All About Passion (Cynster 7)

He closed his arms about her, his body curled around her, his head bowed beside hers. With his lips at her throat, he undulated slowly beneath her.

It was a different kind of dance. Eyes closed, concentrating on something other than branches, she used her grip on the chair arms to shift upon him. The chair was too wide and her arms now too weak to lift herself, but that, it seemed, was not required in a chair. Not the way he managed it.

She surrendered to his managing, to letting him dictate the pace and tone of their dance. Her senses were wide-open, more receptive than usual; she was more focused on their bodies merging than she’d thus far been. Embracing the experience gladly, she relaxed, released the chair arms and wrapped her arms about his.

He murmured his approval and gathered her deeper into his embrace; she felt his pleasure in his slow, rigidly paced probing of her body.

Gyles skillfully steered her up to and through a long, extended climax, stretched out so she was floating before it ended, and continued floating for long after. He seized the moments to savor her more fully, to enjoy the bounty of her body closing so hotly about his.

He wondered how long he’d last-how long his control would endure the sweet heat, the luscious, scalding silken f

irmness that sheathed him. Leaning back, he urged her to lie back in his arms. Thus positioned, he could prolong their joining for a considerable time. He intended to reap all he could from the interlude. Give her, show her, all he could. She lay relaxed, boneless, against him, only the faint trace of concentration between her brows attesting to her awareness. He continued to move beneath her, wallowing in the hot slickness and the pleasure her body lavished on him.

“Do I still need to look at the branches?”

“You can if you like.”

Leaving his right hand splayed across her stomach, he retrieved his left, shaking it free of her skirts. He started once more to lightly trace her breasts.

She made a murmurous sound of pleasure. He didn’t think she was watching the trees.

Sometime later she asked, “Does it go on like this to the end, or is there more?”

Her tone was merely curious-a pupil inquiring of her mentor. He understood what she was asking. “No-there’s more.”

The next stage, the next level of sensation. They were both floating on a plane of elevated awareness, where their ability to feel was amplified but in a way that didn’t evoke the usual urgency, leaving them free to enjoy, to prolong the intimacy and appreciate it more deeply.

He changed his teasing to more explicit caresses, until he was kneading her breasts, squeezing nipples tight and aching once more. Her breathing was ragged, her hips squirming. Then she angled her shoulders and tipped her head back; he bent his head and kissed her, let her kiss him.

Tongues tangled. Out of nowhere, desire rose and swamped them. Raced through them.

She ground her hips against him, taking him more deeply, luring him to thrust and set her free. He stubbornly kept to his rhythm, drawing out the moment ruthlessly.

Until their kiss turned frantic, incendiary.

Under her skirts, he shifted his right hand, sliding one finger down through her curls to the spot where she ached and throbbed. He circled the tight bud, and she gasped.

He set his finger lightly on the swollen bud, let it ride there as he filled her once, twice, still to the same, maddeningly slow rhythm. Then he slowed still further, let her sense what was to come, then he pressed down, firmly, evenly, and thrust deeply inside her.

She fractured like glass. He drank her scream, then drove more deeply into her. She gasped, clung, her ebbing strength leaving her open and vulnerable, unable to do anything other than feel as he held her down and thrust more deeply, then deeper still, pushing her on.

With another scream, she shattered again as he felt his own release sweep through him. He held her locked to him as he spilled his seed deep in her womb, felt her body go lax about him, all tension released, open and willing and welcoming. Wanting and accepting.

Chest heaving, he slumped back in the chair and gathered her to him.

“Remind me”-he had to pause to catch his breath-“to teach you about flowers.”

Her fingers trailed down his arm. “Do they differ significantly from trees?”

“To appreciate flowers properly, you have to be standing.”

They lay there, still joined, and let the minutes tick by, neither willing to move, to disturb the moment. To cut short the deep peace that intimacy brought them.

Gyles stroked her head, fingers tangling with the long, trailing curls spilling from her topknot.

He hadn’t bargained for this-not for any of it. Not for her passion, not for her intelligence-not for her love.

That precious something she was determined to give him, that part of him desperately wanted to claim. But… he was unsure he could pay her price. He knew what it was, what she wanted in return, and did not, even now, after four days of considering, know if he could give it to her.