by Cindy Gerard
He swallowed hard as a break in the cloud cover flooded moonlight across his bride and the white-on-white nightgown she wore.
Where was her robe, he thought frantically? Where was her fussy pink robe that covered her from ankle to throat and only gave him glimpses and guesses at the curves that lay beneath?
Where did she get that…that whisper of a gown that left nothing and everything to the imagination? Virginal white. Long and flowing. As gossamer as sea mist, as concealing as a bridal veil. Her back was still to him, and he could see every curve and contour of her womanly body. The soft flair of her hips, the rounded firmness of her buttocks, the slim line of her legs.
He tried to look away; he couldn’t. And he knew in that moment he was in very large trouble.
“I like to come out here, too, when I’m having trouble sleeping.” She turned to him then and pressed her cheek to a porch post that he’d painted two days ago. When he was sane. Which he wasn’t now. Which he had no hope of becoming as she hugged the post with her arm and leaned against it.
“I guess I shouldn’t have had that last cup of coffee,” he croaked, unable to take his eyes off her, which only got him into more trouble.
It was a honeymoon gown, he realized finally. Very sheer. Very flowing. Very—he suppressed a groan—very sexy.
The hem skimmed the floor, though the toes of her tiny bare feet peeked out beneath it. The neckline was round and low, held together between her breasts with a single delicate white satin ribbon. He could see the shadowed outline of her nipples pressing against the softly clinging fabric that the night breeze molded against her sweet, sweet breasts. Against her flat belly and the slight indentation of her navel. The downy curls at the apex of her thighs.
“You.” He cleared his throat, tried again while his heart jumped into a jungle beat. “You should go back inside. You—” He swallowed as her nipples tightened then pressed like diamonds against silk. “You must be…cold.”
And he was hot. Blistering hot and already imagining that with one flick of his finger he could undo the ribbon that held her gown in place. With one tug of his hand he could peel that skim of material from her breast and feel the velvet softness of her nipple against his tongue. Taste the silk of her skin. Draw her deep into his mouth.
“Do you want me to go inside, Lee?” She took a slow step toward him.
He groaned, closed his eyes…and opened them to find her kneeling at his feet…searching his face with eyes the color of summer violets…covering his thighs with small, warm hands—hands that he’d imagined touching him in places that would shock her and send him straight over the edge.
“Ellie.” It was a serrated, grating whisper that begged her to leave before he forgot why he was still clinging to a desperate notion that he was saving her from whatever the hell he was so certain he needed to save her from.
He clamped his fingers around the arms of the rocker to keep from reaching for her. To keep from ravaging her. “Go to bed,” he ordered gruffly.
“I’ve been to bed,” she whispered as she rose and eased onto his lap.
He swallowed hard, dug deep and found very little to hang on to—except her. She looped one arm around his neck, pressed the palm of her other hand against his chest where his heart slammed like a jack-hammer. She smelled like vanilla and cinnamon and woman.
“I’ve been to bed,” she repeated softly. “It was lonely there. It’s been lonely there.”
It was too much. He was only human. And she was his wife. Her scent surrounded him, her slight weight, the heavy curtain of her hair, teased by the wind, fluttered across his face, snagged on his midnight stubble.
He wanted everything she offered. He craved it. And as she shifted so she could look into his eyes, and inadvertently pressed her hip against the rock-hard length of his arousal, he thought he’d die if he couldn’t take it.
“Don’t you want me, Lee?”
Moonlight danced across her fiery curls and cast her face in shadow.
“Don’t want you?” He groaned, incredulous, and surrendered…to the night that tempered his sanity, to the eyes that begged him to love her, to the need that had grown beyond denial.
“I have wanted you…” His hands moved to span her waist and settle her hips deeper into his lap. “I have wanted you for what seems like forever.”
He skated a hand up her ribs then across one sweet breast and higher, to span his fingers along her throat and tip her face to his. “Your mouth. Ellie—” he brushed his thumb across her lower lip, felt her tremble “—how I’ve wanted your mouth.”
Ellie caught her breath, bit back a moan as a wild, delicious arc of heat shot from her breast to her belly where it pooled, then spread like liquid fire.
Peg had been right. He did want her. And she’d been a fool to wonder and worry and not take matters into her own hands. The problem, she realized now, was not that he saw her as different, not that he didn’t want her, but that he didn’t want to see her as a woman. He wanted to think of her as his charge—or thought he should think of her that way. That much Peg had helped her figure out. She just wasn’t sure why he was so determined on the issue.
Determined or not, he was seeing her differently now.
He’d started seeing her differently, she realized, that morning when he’d kissed her in the bathtub. She wasn’t sure why she knew—maybe it was that woman’s intuition Momma had always talked about—but she understood now that in that moment he’d not only seen her as a woman, he’d wanted her as one. And he hadn’t been very happy with himself because of it.
The why of it still puzzled her. The how of getting him past it, however, was starting to become very clear. To make him treat her like a woman, she simply had to behave like one.
“Will you kiss me, Lee? Will…will you kiss me like you did that morning in the bathtub?”
She barely got the last word out before he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his.
And kissed her. The way a man is supposed to kiss a woman, she thought, as she threw her arms around his neck and hung on, ready to go anywhere he wanted to take her.
“Oh. Oh,” she murmured on a breathless sigh when he tilted his head to increase the contact, adjust the angle, heighten the pleasure. And there was pleasure. So much, so fast, her heart was racing as she turned into him, wanting, suddenly, to crawl under his skin and be a part of him from the inside out.
“Ellie…Ellie, sweetheart.”
From a distance she heard him whisper her name. With a small whimper of protest she felt his mouth leave hers, only to slam back hard for a fierce, hungry kiss before he dragged his mouth away again.
“Lee.”
“Shush, baby.”
A warm hand cupped her cheek as he pressed his lips to her forehead and drew in a ragged breath. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just…just slowing things down a little.”
“I liked it fast.”
A harsh laugh rumbled against her breast. “Oh, I know. I know you did. But…just trust me on this, okay? You’re gonna like it this way, too.”
“What way?” she felt dazed as she lay back in his arms and watched his face, watched his eyes go dark and hazy.
“Slow and easy,” he whispered, and good to his word, eased his hand slowly down her cheek, along the column of her throat. “Very, very slow. Very, very easy.”
She was breathless with anticipation as, in agonizingly slow motion, his hand stole lower to finally cup and caress her breast through her gown. Everything inside her clenched at the wondrous pleasure, at the electric thrill of his hand touching her where she had longed for him to touch her for what seemed like forever.
She closed her eyes, arched into his hand as he caressed and stroked, then circled her nipple with the tip of his thumbnail.
“Oh.” Stunning sensations spiraled through her body. She wanted them to go on forever, yet she wanted more. “Lee.”
“Shush. Easy, remember? Let me go slow and easy with you, Ellie. We’ve both
waited so long.”
She opened her eyes, her trust complete, her need enveloping her in a new set of feelings, a new sense of awareness.
He lifted her then, shifted her until she was no longer lying sideways in his arms but straddling his lap. Her knees pressed into the flowered cushion on either side of his hips, her gown bunched around her thighs in silky folds. Her bottom nestled on his muscled thighs and he very purposefully lifted her arms and draped them over his shoulders as her hair drifted over hers. He clasped his hands at her hips and held her there, warm against him, open against him.
It was shocking. Exciting. She’d never felt more vulnerable, or more alive.
“Kiss me, Ellie.” His blue eyes were dark with promise, his voice, a velvet command. “Kiss me the way you’ve been wanting to kiss me.”
She searched his face, then studied his mouth, the full lower lip, the lovely cupid’s bow of his upper lip, the tiny scar that resembled a crescent moon. She wasn’t aware that she had licked her own lips, savoring the feast to come. When his mouth curved up in an indulgent smile, she realized what she’d done and felt her face flush in the moonlight.
“It’s all right.” He turned his face to the inside of her forearm, bit her gently, then kissed the tender flesh in supplication. “I love how you look at me.”
“How do I look at you?” Her voice sounded breathless, just the way she felt as he turned back to her, his cobalt-blue gaze drifting across her face beneath the sweep of dark thick lashes.
“Like you want to eat me up in little bites.”
It was her turn to smile as a newfound confidence bolstered her. “I’d rather have a big bite, please.”
He laughed, and the sound filled her with love and desire and a confidence she’d never dreamed she had in her. She leaned forward, touched her mouth softly to his.
He drew in a breath, closed his eyes. And she smiled and, still smiling, touched her mouth to his again. This time she lingered and licked and learned the shape of him, and understood that she fed his hunger when his arms banded around her and he dragged her hard against him.
She loved his tongue. The taste of it, the bold possession as it swept inside her mouth and claimed, then teased, then gentled until she was the one teasing and he was the one squirming to draw her closer, he was the one fighting for a steady breath.
“Umm.” She licked her lips as she pulled away and sat back down on his thighs. “You taste like coffee. And wedding cake.”
“And you taste…Ellie, you taste like heaven.” His gaze on hers, he skimmed his hands up ribs and stopped, just below her breasts. Ever so softly he brushed his thumbs up and along the tips of her nipples.
She shivered and tried not to whimper.
“Can I taste you here?” he asked quietly, making it clear with the steady sweep of his thumbs where he wanted his mouth, what he wanted to do.
She’d read the book. She’d seen the pictures. She’d imagined what it would feel like to have Lee’s mouth on her breasts. To feel him kiss her there. But she’d seen pictures of a man’s hands on a woman’s breasts, too, and she’d imagined what that would feel like. Imagination hadn’t begun to compare to reality. So just thinking of Lee’s mouth there, where his hands had been, sent a lush, liquid heat gushing through her body.
“Yes, oh, yes,” she answered, and with flying fingers reached for the ribbon that held her gown closed.
His hands stilled hers. She looked up, watched him through a curtain of hair.
He brushed it back from her face, tucked it behind her ear. “First like this.” With his hands spanning her waist, he lifted her until she was standing on her knees before him.
Her breasts were on a level with his mouth. She could feel the tips tighten just thinking about what he would do next. And what he did next made her draw in her breath and dig her fingers into his shoulders.
He urged her forward with those big, gentle hands on her waist and breathed on her. A warm breath, a gentle caress, a promise that made her shiver and burn all at the same time.
“More?” He bussed his nose around the edge of her aureole.
She did whimper then, and pressed herself against him.
“Definitely more,” he murmured with a smile in his voice as he kissed the valley between her breasts, then worked his way in small, eating kisses to the peak of her left nipple.
She clutched a handful of his hair, sighed his name.
And then he surrounded her, biting her lightly through her gown, driving her wild with the wet sweep of his tongue against fabric and skin, making her moan, making her yearn. He tasted his fill, lingering over one breast, then the other until he finally pulled away and with his eyes gone slumberous and dark, gave her permission to undo her gown.
Her fingers were shaking as she untied the small ribbon. Her breath was shallow, as shimmering silk fell open, exposing a pale slice of flesh to the night and to his eyes. His hands moved slowly, first to cover her, then to caress, then to separate silk from skin. Slower still, he brushed the gown aside. Her heart was in her throat as she shrugged it off her shoulders, then lifting her arms, let it slide free to pool at her hips.
She watched him swallow, felt his fingers spread wide beneath her shoulder blades as he looked his fill, murmured his approval, then pulled her unerringly toward him.
It could have been her name she heard escape his lips, it could have been a prayer. She didn’t know. Didn’t care, couldn’t think for the feel of his mouth on her skin. Naked lips to naked breast.
She had never imagined. Had never known about the magic, the magnitude of sensations. A man’s mouth. Lee’s mouth, drawing on her breast. The stubble of his cheek brushing her skin, the heat of his breath. It was more than a delicious, mind-numbing sensation, it was a deep, soul-deep communion. And she understood in that wonderful moment that she wasn’t the only one who needed this physical contact. He needed. He needed her. She felt it with the gentleness of his touch, the endless depth of his hunger.
His eyes were deep, dark extensions of his soul as he kissed her breast one last time, then slumped back in the chair, watching her. Wanting her. His gaze never left her face as he ran his hand up and under flowing silk that drifted across her thighs. He spread his fingers wide, absorbing the resilience of her muscles beneath his palms, the warmth of her flesh.
His gaze locked on hers, he slid his hands slowly toward her center.
“Can I touch you here?” His voice was a scratchy, velvet whisper.
She shivered, felt her inner muscles clench, felt herself pulse and swell—and for the first time felt a twinge of self-consciousness. But this was Lee. This was her husband whose lap she straddled, her husband whose gaze had gone smoky and dark, her husband whose mouth had suckled her breasts and wanted to touch her intimately. This, finally, was her lover.
The night breeze lifted her hair, whispered across her breasts still wet from his loving, still tight with longing.
She leaned forward, brushed his lips with hers. “Please,” she murmured into the warm, wet wonder that was his mouth as his hands moved higher up her thighs, his thumb stroking, enticing, “Please, please touch me. Touch me there.”
She watched his eyes as he brushed the back of his knuckles against her curls. She breathed his name, waiting, waiting for the touch of him. For the love of him.
He touched her then.
Finally.
Gently.
Then deeply.
She heard herself moan, felt her fingers dig into his shoulders and didn’t care that she was completely open, totally vulnerable. It felt so…exotic and so unexpectedly shocking. So extraordinarily good.
With a light hand he stroked her, a delicious little swirl of his finger to her core. She felt her own wetness, thought she should be embarrassed by it but was too lost in sensation to do anything but hold him tighter and wish she knew how to ask for more.
Somehow he knew. He gave more without her asking, intensifying the pressure, increasing the speed until she
rocked involuntarily against his touch, begging him for something…something. She didn’t know. She just wanted it to go on and on, this pleasure that was so pure and so perfect that she gave herself over to it. Lost herself in the wonder as it built to an electric, enveloping climax that eclipsed thought, vanquished control and ripped through her body like a starburst. With a shattered cry she let it take her, let it toss her, let it consume her until she collapsed against him, boneless and winded and deliriously devastated.
Lee gathered her against him, his heart pounding in tandem with hers. He wanted—more than he wanted his next breath—he wanted to free himself from his jeans and bury himself deep inside her. He was past denying that he wanted her—all she’d had to do was ask. All she’d had to do was offer, and all of his resolve had folded like a tower of precariously stacked cards.
She’d held the trump card tonight. In retrospect he realized now that she always had. He’d just been fooling himself into believing he was the one who would call the shots and make the rules.
He knotted a fist in her hair, absorbed her heat and the aftershocks that rippled through her delicate, hot little body. Her first time. He’d been amazed by her responses. He’d expected hesitation. He’d expected shyness. And yes, there had been some. It had flickered across her face just as the moonlight had flickered through the clouds, but she’d quickly denied it and leaped without fear into his arms. Into his soul, with her breathless sighs, her fearless heart.
Addiction. He’d never understood it. He thought he might have a loose handle on it now. He could get addicted to the look of her, the feel of her, the scent of her coming apart in his arms.
She shivered and snuggled closer, her breathing leveling, her heartbeat settling. She was so limp, so…wasted…he tempered his desire, dived headlong into concern—where he should have been from the moment she’d walked into the moonlight and stolen his breath and his sanity.
Too much. He’d taken too much. He’d pressed her too soon.
“Ellie? Sweetheart?”
She sighed and wrapped herself around him as if he was a bed and she wanted to cover him like a satin sheet.
