In most situations he could see her point, even sympathize with it, but…
It was that but he wasn’t used to, that he had no experience in dealing with, coping with, much less controlling.
He didn’t like what she made him feel, didn’t approve of it, resented it, railed at it—all of which did no good. He was obsessed with her—and some part of him knew where that obsession was heading. What it was leading him to.
But while his mission was in train, he couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t think of what came later, after.
Eventually, the conversation died. The other two yawned, then stretched. Together they all rose and left the suite, strolling down the corridor. He halted outside his room. With relaxed good nights, Tony and Gervase went on to their rooms further around the gallery.
Del watched them go, then reached for the doorknob. His hand closed about it, but then he stopped. For what seemed an unending moment, he stared at his hand grasping the knob.
He wasn’t thinking—wasn’t even debating. He knew he should turn the knob, go inside and fall into his bed.
He couldn’t remember why.
Muttering a curse, he released the knob, turned and stalked back to the suite.
The door was still unlocked. He locked it behind him; Deliah’s maid would have come and gone via the door between bedroom and corridor.
Deliah should, by now, be abed.
He didn’t hesitate but knocked on her bedroom door.
He leaned against the jamb, waited.
Eventually, the door opened.
She stood in the doorway, no sign of surprise on her haughty face. Her hair was down, rumpled dark red tresses caressing the shoulders of the ivory silk wrap she’d flung over a prim white nightgown.
Also of soft, sensuous silk.
Behind her, the bed was disarranged, the pillow dented. She had, indeed, been abed.
Beyond his control, his gaze slid down, over the full mounds of her breasts, nipples peaking, down over the flat of her stomach and the swells of her hips, all the way down her long, long legs, outlined lovingly by the clinging gown. He was immediately, painfully hard. Aching to possess what he knew the silk concealed.
It took a moment to lift his gaze back to her eyes.
She coolly searched his face, then, imperiously, raised her brows. “What do you want?”
Her tone was even, direct, neither encouraging nor discouraging.
He gave her the truth. “You.”
For another unending moment, silence reigned.
Then he straightened from the doorjamb, stepped forward.
And she stepped back, allowing him in.
Deliah closed the door behind him.
This was madness, but what was she to do? Tell him no?
She didn’t think she could. Didn’t think her vocal cords would cooperate in uttering such a very big lie, not when her heart was turning cartwheels of anticipatory delight and her mouth was salivating in expectation.
Turning, she found him waiting. One arm sliding around her waist, he drew her to him.
She looked up, met his eyes as their bodies touched. Awareness streaked through her, but she hid it, suppressed it. Her hands rose, came to rest on his shoulders. Beneath her palms, the tempting warmth, the masculine hardness seduced as she watched his eyes search hers, then drift over her face.
Then lower to her lips.
Parting them, she drew in a shallow breath. There wasn’t anything she felt she should say. Nothing she expected him to say, to explain. He was a man of the world, and she…she could pretend to be his counterpart.
Would pretend, as his eyes touched hers again and, after a heartbeat’s hesitation, he lowered his head, to be taking this all in her stride.
Determinedly pretend, as instinctively she lifted her chin, met his lips as they stooped to hers, that her nerves weren’t skittering, that her senses weren’t poised to swoon, that her heart wasn’t tripping in double time.
He kissed her, and she kissed him. Familiar, yet not. Last night had been so urgent, so heated and driven; tonight, she sensed in him a greater attention, an intention to remain focused…on her.
On what he wanted of her.
Quite what that was she didn’t know. A thrill of expectation flashed, sharp and bright, through her.
The kiss grew hungrier, more demanding. She met him, matched his claims, his conquest, with her own needs, her own wants.
All entirely instinctive, but she had no other guide. She wasn’t innocent, not in the biblical sense, yet she’d never been this way before, had never needed as she now did before.
Had never wanted a man as she wanted him.
That simple; that complicated. Her want was a pattern of needs and desires, and as he wasn’t in any hurry tonight, and neither was she, he seemed content to let her explore—those needs, those wants, and him.
He let her undress him. His lips curved when she wrestled his shirt from him and then, the garment sliding from her fingertips, stared in wonder at the muscled expanse of his chest. Eyes wide, she dropped the shirt and spread her hands, palms to his hot skin.
And learned.
She explored like a wanton, freed of restraint, and he let her.
Encouraged her.
Until he stood naked in the moonlight, each heavy bone, the taut line of every muscle, gilded in silver, and she couldn’t breathe, yet still she took his member, erect and so flagrantly male, between her hands, stroked, closed her fingers, and lightly squeezed.
He stilled. She sensed the tension in him grow, tighten—to steel, fine and hard and unwavering. Her fingers, her hands, slowed.
His chest swelled as he drew in a breath. Then his hands rose to her shoulders, cupped, tightened—then eased. He drew off the silk wrapper she’d donned over her nightgown.
And slowly, deliberately, turned the tables on her.
He took his time, his lips returning to hers now and again, to sup, to send her senses spinning again. To woo her wits into compliance with his agenda—his needs, his wants, his desires.
His wish to learn of her. To explore her even more intimately, even more thoroughly, than she had him.
His hands traced, outlined, possessed. His touch imperfectly shielded by the fine silk of her nightgown, he cupped, stroked, tantalized.
Eventually—at last!—he divested her of the gown. Stripped it away with maddening ease, and equally maddening slowness.
A slowness that stretched her nerves taut, then set them quivering. That left her lungs seized, her breath a mere sigh, her wits scattered beyond recall.
Her senses were all his. His to command.
Expectation, physical anticipation, had never been so brittlely sharp, so exquisitely honed.
So attuned to his intention, his wish, his desire.
To know her. To have her. Ultimately to possess her.
With hands and fingers, with lips and tongue, he stroked, sampled, caressed. Until her breath shuddered and hitched, until her skin burned, until need was a molten ache low in her belly.
Until reckless abandon pounded in her blood.
When he sank to his knees before her, she had no idea what he planned to do. And no time to wonder, to guess and mute the shock, before he set his lips, his hot mouth, to her curls, then, ignoring her breathless gasp, he parted her thighs, and set his wicked tongue to her softness.
He licked, laved, probed, and her senses reeled. Fingers tangled in his thick hair, she fought to remain upright while her legs threatened to give way. He sensed it, caught one of her knees, bent and lifted it to drape her leg over his broad shoulder, balancing her there, his large hands cupping her bottom, the position keeping her thighs wide—opening her to an even more intimate campaign.
One he wrought with devastating effectiveness.
With ruthless thoroughness.
Experience told.
The assault on her senses stretched her nerves to the breaking point. Head back, eyes open but unseeing, she was struggling to eve
n gasp, battling to remain afloat on the tide of his sensual mastery, and not let the waves of tactile pleasure pull her down and drown her, when, with one last, flagrantly explicit foray, he drew back.
Still supporting her, he fluidly rose.
Before her raised foot even reached the floor, he gripped her hips and hoisted her.
She only just managed to swallow a shriek. Suspended between his hands, her body felt taut, heated by flames licking over her skin and a fiery emptiness burning within. Clutching his shoulders, her thighs clamped to his flanks, she looked down to search his face—but he was looking down as he drew her hips to his.
In the instant she understood, she felt the broad head of his erection part her slick folds, and press in.
Surrendering to instinct, she lifted her legs, wrapped them about his hips. Tilted her hips closer, wanting, needing…
She lost her breath as he thrust in.
Arms locked about his shoulders, she let her head tip back, eyes closed, spine arching as he held her and steadily pressed deeper to fill her. Tiny thrills skittered over her skin; flickering showers of bright sensation skated along her nerves. Inexorably, relentless and intent, he drew her hips to him, held her there, locked against him, and pushed deeper still.
And then he was there, hard, hot, and impossibly large, filling her, completing her.
She dragged in a huge breath.
Lost it as, his fingers biting into the lush curves of her derriere, Del lifted her, drawing his rigid erection from the scalding slickness of her sheath, only to slide smoothly home again, to the hilt.
The moan she uttered was music to his ears. He set about gaining more.
Set about discovering how much more she could take. How much more he could take of her before surrendering to the inevitable, to an all-consuming, senses-stealing rapturous release.
She hadn’t been a virgin, was twenty-nine, and had lived outside England for a decade. A woman so richly endowed, so attuned to the sexual, so openly embracing and welcoming of the act as she’d proved to be, wouldn’t have lived those years in abstinence; there was no reason he need feel constrained by typical English sexual mores.
More need, in fact, given her adventurous nature, to use his experience of exotic lovemaking to lure and hold her.
He didn’t need to think further. He walked around the room, jigging her with every stride, making her clutch and moan anew, then he walked to the bed, braced his thighs against the side and set her down on her back on the coverlet.
He straightened. Took a moment to look down at her, hair wild and spread beneath her head and shoulders, her features stamped with blatant desire, her luscious body naked, wracked with passion, her skin delicate rose-tinted ivory, her breasts full and firm, nipples tightly furled, her white thighs spread wide, her long legs wrapped around his hips.
His erection sunk in her sheath.
He looked up, caught a glimpse of jade-bright eyes beneath her lashes. Saw her watching him.
Saw her breasts rise as she drew breath.
Sliding deep, snug within her, he set his hands to her breasts, filled his palms, possessed. Drew her nipples into throbbing buds, then ran his hands down her body, over her waist, her bare stomach.
Assessing, branding.
He bent his head and with his mouth, his tongue, swiftly followed the same path. Made her gasp and squirm.
She arched, lifted to him as he returned to pay appropriate homage to her bountiful breasts. When she was reduced to desperate, wordlessly pleading need, he straightened and filled his hands with the firm cheeks of her bottom, her skin flushed and dewed, heated and damp. Tightening his grip, he withdrew from the slick clutch of her body until he was almost free, then thrust deep again, harder, more powerfully.
Holding her hips immobile, he set up a driving, compelling rhythm.
She moaned, then sobbed, threshed her head from side to side.
He released her hips, unwrapped her legs from his hips and raised her calves to prop her ankles on his shoulders, then gripped her hips anew and held her steady as he thrust repetitively, penetrating even more deeply inside her.
Her breath came in panting gasps, her hands fisting in the coverlet as the tempo increased and he pounded into her.
She tightened, and tightened, spine bowing, muscles locking.
Then she came apart.
In a glorious, rippling cascade, release took her, caught her, wracked her, rocked her, shook her. Deliah had never felt anything so sensually profound. So primitive. As if her senses had shattered, disintegrated under the onslaught of sensation he’d wrought.
But even then he wasn’t finished with her. He continued to move within her, until she reached that curious state of floating.
Then he withdrew, leaving her strangely bereft, but only for an instant.
Shrugging her legs from his shoulders, gripping her hips, he rolled her onto her stomach. He drew her toward him until her hips were at the edge of the high mattress, her legs over the side of the bed, her toes barely touching the floor.
She lay there, boneless, and he filled her from behind.
Her nerves sizzled, stretched.
Passion flared anew as he withdrew and thrust into her. Her senses expanded, greedily taking it all in—the novel sensations of his groin meeting the vulnerable skin of her exposed bottom, his heavy balls brushing the sensitive backs of her naked thighs.
The hot, hard, heavy reality of his erection pushing repeatedly into her.
Excitement melded with a sense of vulnerability as he held her there, pinned, effectively helpless, and filled her body, relentlessly filled her senses and her mind with sensual delight, with mind-melting pleasure.
Desire rose and swamped her; passion erupted in a hot tide and swept through her anew. She wanted to move with him, to contribute, to take him, but his hold was unbreakable and his strength too great; he kept her still, immobile, and thrust ever more powerfully, faster and harder into her.
She tightened about him, instinctively seeking to hold, to caress.
Sensed him shudder.
Through his hands, through the rigid columns of his thighs pressing against hers, she felt the tension holding him tighten, then she heard him drag in a huge, broken breath.
Beneath her skin, fire raced and razed. Closing her eyes, she surrendered to instinct and continued to clamp and ease about him, using her body to intimately caress his as he continued to thrust into her….
He gasped, released her hips and leaned forward. Hands sinking into the coverlet on either side of her shoulders, he hung over her. His breathing was harsh and labored above her. His weight pressed her down as his hips hugged hers, pumped desperately—
And release swept him, took him as she clung, as she tightened about him one last time, and felt herself tipping, falling into the vortex of cataclysmic sensation, too. Into a whirlpool of sharp, bright feeling that coalesced and drew in, tighter and tighter, then exploded in a nova of incandescent heat.
Glory erupted, brilliant and bright, spreading and spinning about them, over them, through them, enfolding them in golden pleasure.
Slowly, inexorably, the glow faded.
His arms gave way and he slumped over her, coming down on his elbows, his chest rising and falling like bellows against her back, his breathing harsh by her ear, his body hot, malleable steel curved protectively over hers. His heart still thundered. She felt the evocative beat against her back, felt it where they joined, in the slick furnace between her thighs, in her still clenching womb. He was in her blood, in her bones, had sunk to her marrow.
The beat gradually slowed as they drifted back to earth.
Eyes closed, thoughts in abeyance, her body more his than hers, her cheek pillowed on the coverlet, she realized she was smiling.
She was a mass of contradictions.
Later, once he’d managed to summon strength enough to disengage and lift her, then draw down the covers and rearrange them both in her bed, Del lay back on the piled pil
lows, one arm behind his head, the other around Deliah as she slept the sleep of the pleasurably exhausted, her cheek pillowed on his chest.
He stared at the canopy and tried to make sense of her.
Not an easy task, given said contradictions.
Her nightgown, for instance. The style was prim and proper, as befitted a deacon’s daughter—her father was a deacon, he recalled. The gown’s fabric, on the other hand, was a testament to tactile sensuality. The Indians understood the arousing properties of silk, its inherently sensual nature. So, apparently, did Deliah.
Touching her through the garment—sliding, shifting silk caressing silken skin—had been as arousing for her as it had been for him.
That contradiction mirrored another—her oftimes prim behavior, her insistence on propriety, contrasting sharply with the experienced wanton she was. Or at least appeared to be.
Which left him with the last of the contradictions he’d thus far uncovered. She hadn’t been a virgin, yet every instinct he possessed insisted that beyond the basics she was—or at least had been—untutored and untried.
He hadn’t been in any condition to think much at the time, but he had noticed. Now he had the leisure to think back…she’d been startled—honestly taken aback, even shocked—when he’d used his mouth on her.
She’d been surprised when he’d lifted her, although she’d very quickly grasped the possibilities.
When he’d had her on her back….
Eyes narrowing, he replayed all he could. Accepted that his earlier conclusion regarding her experience had been wrong.
The heat of the moment, her eager, all but molten responses, had veiled the truth. All of the aforesaid—and doubtless all that had come after, too—had been new to her.
The only way he could reconcile the nascent, latent houri he knew her to be, that she’d proved to be in his arms, with the twenty-nine-year-old non-virgin with barely a sexual encounter to her name, was that somewhere in her past lay what was commonly termed “a disappointment.”
The Untamed Bride Plus Two Full Novels and Bonus Material Page 18
