Beyond Seduction (Bastion Club 6)
Her question was transparent: What next?
He halted by the daybed; hands rising to his hips, he looked down at her—as if unsure what to make of her.
Indeed, she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of herself; she felt…not new but different. As if during the last hour he’d freed the sensual woman who had always dwelt inside her, and somehow integrated that hidden self into her whole so that she could now without a blink, with calm assurance and a better certainty of who and what she was, sit there, naked, and watch him, naked too, and calmly wait to see what he would do.
When he didn’t do anything but stare, a frown forming in his amber eyes, she leaned back against the raised head of the daybed, looked him in the eye—then plucked a grape and held it up to him.
He held her gaze for a fraught moment, then knelt on the daybed and with his lips took the grape from her fingers, then slumped beside her. He chewed, swallowed, then reached across and took the stem and remaining two grapes from her hand, plucked one and held it for her to take.
She met his eyes briefly, then did.
He popped the last grape into his mouth, tossed the stem back into the dish, then sighed and settled back. Lifting one arm, he slid it around her; drawing her in, he placed a kiss on her temple.
Settling against his chest, her hand splayed over his heart, she waited.
After a moment he said, “You…I didn’t think it would be…like it was.”
“In what way?” Looking up, she met his eyes. “You have to remember I haven’t done this before.” Regardless, she wasn’t such a ninny that she didn’t know he’d been, at the last, utterly sated.
The look on his face was one to treasure; it wasn’t often he was lost for words. Or rather, that he encountered so much difficulty over choosing which of the many replies that had plainly leapt to his tongue to give voice to.
Eventually, he said, “It wasn’t supposed to be so fast and furious.”
She studied him, raised her brows. “I rather like the fast and furious.”
“Obviously.” He hesitated, then asked, “Are you sore?”
She looked across
the room, inwardly assessing, then shrugged. “Not especially.” Not more than if she’d ridden hard astride for several hours. There was a small degree of chafing, a little heat, but…She met his eyes. “Nothing that would prevent me from doing it all again.”
He searched her eyes, then shifted around to face her. “In that case…” Lifting one hand, he brushed back her wayward hair, feathered his fingers over her jaw. “Let’s try it again. Only this time we’ll aim for the slow and gentle.”
He tipped her face to his and kissed her—so gently, so tantalizingly she nearly growled with impatience. She drew back enough to say, “I’m rather fond of the fast and furious.”
“Nevertheless, in the interests of your education, let’s try it with less heat.”
Inwardly wondering why he would want to, she mentally shrugged, kissed him back, and let matters take their course.
Chapter 9
The following afternoon, Gervase paced the clifftop path where it joined the track down to the boathouse. His face was set; despite his triumph—his victory in seducing Madeline—nothing had gone as he’d planned.
Not the first time—nor the second.
With less heat had been his dictate. Instead, going slowly had only intensified the firestorm that had raged between them, fueled by passions far more primitive, more urgent and powerful than any he’d previously felt. Why that was so, where such passions came from, why she and no other evoked them in him he didn’t know, but again instead of him teaching her, it had been he who had had to grapple with stunning and startling revelations.
Not that she was teaching him; it was lying with her—joining with her—that opened a door to some novel and disconcerting landscape. She was as new to it as he, but that didn’t seem to bother her—not in the least. She’d embraced every aspect—the fast as well as the furious in their heated-beyond-imagining couplings—with a wholehearted eagerness, an open delight, that had only dragged him deeper.
Further under the thrall of…whatever it was.
Until yesterday he hadn’t known he—not even his beast—harbored such powerful and primal cravings.
He’d needed her, needed to be inside her, needed to see her, feel her writhing in abandon beneath him—and in that moment, he’d needed that more than he’d needed to breathe. Even to live.
In that ultimate moment of madness that she and only she could reduce him to, his entire existence seemed to hinge…on her. On having her, on proving incontrovertibly, in the most explicit way, that she was his.
Raking one hand through his hair, he paced, stalked, inwardly more uncertain than he could recall ever being in his adult life. He’d never been dependent on another person, not for anything; he’d been an excellent operative because he worked alone, entirely self-sufficiently.