Linda Needham (23 page)

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, myyyyyyyyyy!” She slumped farther and Jared kept up his assault, changing to the other leg and then her arms, glad of the metal barrier between him and his wife’s moans of ecstacy.

Because he was near the brink of his patience and planned to stay there until he’d brought Kate to her pleasure.

“I don’t think I can move.” Her voice wavered and hummed, her eyes were closed and her arms flung to the side.

“I promise you will, love.”

Jared stepped out of his shoes and into the bath on either side of Kate’s knees, straddling her waist.

“Jared, your trousers!”

“I couldn’t wait.”

She laughed and sat upright, staring up at him, assessing him from below his knees in a most provocative way. If he sat, all the water would flood over the side. So he slipped his hands around her and brought her to
her feet, her naked skin and his bare chest meeting like slick fire.

“Mmmmmm…” She sighed and moved against him, sliding her fingers up his back, kneading his aching muscles, gliding her thumbs along his waistband.

Thoroughly enchanted, Jared, held her close, memorized her textures and spoke a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

Kate was sure that her heart would burst from her chest, that her blood would boil right out of her skin.

He was Neptune and Isis, a pirate and a spy. And suddenly a father.

Extraordinary in every way, his broad chest gleaming golden in the forest of candlelight, his smile as husbandly as it was roguish. She felt wanted and adored.

So enchanted with him that she hadn’t noticed him lifting her out of the tub, until she felt her thighs meet the upholstered cushion of the bench at the foot of his bed, couldn’t imagine what he was planning until he knelt, and nudged her knees open on either side of his waist, then pulled her into his arms.

“I’m soaking wet, Jared.” Which didn’t seem to bother him in the least, seemed to mobilize his hands and his lips and his tongue.

“I’ll take care of that.” He was breathing madly, hot bursts of air trailing against her skin, nibbling his way down the center of her breastbone, between them, making her lean backward on her elbow, making her giggle.

“What are you up to?”

“Paying attention to you. Very close attention.”

The wicked way he said that sent her imagination running wildly away from her. Out of bounds. Because she was lying with her legs spread on either side of him, the split of her drawers open and visible should he decide to look.

Thoughts that turned her cheeks crimson and filled up her belly with a yearning that seemed impossible.

“How close do you mean?” Because he seemed enchantingly close right now.

“Much closer than this.”

“Much?” She couldn’t resist touching the damp cords of his chest, or spreading her fingers along the muscles rippling there, and deep in his arms. So well defined, so steadfast. “And to think, I actually believed you were a pompous, prig of a man named Colonel Huddleswell.”

“I’ve played far worse roles than the old colonel.” He bent his head and caught up her nipple between his lips, sucking a gasp out of her until he was simply ravaging her will, making her squirm and pull at his hair.

“Worse than Colonel…ohhhh!” She growled and drew in a breath between her teeth and leaned back against his arm, not quite knowing where to cling next, his shoulders, his arms. Wanting him, all of him. Wanting him completely naked.

And dancing with her in the candlelight.

“These have to come off, Kate.”

“My drawers?” She reached feebly for the ties in the front, but he covered her hand, her head spinning with pleasure.

“But slowly. I have my ways.” He cocked a brow at
her, roguish and dark as he caressed the inside of her thighs just above her knees, a sensation with its own magic, that made her feel completely shameless, filled her with a desire to open herself to him.

“You’ll find that I have my ways too.” Not exactly a way, but a thriving curiosity about how that fine, hot penis of his would feel in her hand once she got his trousers off him.

“I already like your ways.” He nuzzled her breast, still breathing like a stag, grabbing one steamy breath after another as his mouth blazed a long, thrilling path of kisses between her breasts and then slowly, amazingly, down the middle of her belly, stirring up exotic sensations that seem to be gathering like a storm.

She sprawled against the end of the bed just behind her, felled by another wave of shamelessness, languid and lounging in her wet drawers, wondering what he planned as he massaged and kissed and made her flesh goose and all her muscles cramp.

Thoroughly distracted by the sensations he was causing, the breathless glow that was swelling between her legs, she hadn’t realized exactly where he was heading with his attentions until—

“Jared?” She sat up, looking into the smiling face of her husband, his hair wild and his eyes filled with delight.

“Yes?” The lout knew what she was asking. He’d been toying with the tie at the waist of her drawers, tugging and teasing. Now he’d slipped his finger into the slit between the legs at the waist, was lightly drawing his fingertip across her belly.

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“And exactly where I’m going.”

“Where?”

His eyes flashed. “Making up for lost time.” He dipped his finger lower, as though to prove his strategy. “And paying close attention.”

A stunning whisk through her curls. “Oh, my!”

He couldn’t be thinking of getting that close.

“There,” he said, grinning, the ends of the drawstring were dangling in his fingers, dancing against her belly and her nerves.

There, indeed.

He was still kneeling between her thighs, still taking his time with his tender threats. Though now he was pulling aside the tops of her drawers, peeling them back, exposing her most private place as though he were opening a Christmas package.

He grinned up at her, a young man in a sweet shoppe. “Ah, Kate.”

Before she could stop him he settled his hand between her legs.

“Jared!” She grabbed his arms, quaking like an autumn leaf, staring at him as he began playing his fingers through her curls.

“Close attention.” And then her amazing husband leaned into her and kissed her on the mouth, while he played his fingers at the joining of her thighs!

“Jared, please…” She couldn’t keep her hips still, fell backward, grinding herself against his intoxicating hand, his fingers dancing through her damp curls.

“Didn’t I say that you’d be begging me for a kiss?”

“A kiss? I wasn’t…” She opened her eyes and realized that she’d turned completely brazen. She’d wrapped her legs around his waist, was arching toward him.

And then he kissed her! There! Pressed his mouth where his hand had just been and sent her senses reeling, shooting off little stars behind her eyes.

“That was a kiss!”

“Here’s another”—he straightened some, a lusty look in his eyes, a beast sating himself—“unless you object. Do you?”

“No!” She didn’t really need to shout. But it made him grin, made him dive back into his objective, this time with the tip of his tongue and then a slick, humid kiss. “Ohhhhh, soooo wonderful! Jarrrrrred!”

She wanted more of this. More of him.

“Closer still, Kate.” He caught her attention and then slipped his fingers slightly inside her, moved them, feeding her wildest hunger for him.

“Jared, I want—”

“Yes, I can tell, sweet. But not yet.”

“Not yet what?” She hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant, but he nuzzled her one more dazzling time between her legs, and then became her broad-shouldered, nearly naked flyfisherman, the loss of his closeness leaving her aching and unfulfilled, breathless.

He would have stood up if she hadn’t sat up straight and caught hold of the tops of his trousers. “Where are you going, husband?”

Two could play at this.
Should
play at it.

“To cool off.”

“Not yet, Hawkesly. My turn.”

They were eye to eye and he raised one of his arrogant brows. “Yours?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve always wanted to feel one of these.” She pressed her palm against the bulging front placket of his trousers, and found a most magnificent shape beneath the wool—long and thick, rigid like a hot iron rod.

“One of these?”

And she knew exactly what it was, had seen a few in their pagan glory.

But this one belonged to her.

“Oh, this is very nice.”

Nice?
Jared could hardly speak for the breathtaking caress of her hand as she blithely, meticulously measured the details of his erection.

Length and breadth.

Rigidity. Which it was. In full rock-hard tumescence.

Applying just enough pressure in just the right places to finally make him grab hold of her fingers.

Her eyes glinted just inches from his. “You’re not faulty in the least, Jared. In fact, you’re working just fine. Though you’re much larger than I’d imagined.”

“And just how would you know how a man’s equipment should be working.”

“Never mind. I’ll behave now.” Her fingers sped down the front placket of his trouser fly until she’d freed the last button.

“That’s enough.” Certain that the woman meant nothing but trouble, Jared moved well out of her reach across the room, and shucked himself of his trousers and the rest of his clothes, tossing them aside.

He turned back to her, expecting to find his bride where he’d left her on the bench at the foot of the bed, eagerly waiting for him. But she’d vanished.

“Kate?” Candles blazed everywhere, leaving nothing but the darkest shadows beyond the flames.

“It’s time.” She had moved silently to the other side of the room, pillows piled in a corner and a candle on the floor in front of her.

She was standing utterly naked, her skin like gilded silk, her hair a cloud of the finest spun gold, her eyes bright and beckoning to him with her enchantments.

“Time for what?” Time to take all that beauty to bed.

But she seemed to have some other plan in mind.

She smiled seductively at him, lifted her lacy shawl off the arm of the chair, then started dancing with it, a slow, serpentine flow of languid arms and sinuous thighs.

“Well, it’s not a blazing fire.” She turned her back to him, swaying that gorgeously rounded bottom at him, all undulating curves and two dimples that he hadn’t known were there. “And there’s no music.”

So entrancing he couldn’t stay away.

“It’s not the jungles of the Abasanti, Kate, but I’m sure they would be pleased.”

He
was pleased.

He was ramrod straight and aching.

She was a glory of shadows and shapes and bobbing breasts, of swirling hips and golden hair, and that luxurious length of lace that she draped here and drew across there, hiding away her most savory details just as he expected to see them, taunting him, drawing him toward her.

Until he was standing in the circle of her light, reaching out for her, catching one of her kisses when she turned in her dance, his eager, unabashed wife.

“You’re very like an Abasanti tribesman tonight, Jared.”

Christ’s bones, she was beautiful!

She swayed in place, regarded him steadfastly, boldly flicking her gaze downward across his belly to rest on his penis, staring at his groin, rocking the room sideways.

“And you, woman, are utterly wanton.”

“I can see you so well under an Abasanti moon, my warrior husband.” She draped the lace shawl over her shoulders and strolled toward him, smiling, her hips still swaying. “Celebrating your astounding prowess, proudly wearing two stripes of ochre paint along your jaw.”

His extraordinary wife applied the imaginary ochre paint to his jaw with her fingers, following each with a line of hot, lingering kisses that drove him ever closer to the edge, that wrapped him in the heady scent of lilac and lemon.

“Dashes of deep red across your chest.” Her fingers were like slow, sweet fire, had a wild rhythm of their own.

“And, husband, a thick band of dazzling violet from the base of your throat down the length of your torso—”

She slid her fingers downward, over his heart and then lower to the middle of his belly and downward until he realized where she was heading.

“Kate!” He would have caught her hand, but she stopped short of his arousal so he held back, watching
her every move, watching her breasts bob, well within reach. “These Abasanti warriors must have nerves of steel.”

“Men of great courage.” She kissed him, dallied there with her tongue, then drew her fingers lightly down the bridge of his nose to his mouth. “Blue means that the warrior has raised himself up from a dark abyss to a place of great honor.”

“So much for that piddling knighthood ceremony I went through at Westminster Abbey when I received my earldom.”

“You do look fine in your ceremonial paint.”

He felt fine. And good. And almost worthy of her.

“Is there another color?” He spread his arms, opened his palms to her dance.

“Orange, my husband, from your shoulder to the tips of your fingers.” Her touch was slow and magnificent, soothing and raw, wild and sinuous.

She trailed kisses across his chest, spent a time tugging and licking at his nipples, nibbling, brushing her hips against his until he had closed his eyes and was moving slightly to her melody.

“Now, if I were an Abasanti woman I would devise my own band of color to bestow on my warrior.”

He liked being Kate’s own personal warrior, attended to with such care. “What color would that be?”

She rubbed her cheek against his chest. “A blend of two actually, a sunshine yellow and the green of a pine forest. Carefully applied from the buttocks forward around the hip to the—

“Kate!” Too late. Her wonderful hands. “Gahhhhhh, that’s so fine.”

She had flattened her palms and drawn them across his stomach and then in a single move, she’d fluted him with her exquisite fingers. Circled him, found his pulse and matched it.

“You’re so large, Jared. And thick and hot. I love the feel of you.”

He grabbed her shoulders, his blood sodden with the bliss of her touch. “Take care, Kate.”