The Tempting of Thomas Carrick (26 page)

Their bodies met, naked skin to skin.

He’d forgotten just how potent that first jolt of sensation could be—how momentarily disorienting.

Lucilla’s senses seized. Her eyes remained open, but she couldn’t see. The feel of him, of his skin so hot, of his muscled strength surrounding her, pinning her—covering her in this most primitive of ways—stole her breath.

Stole her senses and claimed her mind.

His hands held hers trapped, the weight of his arms anchoring hers to the bed, the broad sweep of his chest pressing against her breasts, declaring his dominance. His hips lay heavy over hers, immobilizing her; the columns of his thighs felt like steel between hers.

She should have felt fear, or at least wariness. With any other man, she would have.

But with him…gripping his hands, she opened her senses wide—wider—the better to drink in every last scintilla of tactile sensation.

Of the raw intimacy of his naked body lying atop hers, of his skin, hot and rough, firing hers, abrading hers—feeding her passion.

With effort, she drew in a tight—so tight—breath.

As he did the same.

Her breasts rose as his chest expanded; the swollen mounds flattened against his hard planes, her tightly furled nipples pressing into his skin.

She blinked, refocused. For one instant, in the soft shadows of the bed, their eyes met—hers felt impossibly wide. Their gazes locked. Time stood still for just that instant, then he dipped his head.

He found her lips with his. She parted them, welcomed him in, then drew him deeper. The kiss was all liquid heat, desire made manifest, the thrust of his tongue a presaging of the joining and sharing to come.

He angled his head and plunged deeper yet, and their passions rose and whirled again, higher, then higher.

She let go and followed, surrendering again to the compelling beat fashioned of need, of desire and yearning.

When he drew back from the kiss, she let him go without complaint. The kiss had been intense enough to leave her senses reeling. Feeling him draw away, his hands releasing hers as he eased down the bed, she lay with every nerve on high alert, tense and flickering, and waited, expectant, to see what came next.

Slow down, slow down, slow dow
n. Thomas repeated that mantra as he slid down her body. His didn’t want to comply, but it was obvious a little finesse was required. He was large, distinctly so, and she…wasn’t.

No matter how experienced she might be—and of that he really had no idea—given he didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to, hurt her, he needed to find the strength to slow them down….

The only way he could think of to do so was to spread her legs, wedge his shoulders between, and dip his tongue in her nectar.

Predictably, she shrieked, but as she’d earlier proved, no one would hear her. Only him—and, he discovered, he liked hearing her scream with pleasure. So very different from her screaming with fear.

Those delectable screams grew increasingly breathy; she grew increasingly breathless as he ministered to her senses and his. Her tartness was ambrosia on his tongue; the restless, needy, almost mewling sounds he eventually drew from her were exactly what he’d hoped to achieve.

With calculated expertise, he drew the nubbin of her pleasure between his lips and flicked it with the tip of his tongue.

And sent her flying.

She shattered on a broken scream.

After one last long lick, he rose, shifting over her. His body aching with need, he settled his hips between her widespread thighs.

Her slickness coated the head of his erection in scalding welcome; even before he’d thought, he’d flexed his spine and pushed past her tight entrance.

He caught his breath.

Letting his head hang, he closed his eyes against the sight of her lying wantonly naked and spread beneath him. He forced himself to pause and breathe in. Deeply. His muscles bunched and shifted as he fought down the urge to thrust in to the hilt. She was tight and hot and open to him—his to take, to claim.

He didn’t need to be brutal about it.

When he was sure he had enough control to last the distance, he eased his reins and pushed further. Deeper.

Even though she was all but boneless, he felt her tense; he halted, but almost immediately her tension eased, faded. In the next heartbeat, she raised her arms and wrapped them about his chest. Reaching, holding. Her hands flattened on his back and pressed; wordlessly, she urged him on.

Dragging in another tortured breath, he held it and obliged, forging deeper into her slick sheath, aware of the tightness as he stretched her… He paused and eased back a fraction, then he flexed his hips and thrust in.

She tipped her hips at the same moment.

He ended fully embedded in her body. She gave a soft, smothered squeak, and his mind seized as she clamped, hard, all along his length.

The membrane that had marked her virgin had been barely there. She was twenty-eight, had ridden all her life, yet even though, from her flagrant encouragement, he’d assumed that she’d long ago indulged in the act, he’d had just enough mind left to register the slight resistance, the sudden give—and know.

Opening his eyes, he stared down at her in shock and confused disbelief, but she didn’t open her eyes and look back. All he saw was the faintest hint of awareness crossing her features—leading him to imagine what she was so suddenly aware of—and then she moved. Smoothly shifting beneath him, relentlessly and inescapably she urged him into the age-old dance.

His mind shut down. His senses whirled.

He closed his eyes and answered her call, responded to the primal rhythm she set, and joined with her and rode on. He was unable to do anything else, even to pause long enough to ask…a question she clearly didn’t wish to answer, at least, not then.

Not with the fires of passion, finally released and free, raging through them.

Not with need sinking its spurs deep, then deeper, driving them, raking them, forcing them on.

The flames they’d spent the last half hour stoking rose up and engulfed them.

And they rode. She might have been a novice, but she knew the ways of this riding. Knew when to cling and hold him in her body, when to release and let him pull back.

So he could drive into her again, and drive them both on.

Into the landscape of their melded desires, created from the interlocking complementary aspects of their passionate souls.

That they were well matched—in passion, in desire, and, tonight, in need—could not have been clearer.

They moved as one, increasingly confidently, increasingly forcefully, driving and urging each other on.

They gasped, clung, panted; breaths mingling, skins slick, she writhed, he plundered, and they strove for yet more.

To you, I will always bring life.

With crystal-like clarity, he remembered the last time she’d done exactly that, when he’d been running through the forests as Herne, god of the hunt. She’d seen him, known him, and had saved him from a hunter’s bullet.

It seemed, now, that he was running as Herne again—the same ancient, thudding, repetitive beat filled his heart and pounded through his veins—and she was there again, with him again, his goddess come to claim him.

Naked and willingly spread beneath him, she offered herself to him, his to claim in return.

With her passion and her power, she held him to her and urged him on, and he plunged deeper into her fire, deeper into the slick heat of her body, and wild and free, together they raced on.

Together through the heat, the raging flames, through the tumult of their combined desires.

Beneath the skin, she was as wild as he, as unfettered. As unrestrained in her pleasure, as open in her ardor.

Angling his head, he found her lips, supped, then sank deeper, another element of this untamed mating.

And suddenly they were there, teetering on the cusp of paradise.

He hung back for one second, and she sank her nails into his back—in desperation, scored his skin.

He thrust deep and she shattered.

And took him with her.

Straight over the edge into the blinding heat of ecstasy.

And on, on. The cataclysm wracked them, wrung from them the last drops of their passion, then left them limp, clinging to each other as glory bloomed, spread, and dragged their senses down.

* * *

Sprawled on his back with Lucilla slumped across his chest, her long hair in glorious disarray, the tendrils warm where they caressed his body, he slowly returned to the land of the living, his mind swimming up from the depths of satiation.

A satiation deeper than any he’d previously known.

He frowned as his mind fully re-engaged. Eyes still shut, he considered, compared.

He’d never experienced anything remotely similar in his not-uneventful, considerably varied, and extensive sexual life.

He didn’t understand why that should be so; they hadn’t done anything he hadn’t done countless times before, yet…

The notion that the quite startling result might be because it was
Lucilla
he’d finally indulged in the act with wasn’t one he wished to examine too closely.

The truth hit him like a brick. He’d finally succumbed and had surrendered to the attraction between them, and to her, and let both lead him here, to this. They’d shared their bodies; he was sharing her bed. Very definitely the last thing he’d wanted to do and the last place he’d wanted to find himself.

Yet despite that…he didn’t regret it. Couldn’t even pretend enough to conjure the emotion. Even so…

Opening his eyes, he glanced at her, but her head was tucked down, her cheek resting on his chest; he couldn’t see her face. “That was your first time.” He didn’t make it a question.

“Yes.” The admission sounded…dreamy. She was clearly still awash with pleasure.

He tried not to feel smug, but failed.

Slowly, languorously, she rolled over in his arms until her breasts were pressed once more to his chest. Her still naked breasts; he wasn’t about to complain.

Finally lifting her head, she looked into his face, into his eyes. He couldn’t guess what she saw there, but after several moments, her lips slowly curved, then she patted his chest, turned again, and settled as she had been, her head over his heart.

“My decision,” she softly said. “Not yours.”

He wasn’t sure he liked that; wasn’t sure he liked the implication. He’d been very much an equal participant.

That said, despite the extreme provocation of the situation they’d been plunged into earlier that night, with her so shaken and him so ridden by a protective possessiveness he even now didn’t fully comprehend, he would have done the gentlemanly thing and walked away—if she had let him. His resistance would have held if she hadn’t demolished it with her insistence.

Only hours prior to that, he’d done the right thing and told her, clearly and unequivocally, why he and she could never develop a formal relationship. Why they could never marry. There had been several strands in his reasoning, all contributing to that conclusion, and she’d understood them all. More, she’d said so.

She’d known he and she would never wed, yet she had—as she’d just confirmed—made her own decision to take him to her bed.

To demand he share it with her.

She—and the situation—had made it well-nigh impossible for him to refuse.

He wondered what that meant in terms of where they were now.

She’d relaxed in his arms, but she wasn’t asleep. Briefly, he hugged her tighter to get her attention. “So this is what? Your first fling?”

She didn’t immediately answer. Then she shrugged the shoulder not pressed to his chest. “It is what it is.” She paused, then more quietly added, “And I’m content with that.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say in response—nothing that he wanted, at that point, to say.

And while there were several other pertinent questions he wanted to ask—such as whether she would consider indulging again later—he didn’t feel now was the moment for such inquiries.

He thought, then murmured, “I’ll stay until dawn.”

“Yes. Please.” She settled deeper into his embrace. “Until then…at least.”

Another statement he saw no reason to challenge. Closing his eyes, he let his senses sink back into the satiation that still had a firm grip on his body, and was waiting, still, to snare his mind.

* * *

Lucilla left her room and headed for the dining room, eager to discover what effect the events of the night would have on more mundane interactions between Thomas and her.

She’d spent a lifetime following her instincts, even when they’d urged her to acts that, on the face of it, had at first led to what seemed like disasters. In the clearer light of hindsight, said disasters had always proved to be turning points leading to the correct path—not just for her but for all those involved.

Last night, she’d followed her instincts. They’d spoken loud and clear, and she’d surrendered herself to their guidance. She’d followed their insistent compulsion without question, without hesitation.

And had reaped a glorious reward. A reward that had been a great deal
more
than she’d expected.

She had thought she’d known, that she’d understood, but the clinical explanations and whispered confidences hadn’t prepared her for the sheer, glorious physicality of the act. At moments—such as when he’d first joined with her—her senses had nearly overloaded; she hadn’t had any notion of how it would
feel
—what it would feel like to have him inside her like that, stretching and filling her
like that
, with such strength and weight, such raw male power.

And the sensations associated with that fabulous muscled power had rolled on through the ensuing intimate engagement.

Lips curving, she paused at the head of the stairs as the memories rolled through her, leaving remembered warmth beneath her skin. Thus far, her instincts had proved correct, and a lifetime of experience reassured her that, in this instance, too, her instincts’ directives had started her and Thomas down the road they needed to take.

She didn’t know the details of how matters would work out, only that they would.