She did. The stool was an ornamental one with a needlework top, about a foot long—just wide enough for her to be both comfortable and secure.
He knelt behind her, settled himself around her, her calves between his thighs, his knees wide on the carpet on either side of the footstool. He slid one hand around her, splaying his fingers over her waist.
“Can you reach the sill?”
She could if she tipped forward. The wide wooden ledge was about eighteen inches off the floor. “Yes.” Puzzled, she added, “Why?”
He hesitated, then murmured, “You’ll see.”
The arm about her waist tightened, locking her back against him. She felt the hard ridge of his erection low against her spine. She didn’t know what to do with her hands; in the end she wrapped her arms over his arm at her waist, gripped his hand and forearm.
He shifted behind her, and she sensed what he would do.
“If you need to brace yourself, reach for the sill.”
Brace herself. She wasn’t going to ask, but her mind was streaking in any number of promising directions when he lifted the back of her chemise and pressed himself, skin to scalding skin, against her.
She let her head fall back against his shoulder, murmured her encouragement, shifted her hips against him.
He laughed briefly, raggedly, then bent his head and set his lips to the point where her shoulder and throat met. She tipped her head farther back, spine bowing, her breasts thrust forward.
His free hand closed on them, first one, then the other, possessively kneading until she gasped, then he squeezed her nipples until she squirmed. Panted. His hand slid lower, over her stomach, kneaded evocatively. Wordlessly, she begged.
He bent her forward, over the arm at her waist. The columns of his thighs rested outside hers; they felt like steel, his hair-dusted skin rasping lightly. With her hips and thighs held against him and his arm around her, she felt caged by his strength. Trapped. Captured. Soon to be taken. She held tight to his arm, fingers sinking deep in intense anticipation as, behind her, he touched her, opened her, set himself to her. Then, slowly, he penetrated her, sinking inch by inch into her softness.
Sebastian couldn’t breathe. His lungs locked tight as he watched his throbbing staff slide between the pale globes of her bottom, deeper, deeper, felt the scalding heat of her welcome him, felt her blossom and open for him, felt her body give, her sheath stretch and ease, then lovingly clasp him. At the last he exhaled, eyes shutting, senses reeling as he finally sank fully home deep inside her. The smooth silk of her bottom and thighs caressed him. Her nails sunk deep in his arm, she squirmed just a little, experimentally, not in pain.
Inwardly he smiled; outwardly he was incapable of expression, his features too set in passion’s grip. He flexed his hips, withdrew just a little, and thrust—enough to show her how it would work.
Her interest was immediately evident.
She tried to wriggle, to shift upon him. He tightened his hold, held her stil
l, withdrew and thrust again.
And again.
Until she was beyond doing anything other than holding tight to his arm and letting her body receive him. Over and over again. The erotic friction built, and she sobbed and let herself open even more deeply, let her body surrender even more completely to his possession.
And he took. Like a conqueror, he claimed her and prayed the act would be as deeply imprinted on her senses as it was on his. He closed his eyes, and sensation heightened; deprived of sight, his other senses expanded—to revel in the slick heat of her, the wet, wanton clasp of her body about him.
Lifting his lids, he let his gaze dwell on her silk-clad back, on the hemispheres of her bottom meeting his flat stomach again and again.
The rhythm strengthened. He reached around her and filled his hand with her breast, heard her sob. He kneaded, then found her nipple and squeezed, heard her moan.
He let his hand roam over the curves he now considered his, lifted the back of her chemise to her waist, caressed her bare bottom, lightly traced the cleft. Felt her shudder. Grasping the front of her chemise with the hand at her waist, he raised it. Reached around her to stroke her curls.
Thrust more deeply as he parted them.
Sensed the tension coiling inside her, thrust into it, and felt it tighten more. He caressed her lightly, not touching the tight button but tracing around it. Then he filled her deeply, held still, and carefully exposed it.
Oh-so-gently laid one fingertip upon it.
Then he picked up his driving rhythm again.
Her nails sank into his arm as she fought to hold on to her senses. She lasted less than a minute.
As she fractured, he pressed more firmly, thrust even deeper, then stopped, held still, savoring the powerful ripples of her release as they swept through her.