“Are you sure?”
There was no humor in the question. If she’d had any doubt who it was who stood behind her, rapacious lord or smoothly elegant lover, his tone made it clear. The steely arms that held her, the hard body behind her, were in no mood to be gentle. Their coupling would be heated, furious-primal. The prospect-the promise in his voice, in his body-sent excitement lancing through her. “Yes.”
His hands closed about her waist and he lifted her forward.
“On your knees, my lady.”
His gravelly purr sent heat curling through her. He set her on the daybed, her knees close to its edge. He straddled her calves, keeping her knees more or less together.
“Bend forward. Hold on to the back of the bed.”
She did. The daybed was wider than a chaise, but she could reach.
He flipped her skirts up, pushing them and her chemise over her waist, baring her bottom and legs. The cool air feathered over her fevered flesh; anticipation seared her. Then his palms curved almost reverently about her bottom, lightly caressing before trailing down the backs of her bare thighs. One left her; she imagined him unbuttoning his trousers while his other hand slowly slid upward, long fingers tracing the inner face of her thighs, higher and higher-he stopped before he touched her.
Her body reacted as if he had.
He shifted, moved closer. His hands gripped her hips.
The blunt head of his erection pressed between her thighs, probed her swollen flesh.
She would have wriggled and taken him in, but he anchored her hips, held her steady as he searched and found her entrance, then pressed inside.
He held her still. Inexorably he pushed into her, filling her inch by inch, stretching her softness, claiming it as his. She thought he’d gone as far as he could when his hips met her bottom, then he thrust and she gasped.
He drew back and filled her slowly again, again thrust at the last, jolting her breathing. Then he settled to a slow rhythm of thrust and withdrawl; within a minute she was melting.
Her body rocked with each thrust, each possessive claiming.
She tried to ease her knees apart, to gain some purchase in the dance. The rigid columns of his legs gave not an inch. He kept her knees trapped together as he plumbed her, entirely at his whim. As if to confirm that, he increased the pace, then, just as she thought the inferno would ignite, he slowed again to that same steady, pleasant but unfulfilling rhythm.
She could do little to influence his script. Could do nothing other than close her body like a glove about him and give herself up to his possession.
She did, and sensed him draw in a huge breath, then he released her hips, pushed aside the neckline of her gaping gown, released her chemise, stripped it away, and closed his hands about her naked breasts.
Heat poured through her. His touch was commanding, covetous yet as one who
had the right. Fire flowed from her breasts to her womb, to where they joined.
He filled her again and again, over and over, his hips rocking hers, his hands closing about her breasts.
The fire flamed, spread, then erupted in a spasm of heat and desire, white-hot sensation shooting down every vein, frazzling every nerve. She cried out, and heard it as a distant song, then all she knew, all she felt, coalesced into one exquisitely intense sensation.
He held her there, his hands firm about her breasts as he thrust harder, deeper, faster.
She felt the power shudder through him, felt him surrender, felt him join her in that place where lovers go.
Gyles’s heart thundered as he wallowed in the indescribable sensation of his body emptying into hers, so tight, so hot, so welcoming. He supported her in his arms, his hands full of the bounty of her breasts, his loins flush against her naked bottom.
A shudder of primal triumph rocked him.
She was a harvest he’d just reaped. Nothing in his life had ever felt so good.
They did lie, relaxed, on the daybed, but it was now full dark outside. Neither felt any desire to move, content in the warmth of the other’s embrace.
Francesca’s dark head lay on Gyles’s chest. He stroked, letting his fingers slide through the silky black locks. He smiled self-deprecatingly as he recalled his original view of her as a woman too dangerous to seduce. A woman he should fear, given her innate ability to reach behind his civilized mask and communicate directly with the barbarian behind it.
He’d been right. That was, indeed, precisely what she did. Yet he no longer feared her ability-he exulted in it.