Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

“Then it worked,” he said. “You definitely are irrational. That’s what I was waiting for.”

His hand crept up to encircle the swell of her breast. Hot and cold warred against her skin, the frigid temperature of the room contrasting with the heat of his fingers. Her nipples tingled in anticipation.

“It would be wrong for me to take advantage of you in such a state,” he intoned piously.

“It would be more wrong if you didn’t.”

He drew a figure eight atop her breast; his thumb feathered briefly over her aching nipple.

“Ned,” Kate said, “stop playing and do it.”

He was still looking her in the eye. He smiled again and raised one eyebrow. “If you insist.”

And then he leaned down and closed his mouth around her nipple. She had a moment to feel the warmth of his breath. It enfolded her, like that instant of silence between the stab of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Not the particular it she had meant but, oh, she wouldn’t stop him, and the cry she let out was the farthest thing from a protest. The heat of his tongue around her nipple overtook her. She felt the sweetness of the connection clear from the bottoms of her feet to the palms of her hands, a powerful tingling net cast about her. Her thighs parted; she pressed up against him in unspoken longing, in years-old desire. This was supposed to be practical. But there was nothing practical about her want, about the deep well of longing that overtook her.

And still he held back from her. When she arched her back, one of his hands slipped behind her; when she pushed up at him, his tongue inscribed a circle, a wet, heated kiss, about her breast. He lifted his head to nuzzle her ear, and cool air washed over her.

“You’re going to undo me,” he growled against her neck.

“Hurry up and be undone.”

His fingers pressed into her back. “Do you know what I was doing when you walked in?”

Even the thought of it left her awash in further longing. She still had no verbs to describe that action. Only the one pitiful word, a mere noun: onanism. And that word described a sin, not the near sanctity of her husband’s body.

“The only words I know are proper and stilted.” Not hot and needful. Not a match for what she felt.

His mouth covered hers again. There was a rough urgency to his kiss, as if she would fade away if he let her go. But she was positively alive with light. She felt her blood pulsing through her, in time with the rhythm of his caress. She angled her head back and he kissed his way down her chin, her collarbone.

“There are only improper ones,” he said.

“Don’t treat me like a flimsy thing. Don’t pawn me with kind assurances and excuses of propriety.”

He didn’t. Instead, he pulled away from her an inch and looked into her eyes. When he realized she was serious, he sighed. “I was, as the schoolboys say, frigging myself senseless.”

A wave of longing passed through her. Yes. She wanted to know that. She didn’t want to be shielded from her own desire with ignorance. She wanted to be able to describe her thoughts, her wants. Her husband.

As if he sensed that tumultuous passion, he touched his nose to hers. “But it’s not the words that matter. What I was doing when you walked in—I want to watch you do it to yourself.”

“What?” The suggestion was more fraught with peril than merely succumbing to his touch. Admit to him the depth of her longing? Be something other than a passive recipient?

He pulled away from her, rolling onto his side next to her. He gulped in breath and met her eyes. “I want you to do it to yourself.” His hand engulfed hers. He was warm around her. His other hand slid up her leg. She could feel the night air, cold against her thigh. Her skin leapt under his touch. Surely his pulse beat in time with hers. Surely he could feel that harsh thump in his wrist echoing deep inside her.

His right hand joined with hers. He brought their linked fingers down. “Here,” he said. “Touch yourself here.” And he placed their hands between her legs. She met his gaze. His pupils dilated. She was touching her own slippery wetness. No—better yet—they were touching it. Intimately. Slowly, he moved, slipping between the folds of her skin. His fingers explored her, sliding down her flesh, rubbing her in her most forbidden place.

It was so deliciously right—and yet even then, she could feel that his touch was…not wrong, but incorrect. He should have touched her there, not there; he was off a hairbreadth there, misplaced his fingers ever so slightly there. Her hand met his, touching. And then she was teaching him, showing him that she needed pressure there, that she wanted the rhythm like that, that he trace a pattern that she had never before felt, but that she knew with a sure, stubborn instinct.

There.

He slipped one digit inside her. She couldn’t have said where his skin left off and hers began. There was nothing but that slide, that pressure, nothing but sheer unadulterated white-hot need.

There, again. He bent his head to kiss her breast, and a sweetness consumed her. She could still feel the cold air against her skin, but he was right—it did sharpen the senses. The temperature heightened the pleasure, made the heat building inside her all the more painful. Her release built with savage intensity. Every inch of her skin caught fire. She gasped as ecstasy passed through her, raging in its brilliance. When it had gone, she lay back, reaching for breath. Her lungs drew in only cold air.

Slowly he pulled his hands away from her. Her breath returned, and with his withdrawal she felt doubly chilled.

“There,” he said. “That’s what I was doing when you came in.” There was a hint of ragged satisfaction in his voice.

Her breath returned to her slowly. “Oh, my. And I interrupted.”

“Even if you hadn’t come through my door, you’d have interrupted in spirit. I was thinking about you.” He smiled at her. “I want you to trust me. Not just with your body, but with everything else.” He brushed her hair from her face. “You see, when I take you, I want to have all of you. Not just one portion.”

“I don’t understand what you mean. You could have me now.”

He smiled wryly. “I’ll be thinking about doing it—every damned stroke. If I can do this…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

Rationality was returning to her with each breath. She’d come to give her husband release. Instead, he’d led her to her own. He was still erect, and by the uncomfortable way he shifted next to her, she hadn’t helped matters at all.

And yet…

“Ned.”

He must have heard the hint of longing she imbued in that syllable, because he smiled at her. “Don’t. I was just congratulating myself for not swiving you like the rutting beast that I long to be.”

Kate’s pulse pounded in her throat. Her skin tingled. Her throat ached. She coul

d hear the roughness of the beast he claimed to be in his words, in the husky rasp in his voice when he’d looked in her eyes and said those words. Every. Damned. Stroke.

“You’re not going to, then. You’re not going to—swive me.”

“No. Not tonight. Apparently.” He looked heavenward. “Damn it.”

“Are you going to…to take up where you left off?”

She’d come here tonight thinking only of her own vulnerability. She’d never imagined she would discover his. But it was there, in the touch of his hands on hers. In the slight tremble of his arm.

“Yes.” His quiet exhalation sounded like a surrender.

“May I stay and watch?” she finally asked.

His eyes widened. “It’s not that interesting.”

“Well. Then. I’ll try to contain my boredom.”

He met her eyes and nodded once, jerkily. He did not look away from her; instead, he slowly reached out and touched himself again. His hand slid up his member, then down, a curiously staccato movement that sent an unexplainable thrill down her spine.

He made her feel vulnerable in ways that she could not avoid.

The room was silent, except for the slap of his palm against his member; every last stroke seemed a palpable thrill, as if it were she who he touched, instead of his own eager flesh, as if it were her hands that encompassed him, her body that enveloped his waiting erection. She was cold and warm all at once, alone and yet joined with him. She wanted his eagerness, his vivacity, the hard press of his manhood inside of her.

She couldn’t excise him from her life. She couldn’t even set him to one side.

If she’d been vulnerable before this evening, she was achingly exposed now.

These sensations in her veins—they were nothing new. She’d always bottled them up, tamping them down into the farthest recesses of her soul as if they belonged to some wild and dangerous creature. Today, though, she thought of Ned’s hand on his member, that heated slide of flesh on flesh.

It was the height of foolishness to imagine her husband’s body crouching over hers. It was complete idiocy to fantasize about his mouth finding hers. And when she imagined that hot, firm erection she’d watched pushing inside her, filling her up, she should have flinched away.