You Belong to My Heart

by Nan Ryan

  Mary Ellen stood there in the inky darkness of Longwood’s upstairs corridor, eagerly kissing Captain Knight as he plucked teasingly, tormentingly, at her diamond-hard nipple with all five fingers. It felt good to her, so incredibly good that she hoped he would never stop.

  His lips left hers, but his hand continued to fondle her bare breast, to toy with the nipple. She felt him shift against her, and she blinked owlishly. But she could see nothing in the darkness, so she let out a little whimper of shocked wonder when his heated lips closed around her right nipple through the soft fabric of her blue nightgown.

  “Captain.” She sighed. “Cap…oh… Captain Knight.”

  Her head came away from the wall, and she bowed it slowly. Her unbound hair fell forward, spilling around her flushed, hot face. Her hand lifted, touched his wide, slick shoulder, moved up, and cupped the back of his dark head.

  He tongued her peaking nipple through the wet, clinging cotton until it was pebble hard and throbbing, feeling as it were on fire.

  “Please…oh, yes…pleasssse,” she whispered in the darkness, and her slender fingers tangled in the silky jet black hair at the back of his head.

  The obliging Captain opened his lips and covered both nipple and gown and sucked forcefully. Mary Ellen’s fingers tightened in his hair, and she pressed him close, closer. Almost frantic with joy, the suddenly wished more than anything in the world that she could see him.

  She knew he was down on one knee. Knew one strong hand was anchored at her waist, the other still stimulating her naked left breast. She could imagine how he looked kneeling there before her, with his wide, sensual mouth clamped on her breast, his beautiful silver eyes closed, the long raven lashes sweeping down on his dark, high cheekbones.

  Oh, if she could only see him.

  Mary Ellen could see nothing. She could only feel.

  She could feel the wet heat of his mouth enclosing her throbbing right nipple while his lean brown hand toyed with her left. She drew a sharp intake of air when his mouth abruptly lifted from her. He swept away the fabric, but when his mouth came back to her, it settled on her left breast. He playfully nipped and licked and sucked on the nipple while his fingers stroked the kiss-wet right breast.

  The hot, dark night was also a very still and quiet one. No sigh of winds. No settling of the house. No shouts from the river below. The mansion was totally silent. Mary Ellen could hear nothing but the sound of his hungry sucking, and it was powerfully erotic. She shivered with bliss and bent forward a little, at the same time clasping the back of his head to draw him closer.

  Abruptly he allowed the hard, wet nipple out of his mouth, and his fevered lips pressed kisses to her delicate ribs. Mary Ellen felt his hands tugging the opened gown down her shoulders and arms. She helpfully drew her hands free of the sleeves, and when the gown settled on her flaring hips, she placed anxious fingers atop his wide, bare shoulders.

  She closed her eyes and sighed when he kissed her waist, her quivering stomach, and, pushing the gown down with his hot face, dipped his tongue into the small indentation of her naval. She made no move to stop him when he lifted his face, gave the snagged gown a firm yank, and lowered it over her hips. She felt it whisper down her bare legs to the floor, felt his fingers enclose her ankle to lift her left foot free.

  He didn’t bother freeing the right foot. His hot face returned to her bared flesh, and his sure hands clutched her hips. Mary Ellen sighed and squirmed as his burning lips sprinkled kisses over her tingling stomach, tracing the prominent hipbones with his tongue, licking at the thin line of wispy white-blond hair going down from her naval.

  He caressed her dimpled knees and firm thighs and fluttering belly, his lips tasting and his tongue stroking until she was so aroused she couldn’t stand still. Her entire body ignited with the most incredible heat, and she felt as if she couldn’t tolerate the sweet joy for another second. Naked and breathless, she was on fire, swept away on a rising tide of passion. All pretense of wanting him to stop was gone. She’d die if he stopped. She couldn’t stand it if he were to leave her like this. She needed—had to have—what he alone could give her.

  Yearning for the blessed release his strange yet familiar body promised, Mary Ellen felt a sob of pain and pleasure building deep within her, and every tensed muscle in her body cried out for him to help her, to save her, to give it to her.

  Yet when she felt his hot face nuzzle in the white-blond curls between her trembling thighs, Mary Ellen gasped in surprise and pushed on his wide, perspiring shoulders.

  “No!” she murmured anxiously, beginning to struggle once more. She felt his firm hand nudging her legs apart and his fiery breath on the inside of her thigh. Then his teeth were nipping her gently, his heated lips were kissing her. She was aghast. “Don’t…No…you…must…stop,” she whispered breathlessly.

  But he didn’t.

  Shocking her, thrilling her, his tongue swept the crisp white-blond coils out of his way and his heated mouth covered the throbbing, ultrasensitive tiny nubbin of slick female flesh where her blazing desire was centered.

  A stunned sob broke from Mary Ellen’s throat, and her first impulse was to push him away violently. Before she could try, his tongue touched her there in that most feminine of spots, and her whole body shuddered with shock and pleasure.

  His hands filled with the twin cheeks of her bare bottom, Captain Knight pressed his feverish face to her and gently, expertly, stroked her with his tongue. Mary Ellen was instantly dazzled by the hot, loving mouth pressed between her parted legs. She had never known such wild ecstasy. She whipped her head from side to side and pressed her perspiring palms flat back against the wall, her rubbery knees bending slightly of their own accord.

  Suddenly grateful for the heavy velvet darkness of night that covered both her shame and her splendor, she eagerly allowed him to love her in this unorthodox fashion, wondering at him, wondering at herself—but not really caring if they were behaving indecently. Mary Ellen panted for breath as his face sank closer, deeper, sweeter, until he was buried in her. She was so totally aroused by his searing mouth, she didn’t care if it was right or wrong. She cared only that this dark, handsome man kneeling between her legs in the stygian darkness was licking, lapping, loving her, and it was as wonderful as it was wicked.

  Her body was on fire, aflame. She was wild with passion. All inhibition was gone. She was a greedy sexual female animal demanding the ultimate ecstasy from her mate.

  Mary Ellen grabbed her dark lover’s hair and pressed her burning pelvis to his masterful mouth, every heated part of her body screaming, begging him for release.

  The Captain gave it to her.

  His tongue expertly stroked her throbbing flesh until Mary Ellen was totally engulfed in the searing wet heat. No longer in control of her own body or mind, she trusted him to liberate her from this wonderful pain/pleasure gripping her. Never in her life had she felt as she felt now. Never once in all the years she had been married had her husband made love to her this way. Never before had she surrendered so completely to the blinding joy of such raw, uninhibited sex.

  She wished it would last forever.

  She wished it would end this very second.

  Clinging to his dark hair, Mary Ellen tossed her head wildly and moaned and sighed and urged him on until she felt the first frightening beginnings of her coming orgasm. She flung a hand up to her mouth and bit viciously at the backs of her knuckles to keep from crying out. Wave after terrifying wave of blinding ecstasy washed over her, and Mary Ellen was rocked to the tips of her bare toes by the great explosions buffeting her heated body.

  As the climax went on and on, Mary Ellen looked down on the dark man she could not see and blessed him silently for keeping his hot, healing mouth fused to her until her wild, wonderful climax was completed. Finally it ended with a potent explosion of heat, and Mary Ellen clasped his hair and frantically pulled his face up away from her, unable to stand one more second of such incredible ecstasy.

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nbsp; Then she slumped limply against him, her bent knees buckling beneath her. The Captain’s strong hands kept her from falling. He rose to his feet, swept her up into his arms, and carried her across the hall to the master suite. His suite. Inside he kicked the door shut behind them, carried her straight through the suite to the bedroom.

  Lamps burned brightly on either side of the enormous mahogany four-poster, and Mary Ellen closed her eyes against their intrusive light.

  Captain Knight laid her in the very center of the soft mattress. Her pale, slender body limp with luxurious satiation, her eyes closed, Mary Ellen sighed lazily in total relaxation. Basking in the sweet afterglow of fabulous fulfillment, she felt herself already slipping toward sweet, dreamless slumber.

  But Captain Knight had other ideas.

  He hurriedly stripped off his trousers and climbed naked into bed beside the sated, lethargic Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen felt his lips on hers, and he kissed her. She tasted herself on his mouth and was appalled.

  Her sleepy dark eyes came open.

  The Captain’s hot silver gaze was on her flushed face. His lean brown hand touched her thigh.

  “Now,” he said, “I will make love to you.”

  27

  TOTALLY SATED, MARY ELLEN knew she couldn’t possibly respond to any further lovemaking.

  “No…no, I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you can,” he told her, his voice deep, melodious, his gleaming gray eyes penetrating hers.

  “You don’t understand,” she said softly, too weak to move, “I can’t…I won’t…”

  He smiled, his warming charcoal eyes half closed. He lay on his side next to her, his weight supported on an elbow. “I have,” he said confidently, “methods to meet your resistance.”

  His hand slid down her pale thigh, closed around the back of her knee. He turned her to face him, drew her leg up over his hip, and placed it around his back. His hand then cupped her bare bottom, and he pressed her pelvis close to his straining erection.

  Mary Ellen’s breath caught when it touched her lower belly. He shifted their positions slightly, and she felt the awesome heat and hardness of him throbbing in her open thighs, pressing against the white-blond curls still damp from his burning kisses.

  “Kiss me,” he commanded softly.

  Feebly she shook her head, licked her dry lips.

  Unruffled, he looked at her with those compelling hot-cold eyes and began the slow, rolling movements of his hips, emulating penetration and copulation. His spread fingers on her buttocks kept her pressed to the marble hardness of his blood-filled tumescence. Her warmth made his erection surge and pulsate against her. He had her positioned so intimately against him, it was impossible for her to maintain her state of sleepy repose.

  To Mary Ellen’s surprise, she began to feel stirrings of new desire as he rocked rhythmically against her. Hardly realizing she was doing it, she started the slow, sensual grinding of her pelvis against him, finding his rhythm, her warming groin offering a heated haven for the heavy male flesh pulsating against her.

  “Kiss me, Mary,” he commanded again, and this time she sighed and slipped a caressing hand across his sweat-dampened chest, up over his slick shoulder, and around the back of his neck.

  She lifted her lips to his and kissed him. It began as a slow-building, sensual kiss. Her mouth played with his, her tongue tracing his smooth, warm lips, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth, then sliding her tongue between his open white teeth.

  He took charge then. He kissed her with hunger and passion, and as they kissed, he drew her even closer to him, making her intensely aware of the escalating heat and full arousal of his lean body.

  His mouth feasting on hers in a long, languorous kiss, he moved his lean hand to the cleft in her buttocks. His long dark fingers slipped between, and he touched her with studied gentleness. She didn’t jump, she didn’t jerk, she sighed into his mouth. So the tips of his fore- and middle fingers began caressing her, teasing her, readying her for lovemaking.

  Her eyes now closed, her mouth and body pressed to his, Mary Ellen couldn’t believe what was happening to her. Here she was hot again. Hotter even than she had been out in the hall. So hot she knew she’d do anything he asked, anything he wanted.

  His lips still covering hers, Clay turned onto his back, bringing Mary Ellen with him, placing her atop his long, lean body. He drew her bent knees up on either side of his rib cage so that she was spread open against him. His hands came up to sweep her long loose hair back off her face as they continued to kiss hotly, anxiously. He felt the weight of her naked breasts against his chest, felt the diamond-hard nipples digging into his flesh.

  Feeling as if he couldn’t wait one more second to be inside her, he held back for her sake. He allowed her to remain there draped atop him, kissing him, moving seductively, knowing she was growing increasingly excited.

  At last Mary Ellen tore her burning lips from his and of her own accord rose to a sitting position astride him. She looked at him with an expression that said, “I’m ready, please, please make love to me,” and she waited breathlessly. Waited for him to reach for her, lay her over onto her back, and then take her.

  He didn’t do it.

  Looking straight into her passion-glazed dark eyes, he said, “It’s yours, Mary. You want it?”

  “Y-yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes. Now. Right now.”

  “Then take it,” he said.

  A half frown came to her flushed face, and she started to move off him. “No.” He stopped her. “Stay as you are.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Make love to me like this.”

  She looked puzzled. “Like this? I don’t know—”

  “Rise up onto your knees,” he instructed calmly, and she obeyed. “Now take me in your hand.”

  Exhaling loudly, Mary Ellen wrapped her fingers around his hard, throbbing flesh and smiled foolishly, dreamily, when he jerked involuntarily in her warm grip. She glanced at him.

  “Go ahead,” he said, and his low, deep voice was a caress.

  Biting her lip with concentration, Mary Ellen slowly, carefully guided the rocket-shaped tip of his tumescence into the wet heat between her parted legs. Her hand continuing to hold him, she raised questioning eyes to his once more.

  “Now just ease down on me,” he said. “Take your time. No hurry. Don’t force it. Relax and get comfortable with it.”

  He watched, fascinated, as she slowly, gently, lowered herself onto his throbbing masculinity. His heartbeat quickened. A vein throbbed on his forehead. The muscles in his buttocks clenched. And then at last…

  White-blond curls met raven black. Tight wet heat gripped hard, pulsing flesh. And incredible pleasure spread through his long, lean body as Mary Ellen impaled herself upon him.

  At first he let her set the pace. She moved tentatively, slowly, unsure of herself, as if afraid of hurting one of them or both. But oh, what an erotic vision she made, seated naked astride him, her glorious hair spilling around her lovely face and shoulders, her breasts swaying with the motion of her undulating hips.

  The control he had exercised since their first burning kiss in the corridor was rapidly slipping away. He couldn’t stand it much longer. He closed his eyes against her wanton blond beauty and silently recited the words of an old navy song in an effort to hold on, to keep his full erection, to wait for her to climax before he let himself go.

  The sweet agony was too great; she made him too hot. Hotter than any woman he’d ever had.

  The Captain opened his eyes, settled his hands on her hips, and took charge, his pelvis surging up to meet the thrust and roll of her hips, speeding the rhythm, driving deeper, giving her everything he had. To his delight, she stayed with him, bucking and thrusting, giving as good as she got, reaching for her own release.

  For a few unbelievable minutes they mated like wild animals, savage in their quest, keening and screeching, clawing and clasping, their joined bodies moving so rapidly, so violently,
they rocked the enormous mahogany bed. When they climaxed together, Mary Ellen cried out in her ecstasy while Clay shuddered and groaned loudly, the tendons in his neck standing out in bold relief, his face contorted as if in great pain.

  The last small shudders of pleasure still tingling through her body, Mary Ellen collapsed tiredly atop him. Her tangled blond hair covering her face and his, she lay there panting for breath, too weak to move, too sated to care. His own breath labored, he silently stroked her hair, her satiny back.

  Mary Ellen soon fell asleep.

  The Captain left her where she was for a while, continuing to hold her, to stroke the white-blond hair, the pale satiny flesh, as he wondered at Mary’s seeming naiveté. He was certain she was a virgin to the kind of lovemaking they had engaged in out in the darkened corridor. She was shocked; he could tell. Instinctively he knew that no man had ever done that to her.

  Then later, here in the bed as she sat astride him, he had found it necessary to let her get comfortable with a favored position that oddly enough seemed totally foreign to her. Watching her through half-closed eyes, he had wondered again at her innocence.

  Mary was no maiden.

  She was a divorced woman who’d been married for years. He found it surprising—shocking, even—that she knew so little about lovemaking. Stories of Daniel Lawton’s many conquests had circulated around Memphis long before Mary married him. Surely Lawton was an experienced, knowledgeable lover. So why, Clay wondered idly, hadn’t the rich, blond aristocrat been more intimate with his own beautiful wife?

  He sighed heavily.

  It made no difference to him. He didn’t care what kind of relationship they’d had. Or not had. His only interest was his own relationship with Mary. A purely sexual relationship. That’s all he wanted from her, with her. Her warm, willing body next to his. This pale, slender, beautiful body whose feminine charms he fully intended to enjoy until he tired of her.

  Carefully he moved Mary off his chest, laying her on her back beside him. She never wakened, just sighed in her sleep and snuggled down into the softness of the mattress. Clay reached up and turned out the bedside lamp. He left the other one burning, too sleepy to get up.