest, he became impatient for the next lover. And the next.

Antonia made him eager to linger.

Almost surreptitiously, her hand slid from his rib cage toward his navel. She released another husky sigh and pressed closer.

Ranelaw tensed under that seeking touch. The witch tortured him. She buried her face in his side and he felt her breath against his skin. Oddly, that was almost as arousing as the erratic path her hand traced across his body.

For a few seconds, they lay unmoving. Then slowly, oh, so slowly, her hand dipped lower. Lower. His chest rose and fell with every jagged breath. Serenity rapidly sizzled into need.

She verged so close to his aching cock.

“Stop teasing me,” he growled, burying his hand in her thick, tangled hair.

She released a husky giggle and nipped him sharply on the flank. A shock of heat made him start. “You knew I was awake.”

“Of course I did.” Although he’d only just realized. Her meandering caresses had suddenly struck him as too deliberate to be accidental.

“Liar.”

She kissed the place she’d bitten and another shudder of arousal shook him. Nothing to compare with the jolt when she slid her palm the few last inches and closed hard around him.

“Damn it, Antonia . . .” he protested in a constricted voice, one hand digging into her hair, the other clenching in the sheet.

“Lie still,” she murmured, squeezing him with a steady rhythm that turned his vision to exploding stars.

He closed his eyes and stretched out, releasing her hair. “I’m at your merc

y.”

Another of those soft laughs. She sounded utterly self-confident. That built his arousal. Hell, just the fact that she breathed built his arousal. She turned him into a complete satyr.