The rapacious hunger of his lips sent desire rippling through her. Heat trawled along her veins, arrowed between her legs, made her move restlessly against the sheets. Tentatively, she ran her hands down his back. For all the burning need that now scorched the air, he’d withdrawn too often for her to trust no barrier remained.
“Yes, touch me,” he groaned against her lips, and kissed her again. “Touch me, Charis.”
The yearning in his voice convinced her that at last
she could discover his body as she longed to do. As he rained ravenous, ravishing kisses across her face and neck and shoulders, she tightened her hands. She felt the shifting of muscle, the ridges of scarring under her palms. Poignant reminder of how near she’d come to never knowing him, loving him.
Her hands drifted lower, trailed across his firm buttocks. His breath caught on a strangled gasp, and his hips jerked forward, pushing hot hardness into her belly.
Automatically, Charis curved closer. After this morning, she should be used to what happened to her husband’s body when he wanted her. But the heat and weight of that part of him pulsing against her made her toes curl with excitement.
“Oh,” she gasped, her fingers digging into his buttocks.
“Yes,” he hissed, and bit down on her neck.
She gave a delighted shudder, and her nipples tightened with a longing that was like pain. When he’d taken her breast into his mouth, she’d nearly shattered with rapture. She trembled for him to do that again.
As if she spoke her wish aloud, his lips closed over one aching crest. She tangled her hands in his thick black hair, cradling his head against her. As his teeth scraped the sensitive tip, blinding pleasure gripped her. A sharp cry escaped, and she bowed up closer to that sweet torment.
This morning’s passion had been unforgettable but over too soon. Tonight, Gideon was stubbornly determined to take his time. With a piquant shiver, Charis remembered him saying he wanted to show her everything.
Everything?
Recollections of that astounding earthquake he’d set off made her dizzy. The world had dissolved into molten ecstasy. She’d never imagined such sensations existed.
Could Gideon do that again? Her heart leaped with anticipation. Good Lord, was there more?
He moved to her other nipple, tonguing it, sucking, biting, so she shook with a tingling mix of pleasure and pain. She wanted him to worship her like this forever. She wanted him to fill her body with his.
“Gideon, don’t make me wait,” she begged, when desire threatened to incinerate her. She loved what he did, but the roaring need to have him inside her drove her insane. With every touch, frantic craving spiraled higher. She felt lost, empty, needy. “Please.”
He raised his head and stared at her, his black eyes glittering. He looked like a pirate. A pirate of pleasure.
“You’ll like what happens next.” The current of warm laughter in his voice made her blood thicken to honey. “I promise.”
His kisses this afternoon had hinted that the darkness that marked their lovemaking so far wasn’t the whole story. Now the tormented, angry man who had burned with shame when he revealed his scars turned into a dream lover. Ardent. Commanding. Mindful of her pleasure.
Her heart overflowed with agonizing love, but she smothered the fatal words. Even now, she knew he didn’t want declarations, commitments, vows.
“I like all of it,” she admitted, praying what they did banished his shadows, even if only for a fleeting moment. “But please hurry.”
He laughed softly and trailed a line of kisses between her breasts and across her rib cage. “Never.”
She made an impatient sound, a sound transformed into a moan when he nipped the soft skin of her stomach. Her whole body was alive with sensation.
He kissed where he’d bitten her, as if to soothe the sting. But she’d reached such a pitch of arousal that nothing short of possession would satisfy her clamoring need.
“Gideon!” Her protest at his teasing faded on a gasp as he parted her legs with his hands and placed his lips…there.
Horrified shock paralyzed her. Surely this wasn’t something a man did to a woman. Surely it couldn’t be…
Thought disintegrated to ash as his mouth moved. She felt moisture, heat, suction. The soft friction of his hair between her thighs. The scrape of stubble on tender skin.
His mouth was hot. So hot.
Dear God, was that his tongue? There? She should pull away, demand he stop. Her shaking hands formed talons in the sheets on either side of her. No virtuous woman would suffer such unnatural attentions without protest. Was this some obscure Indian perversion?
She must insist he stopped.