The Greatest Challenge of Them All

by Stephanie Laurens

  The question of: She wouldn’t, would she? had only one answer.

  With no alternative offering, he wound a towel around his hips, gave his thick hair one last, vigorous rub, then he opened the door and stepped into his bedroom.

  He halted just over the threshold.

  She’d doused the lights. The room was lit only by the rosy glow of the fire and the moonlight slanting in through the uncurtained windows. Yet even in the dimness, he could make out Merry’s dress laid over the back of one of the armchairs before the fireplace.

  Visually, he quartered the large room, but couldn’t see Louisa.

  Face setting, he approached the side of the bed—the side he slept on, nearer the door.

  Only when he drew close could he see—confirm—that the other side of the heavily shadowed bed was occupied.

  She lay beneath the covers, her head on the pillow, her black hair spread above and around her face, a veil negligently fanned over the ivory pillowcase.

  She’d warned him—had it been only five days ago?—that she would find her way there. Even then, he’d known she’d meant it, that her bold statement hadn’t been empty words.

  She lay on her side, facing his way. She appeared to have fallen asleep. Through the shadows wreathing the bed, he could hear her soft breaths and track the gentle rise and fall of her breasts screened by the silk of his sheets.

  One arm lay over the covers, her bare shoulder a testament to what she was wearing.

  To what he would find if he joined her between the sheets.

  He stood beside the bed and stared at her.

  At his destiny.

  He could leave his bed to her and sleep in one of the guest chambers, but was he really such a coward that he would run from this challenge? He who thrived on challenge.

  He’d long ago learned that attempting to outwit Fate never worked. If he tried to be clever, to manipulate matters and direct them rather than simply accepting Fate’s decrees, invariably, ultimately, Fate would outwit him.

  For him, to him, Louisa had ever been Fate’s queen.

  He’d decided that they should wait until the mission was ended, until all was done and squared away, and he—and she—could focus on what even he accepted was written in their stars.

  Obviously, Fate—and Louisa—thought differently.

  He stood there, all but swaying as he grappled with the twin urges of his kind—the unbending need to be in control, to dictate his own path at least, and the even more primitive need to seize what she, by her very actions, was transparently offering.

  In the end, he accepted the inevitable. Who was he to argue with Fate—much less Louisa?

  He loosened the towel and let it fall to the floor, raised the covers, and joined her in his bed.

  She stirred, murmured, but didn’t wake.

  He settled beside her. Propped on one elbow, he studied her face—her expression more serene than ever in repose—then he raised his hand, cupped her jaw, bent his head, and proceeded to kiss her awake.

  She responded, her lips softening, then moving beneath his.

  Then she came alive on a soft murmur, and her body shifted beneath the sheets, seeking his.

  Louisa’s palms and fingers met hard muscle, warm and tempting skin. She raised her lids enough to assure herself of the reality—that he was truly there, in the bed alongside her. Sliding her arms up, over his shoulders, her lips curving under his, between one slow, drugging kiss and the next, she murmured, “About time.”

  Those two words encapsulated their past—a past they were clearly about to leave behind.

  When next their lips parted, he murmured back, “I can think of far better uses of our mouths than to swap witticisms.”

  She laughed, husky and low. From beneath her lashes, she let her eyes meet his, glowing golden beneath heavy lids. “So can I.”

  She might be innocent experience-wise, but she’d heard enough, imagined enough…she thought she had some idea.

  What followed opened her eyes.

  He was ruthless in denying her the reins. Every time she thought to press him, every time she tried to take charge, he deflected her, distracted her, with some new and even more intense sensation.

  She’d thought she’d known what his kisses were like, but the evocative, provocative fashion in which he explored her mouth, like a conqueror taking ownership of surrendered lands, was something else again. Something that drew her further, deeper into the exchange, that anchored her in the kiss and awoke some primitive instinct within her that sent shivers of anticipation coursing through her.

  His chest, the breadth and extent of it, the heavy bones of his shoulders, and the thick muscles sheathing them were familiar, yet being able to savor his naked skin, to feel the heat burning beneath her sliding palms, to run her fingertips through the dark crinkly hair that adorned the wide muscle bands, to be able to trace each steely band—all that was a supreme distraction in and of itself.

  And then there was the weight of him—the sheer physical impact of his powerful body as he lay alongside her. The inherent promise of it—of the heaviness, the hardness, and the potent strength every feminine wit she possessed told her lay within that body, his to command.

  A fold of the silk sheet lay between them, yet as his tongue lazily, almost languidly tangled with hers—as if claiming her mouth was his right—even though he held his weight above her, she still felt the ineluctable effect of his nearness pressing against her senses, an enticing flame licking over her from head to toe.

  Then he pushed the sheet aside and closed one hand about her breast, fingers firm and knowing, kneading and dragging her senses and wits to focus there—just as his fingers closed and tightened about her nipple. On a smothered gasp, she arched. Rising, her body connected with his. Inspired, she turned the movement into a long, sinuous caress—and was rewarded with his sudden hiss of awareness.

  At last! One point to her.

  Inevitably, he reacted. Retaliated.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, the kiss turned incendiary, and then the sheet between them was completely gone, and he let his body down atop hers—and she lost contact with the world.

  Lost all awareness of anything beyond his body, hers, and the sudden tumult of her senses. Called forth by the intimate contact, the undeniable, almost brutally clear statement of intent, desire and passion surged in a maelstrom of hunger and giddy, demanding need.

  That need overwhelmed her. Every nerve she possessed sprang to attention. Her wits fractured, fragmented as her mind raced here, there, greedily seeking to absorb and savor every single point of contact—every touch, every pressure, every feel of his skin against hers.

  Throughout, the kiss—now a ravaging, plundering, senses-searing engagement—raged.

  Drawn from him and her both, consuming passion swelled and surged, and compulsive need sank claws deep into her—and given his suddenly ragged breathing, into him, too—and drove them on.

  Drake fought to slow down, to harness the sudden rush of desire and rein them both in, the better to savor, the better to experience…this. Her first time.

  And, in some strange way, his.

  His with her—which even in this early phase of the engagement, his senses saw as different. As special. As one engagement it was imperative he draw out and experience fully. In every little degree.

  Yet the allure of her body, naked and so tempting, cushioned by the mattress beneath his, with her sumptuous breasts pressed to his chest and her long, slender legs tangling with his, called to the essential conqueror in him.

  But this wasn’t a time to simply seize.

  He wanted more than a simple surrender.

  From her, he wanted…so much more. A “more” he couldn’t even define.

  Yet the battle with his own impulses, the effort to corral them, had never been so fraught.

  And she, with her greedy, grasping, hot little hands searching and sliding over all of him she could reach wasn’t helping in the least
.

  In a move that reeked of desperation, he broke from the kiss and sent his lips cruising across her jaw, then down the long, arching line of her neck. He found the pulse hammering at the base of her throat, laved, then suckled.

  Her hands gripped his upper arms, fingertips sinking in as she fought for breath, her body bowing, pressing up against his in instinctive invitation.

  Before the inevitable effect, the compulsion to respond, could seize him, he moved on, skating across and down, leaving a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses across her upper chest to where one plump, pert, tightly furled nipple begged for his attention. He obliged, licking, laving, then drawing the tight bud deep and suckling.

  Her only partially smothered shriek was music to his ears. That sound and her suddenly harried breathing egged him on, and he settled to feast.

  Louisa couldn’t find her feet. Not in the real world, not even in her mind. Passion and need had swept her from her moorings, and the continuing bombardment of sensations commanded every iota of her awareness. All she knew was the escalating heat, a burning compulsion that made her yearn to fling herself headlong into the flames and be consumed. All her mind could focus on was the tug of his mouth, the sensation hot and searing, and the spike of sharp feeling every tug sent lancing through her, somehow evocatively tightening her core. Stoking the building tension.

  His free hand lay heavy about her other breast, strong fingers kneading, provocatively possessing…

  Possession. The word surfaced from the cauldron of feelings and impulses whirling in her brain, and in a flash of lucidity, she recognized that truth. But as an act, possession worked both ways.

  The insight allowed her to catch her mental breath, to realize and respond—not against him, not to counter him, but to join him.

  To align her passion, her desire, with his.

  Her awareness expanded, taking in his heavy limbs, the weight of his torso pinning her to the sheet. She set her hands exploring again, absorbing and drinking in the reactive quiver of his muscles at her touch.

  Emboldened, she stroked up the long length of his sides, then slid her palms down to his waist and the tops of his hips, then across his back, reaching as far as she could to hold, to own, to embrace.

  Drake shuddered, trapped by that simple, almost-innocent caress. Caught by a need to metaphorically lean into her touch, to accept it.

  But the fire between them wasn’t about to fade; stoked by her blatant encouragement, it roared.

  As her hands moved over his skin, need flared anew; set alight, more forceful, it drove him to slide lower in the bed. Gripped by a compulsion laced with wonder, he reared back enough to trace—first with his eyes, now accustomed to the dimness, then with his palms and fingers—the unutterably feminine lines of her breasts and lower ribs, the indentation of her waist, the slight curve of her belly and the triangle of black curls screening her mons, over the evocative shape of her hips, moving ultimately to caress the long, firm, yet femininely yielding expanse of her thighs.

  He reached further still, circling her knee, then sliding his palm along the back of her calf to her ankle. He reversed the caress, returning to grasp her knee and move it up, out.

  Then he shifted, anchoring her raised knee with his shoulder while he repeated the slow, almost-mesmerizing caress on her other leg, before lifting that knee up and outward, too.

  One glance at her face showed her lashes low, her expression not blank but turned inward, her senses holding her mind captive as they followed his touch, absorbing the sensations.

  Before she could regather her wits enough to think, he settled between her now-widespread legs, bent his head, and set his mouth to her softness. To sup and taste the ambrosia he knew he would find pooling there.

  The shock that jolted through her, the way her hands frantically clutched at his hair, at his head, the convulsive viselike clamp of her thighs against his shoulders, both reassured and drove him on.

  Louisa couldn’t breathe. Her eyes had snapped open in shock, but she saw nothing. Couldn’t focus enough to see…

  Then she hauled in a breath on a panting gasp; shallow pants were all she could manage as her senses swam.

  As he licked and savored…

  Good Lord! She’d heard of this, but the knowledge hadn’t prepared her for the reality. For the indescribable sensations as he fed upon her softness. Then the tip of his tongue found the tight nubbin of nerves hidden among her folds and swirled…

  She shrieked. Her body bowed, her head tipping back in instinctive reaction as her fingers compulsively clutched.

  He moved, shifting up the bed, then he cupped her with his palm, touched her with his fingers, and her senses overloaded.

  Drake stroked through the delicate folds, swollen and slick with the honey-like moisture his ministrations had drawn forth. Resting his weight on one shoulder, he leaned over her and, as she drew breath after a sobbing moan, captured her lips again, claimed her mouth again, and ruthlessly waltzed her into passion’s fire.

  In this realm, he was a recognized expert, while she…might be a novice, but even in that moment, he accepted and savored the prospect of her being a very willing and apt pupil.

  As if confirming that, her hands gripped his head and held him to the kiss as, with her lips and tongue, she did her damnedest to match and challenge him.

  Her damnedest was impressive. Even with his fingers dallying at her entrance, she caught his attention and held it for several seconds.

  But the thrum of desire pounding through his veins wasn’t to be denied.

  The scalding slickness bathing his fingertips drew him back to the overriding urgency, to the compulsive need swelling between them. He stroked, then slid his fingers farther, pressed one slowly in, and reached deep.

  Through their ravenous kiss, she made an incoherent sound; instead of pulling back, she pressed into him and all but wrapped her limbs about him.

  No order could have been clearer. With the part of his brain that still functioned informing him just how tight she was, he held to his reins, withdrew that first questing finger, and slowly but forcefully inserted two.

  She was all heat and urgency as he stretched her, readied her, her hands gripping, tugging, wordlessly inciting.

  When, still clinging to control with something close to desperation, he withdrew his hand from between her thighs and shifted to cover her, rising above her on braced arms, she sank her nails into his upper arms, then lifted under him, wriggling her hips, widening her thighs, and wrapping her long legs about his.

  The movement dragged her scalding wetness over the painfully engorged head of his erection.

  Passion surged, more violent and powerful than he’d ever known it; it raced through him in a boiling, devastating wave, washing his intentions, his will, and his wits away.

  His reins snapped and whirled away in the tumult.

  Unleashed, ungoverned, and driven by instinct to answer her primitively evocative call, he pressed in, then with one powerful thrust, he forged into her sheath and filled her.

  Her half-swallowed shriek left her gasping.

  He only just managed to stop himself from immediately plundering. Only just caught the flickering ends of control and managed to force himself to freeze, to hang his head and breathe through the impulses battering him and hold still within the scorching clutch of her sheath long enough to let her catch her breath.

  To let her join him.

  With her eyes closed and her lips parted, in that moment of fractured reality, Louisa had nothing but what she could feel, what she could hear, to anchor her. As she lay wrapped in the shrouding shadows of the bed, the only sounds that came to her ears were her short, rasping breaths and his deeper, harsher ones.

  What she could feel…all but consumed her mind.

  She now understood why they termed this intimacy. She couldn’t imagine any act more so. The feel of his erection, hard, hot, and rigid, buried inside her, stretching and filling her and reaching so high withi
n her, shook her to her core, yet…

  There was something more there—something more to feel, to know.

  Something else.

  A nebulous something hovering just out of reach, as if tempting them to try for it. To seize it and hold it and claim it as theirs.

  On the thought, she felt her inner muscles—muscles that had convulsively contracted at his invasion—start to ease.

  A second later, almost tentatively, he moved, withdrawing just a little before surging back, but more gently this time.

  She discovered she could breathe again, albeit shallowly. She forced her lids to obey her and opened her eyes.

  He was hanging over her, suspended on braced arms, the muscles of which, under her now lax hands, felt like granite; she had to tip her head back to see his face.

  She met his eyes, slivers of beaten gold showing between his dark lashes. His jaw was clenched, every feature locked in what even she recognized as a passion-etched mask.

  He held her gaze and said nothing, simply moved again, that same gentle rocking that in some strange way seemed to call to her.

  The next time he did it, lost in his eyes, in his golden gaze, she mirrored the movement, rocking against him as he thrust in, then prompted by instinct, she tightened her inner muscles and held him, clung as he slowly—very slowly—withdrew. The sensation felt exquisite.

  He shuddered and closed his eyes.

  And held still for a heartbeat, the tip of his erection just within her entrance, then he thrust in again.

  More forcefully this time, but as sensation rolled through her and pleasure bloomed, she only gasped and, with her hands, with her newly awoken body, wordlessly urged him on.

  Once again, theoretical knowledge was eclipsed by reality. Pleasure welled, swelled, and wrapped her in its heat; passion and desire ran alongside, rising simultaneously, pricking and driving, investing them both with a building urgency, a swelling need that compelled them into a plunging, pounding rhythm of thrust and retreat.

  Of meeting and matching and reaching and racing.

  The force, the power, of their desperate joining should have shocked her, at the very least given her pause, but instead, she reveled in the potency, the intensity, the escalating, excruciatingly demanding compulsion as together they strove to seize that elusive prize that yet hovered beyond their reach.