The Designs of Lord Randolph Cavanaugh (The Cavanaughs 1)

She let a heartbeat pass, savoring the prophesy of his words, then she slid her hand to his nape and drew his lips to hers. “Good,” she declared and kissed him.

In open invitation and none-too-subtle demand.

Rand responded, feeling a rightness and an eagerness he’d never before felt, but they were on the open terrace. Gently, he drew back, raising his head to look down at her face—at her swollen lips and shining eyes. At the glow in her cheeks and her desire-etched expression. “Your room or mine?”

She weighed up those options. “Mine. Petunia—my maid—won’t come up in the morning until I ring.”

He nodded, forced his arms to release her, then he caught her hand and, without another word, led her back into the house. He paused to lock the French doors behind them, then she took his hand and drew him into the front hall and up the stairs.

She led him down the corridor to her room at the end. She opened the door, and he followed her inside.

He shut the door, then swiftly glanced around the room as, smoothly, he drew her into his arms. A wide tester bed stood against the far wall. She hadn’t drawn the curtains over the wide windows; the moon was at its zenith, sending more than enough silvery light pouring in for their purpose.

There was something about making love in the moonlight—in a light that rendered white curves pearlescent.

As their lips met again, as she came up on her toes to meet and match him, he once again found himself battered by contradictory impulses—to seize and rush ahead, or to linger and savor.

In the end, he deferred to her. Although he kept his hands on their reins, he let her lead, let her script their play, drawing her back only when her open and unbounded enthusiasm had her racing ahead too fast. Then he caught her hands, captured her lips in a kiss designed to corral her wits, and refocused her on the sensation she’d missed, that in her eagerness she’d failed to properly savor. Once she had—once she’d tasted and gloried—he released her to resume her exploration.

They divested each other of their clothes, piece by piece stripping the garments away, revealing themselves to each other inch by inch.

Felicia marveled anew, thrilled to her core at being able to sate her senses with the resilient splendor of his bare chest. With the fascinating display of rock-hard muscles sheathing heavy bones.

To her surprise, she felt little modesty in allowing him access to her naked curves. She was too absorbed drinking in the wonder of his body, his inherent strength, and the sense of control, of reined power that, unclothed, he emanated.

To an untried lady, that should have spelt danger; instead, to her, he personified wonder.

They’d turned and shifted as they’d disrobed; now, finally naked, they stood beside her bed. She moved into his arms, and their bodies met skin to skin for the first time, and a sharp shiver of awakened awareness, potent and sweet, raced through her.

She lifted her arms and draped them over his shoulders; with her greedy hands splaying over thick muscle and heated skin, she stretched up against him, her nerves sparking at the sliding contact.

He closed his arms around her, bent his head, and recaptured her lips.

As, eager and wanting, she returned the caress, his hands spread on her back, and he urged her closer yet.

She pressed her body to his—and felt her senses leap, then shudder. Felt her heart thud—felt his thud against her breast. Felt his erection, a hot, heated rod, against her belly.

Then he bent his knees and, with one arm banding her upper thighs, hoisted her against him. She broke from the kiss to look down at his face, and he tumbled them onto the bed.

She gasped, then lost what little breath she’d gained as he stretched alongside her, and his hand closed over her breast.

From that moment, her education began, as with caresses and knowing touches, strokes and hot kisses, he opened her eyes to the breadth of her own senses, to the elemental strength of her own passions and desires.

She’d known him for barely two weeks, yet he seemed to have known her forever; he knew just where to touch to make her gasp and tremble, over just what spot to languidly trail his fingertips to make her burn.

Soon, her senses were in tumult, and her nerves had tightened. Wings of heat beat steadily beneath her skin, the flames flaring hotter wherever he touched. Wherever she touched him.

Body to body, they rolled amid the sheets, the soft silkiness of her skin abraded by the hair-dusted roughness of his. The peaks of her breasts cinched tight as the crinkly hair adorning his chest rubbed across them.

His hands sculpted her body, making her arch, making her breath catch as sensation peaked, then fell—only to rise with the next stroke, the next brush of his lips across her skin. The heaviness of his limbs, the promise of his weight, had her sensuously sliding her body against his, tangling her legs with his, exploring and learning, seeking every last source of pleasure, for herself and for him.

Sensation built. And built. Pleasure escalated, wave upon wave, the next always greater than the last.

Suddenly, she needed his lips on hers, needed his kiss to anchor her as her senses and her perceptions whirled.

Her world had shrunk to them—him and her in the billows of her bed.

Delight had never been so sharp and sweet, and the pleasure his increasingly possessive, increasingly explicit caresses sent rolling through her continued to burgeon and build.