Page 47

She made an urgent little sound, low in her throat, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Oh, Zeke,” she breathed against his lips. “I thought you didn’t want to kiss me anymore.”

He gave a humorless laugh. His flesh was burning hot and slightly damp. “You little fool. Haven’t you heard a damned thing I’ve said?”

“Will you lie with me? Just for a little while?”

He groaned. “You may be the death of me, kitten. You know that?”

***

Lying atop the bedcovers, he reached for her. He pressed his face into the thicket of her lush hair, and breathed in the scent of her. Lavender. Rosemary. Kitty.

“You feel so good, sweetheart. So damned good.”

She felt so right in his arms, and the thought of someone else holding her, someone else kissing her tore him up inside. He had to make her see.

“Kitty,” he began, but lost the ability to speak when she twisted her body under the sheets to mold herself to him.

She rained tender kisses down his neck. When her lips reached his collar, she pushed it out of the way and nuzzled into the hollow at his throat.

He closed his eyes and reveled in her sweet ardor, in the weight of her breasts through the sheets and fabric of their clothing, firm and ripe against his chest.

She slid one sinewy leg up over both his. Knee bent, her thigh grazed the rigid length of his cock and he groaned.

His eyes flew open when he felt her fingers traveling down the front of his shirt, undoing buttons.

Whether or not she’d done it by accident, she had pushed the bedcovers to just below her waist. Thanks to the quick work of her wandering hands, nothing separated their upper torsos but the thin lawn of her gown, and chemise.

He swallowed. Her hips squirming against his, her leg sliding over his and, occasionally, over his erection, and now the absence of anything of substance separating them all conspired to push him past the point of desperation. Christ .

“I want to touch you,” she whispered, fueling the inferno of his need. Her breath feathered over his naked chest, sending a spray of gooseflesh over his entire body.

He reached for her hands, trapping them in one of his. “I don’t think…”

She freed one hand, bringing it to his lips to press two fingers there. “I only want to touch you.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “And kiss you.”

Blood rushed like liquid fire through his veins, aiming south. “This was not a good idea.”

He gritted his teeth. If he had any chance of stopping this runaway carriage, he had better remove himself from her bed this instant.

He stayed put, damn his own eyes.

Her fingers trailed down his center, not pausing 'til she’d reached the waistline of his trousers.

His erection jerked against the restraining fabric, and he nearly came. Damn it, he was like an untried youth. Wasn’t she supposed to be the innocent here? Time to take control.

He grasped her shoulders and rolled her onto her back, then threw a leg over her to straddle her. He rose up to his knees and ripped his unbuttoned shirt off, flinging it across the room.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw feverish anticipation burning in hers, saw her chest rising and falling with each inhalation as she panted for air.

“You want to play?” he asked on a hoarse whisper.

She slid her silky palms up his chest. When her fingertips grazed his nipples, she traced their edges with painstaking care, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

Jesus . He groaned and dropped his hands to the neckline of her prim gown. He fumbled with the row of tiny, seemingly endless buttons. Emitting a low growl, he gave up, tearing the thin material apart, surprising himself, and, going by Kitty’s gasp, her as well.

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

She reached for him, urging him down to her. “I don’t care. I want…please…” She lifted her face for his kiss.

“Not so fast.” Gently now, he rent her shift to her waistline. He sighed. “You’re still wearing your chemise. Well, then. Let’s see it.”

He rolled onto his hip and with one swipe yanked the remaining bedcovers from between them. He palmed her ribcage and eased his hand up to cup the underside of one breast.

She made an urgent little sound at his touch, sending his pulse soaring. “You’re making me crazy. You know that, don’t you?”

She didn’t answer, just shifted and shimmied on the bed, her body calling to his. He grasped the two sides of her ruined nightgown and helped free her of the garment, leaving her clothed in only her sheer chemise.

In the moonlight he could clearly make out her shape, and the hint of dark at her apex. Mouth watering, he lowered his head, his mouth seeking and finding one hard nipple.

He drew on it with greedy pulls while his hands roamed. One found her other breast. Squeezed. The other grasped the hem of her chemise and tugged upward. One of his knees speared between her legs, parting them. She opened them with no resistance.

His loins screamed with the need to melt into hers.

But he held back. First he had to touch her.

To make her as hot and desperate for him as he was for her.

He traced his fingertips up the inside of her silky thighs, not pausing until he found her curls.

He parted her, discovering slick, swollen flesh.

It was too much. He laid his cheek against her chest and sucked in air, while his palm cupped her sex.

The first time, when he thought she’d agreed to marry him, it had been easy to convince himself bedding her wasn’t wrong. He’d assumed it would be only a matter of days or weeks between that night of sheer pleasure and their wedding ceremony. But now he didn’t know if or when she’d become his wife.

He wanted her—and not only in the physical sense. He wanted to marry her with an intensity that scared the living hell out of him. But he didn’t want her coming to him because she had to. Because she was pregnant.

He would laugh at the irony if he weren’t in such delicious agony. Because wasn’t that the pretense under which he was here? To see if she was pregnant and claim her as his wife?

He should stop this madness, but he ached to bury himself inside her and show her she was his, to claim her so she would never, could never, accept another’s touch.

“Zeke?” She spoke his name tentatively. Her fingertips trailed over his low abdomen to his waistband. She rand one finger along the length of the band and he shuddered.

“Kitty—”

“I want you to make love to me, Zeke.”

“You’ll let me have you, but you won’t marry me, is that it?” He muttered a curse. “I don’t understand you.”

She reached down, covering the hand that still cupped her at her apex. She pressed one of his fingers between her petals. “But you understand this?” she asked in a soft whisper.

He nearly whimpered. Nodded. Helpless to stop himself, he slid one finger into her slick, tight channel.

She shivered with need, and he felt himself come just a little. His groan was half desire, half frustration.

“Please, Zeke. Please. Make me feel like…before.”

He choked on disbelieving laughter. “So I’ve created a monster, eh?”

She pressed her face into his shoulder and nodded.

His fingers went to work. Circling her, slowly. Caressing. Teasing.

“You want this?” His mouth found one nipple. Suckled. Then moved to the other. “And this?” He found her swollen nubbin, bringing her to the brink of orgasm, then easing back.

Her hips trembled and bucked. Her arms twined around his neck. Her fingers tunneled into his hair, and raked down his back. It was by far the most erotic experience of his life.

He touched her, faster, faster, bringing her ever closer to sweet release at the expense of his own sanity.

Abruptly, she rolled away.

“What the hell?” he demanded, out of his mind with need.

“Not like that,” came her words, muffled by the pillow.

He dropped onto his back, one hand ripping at his hair. She was literally driving him insane.

She rolled again, climbing on top of him, and the leap to insanity was complete.

His hands gripped her hips, staying her attempts to wriggle up to the tip of his cock. “Please. Stop. Moving.”

She leaned over him, her ebony locks falling around him like a curtain of black silk. “I want you inside me,” she whispered.

“We’re playing with fire.”

“I thought you wanted to marry me.” She sounded petulant now, like a child denied her favorite toy.

He shook his head and tugged her down, 'til her face was less than an inch from his. “I do want to marry you. I don’t want to force you. Can’t you understand that?”

Her eyes filled with dawning comprehension. She smiled an angel’s smile and smoothed a cool hand over his brow, sweeping his hair back. “Then do it so we can’t make a baby.”

A hoarse bark of laughter erupted from deep within him. “Woman, how do you know such a method even exists?”

She slid him a glance. “I can read.”

“It isn’t foolproof.”

She dropped a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Then the other. Then feathered kisses over his face.

A hot, aching, tenderness—distinct from the screaming lust tearing apart his insides—filled his chest 'til he thought he might explode from the pain of it.

“Make love to me, Zeke. This might be the last time.”

God, no . The words reverberated in his head like heavy church bells clanging. Kitty was his, and by God, he would show her.

He rolled with her on the bed, pinning her beneath him. With his eyes locked with hers, he removed his trousers and undergarment, adding them to the growing heap on the floor. As for her chemise…he simply couldn’t wait any longer.

He slid one hand between them, pushed up the paper-thin material, and brought the tip of his erection to the entrance of her channel.

She started to close her eyes.

“No,” he said, hoarse now. “Look at me. I want to see your eyes as I enter you.”

She raised her chin a notch and stared up at him unblinking.

He pressed into her. One deliciously slow thrust that cost him at least a year of his life.

Her muscles tightened and flexed around him, making room for the length and breadth of him.

When he’d sunk himself to the hilt, he started a slow retreat.

Kitty’s lips parted on a silent gasp of pleasure.

Jesus she was beautiful. So damned beautiful. The most perfect creature he’d ever seen. He wanted to tell her. Tell her…what he was feeling. How she moved him. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t speak.

His eyelids closed. Couldn’t stay open any longer as he pressed slowly into her, as he fought to maintain that teasing, slow tempo. Once. Twice. Three times.

But his warring need to claim her overpowered his self-control, and his hips pumped harder, faster, pushed deeper as instinct and desire merged.

Kitty met his driving passion with her own. She arched up inviting his thrusts, her insides pulsing around him, ’til he was dizzy with desire and hanging on to his control by a thread.

“Zeke.” She cried his name as her release crashed through her.

He took her mouth, swallowing her moans, feasting on her gasps. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, half climbing his body as hers quaked beneath his.

God, oh God, she felt so good as she came, and came, and came, the walls of her womanhood gripping his cock, milking him 'til, with a hoarse roar, he pulled out of her and exploded like he never had in his life.

He toppled across her, boneless.

Beneath him she sighed, long and deep, as if utterly sated. She pressed the sweetest kiss to his shoulder, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, her lips curved into a smile.

He felt an answering smile of his own. “Was that what you had in mind, vixen?”

She giggled.

His heart seemed to crack open. To fill with light. She’d done something to him. Changed him somehow. God help him, he liked it.

He rolled onto his side, reached down with one arm, and hauled the covers up off the floor. Covering them both, he pulled her into the curve of his body. “Good. Maybe now we can get some sleep.”

She snuggled her hips into his, and, unbelievably, he felt his desire stirring to life.

On second thought, sleep was vastly overrated.