They’d both be bruised. He didn’t care.
He caught her by the thighs, urging her legs higher. She crossed her ankles behind his back as her hands on his rear urged him closer still.Faster, harder,those fingers said. He obliged.
Already his climax was roaring down on him, but she was restless and twisting under him, chasing her own release, not quite there.
“I need . . .” she managed. And then, “Please.”
He withdrew completely. “Turn on your front.”
He caged her body with his own, guiding her onto forearms and knees, her cheek against the pillow. Hands on her rib cage, he steadied her and reentered on a single hard stroke. She shuddered as the force of it pushed her forward.
Christ.Only an iron will kept him from spilling in her.
“Again,” she said breathlessly.
Another thrust like that and he’d go over the edge without her. He rested his weight on her to roll her nipples between thumb and second finger. Her body was drawn tight as a bowstring, breath soughing from her. He rocked against her without withdrawing.
“Help me,” he said roughly. He laced his hand through her own, guiding her to touch herself until she contracted with each pass of their fingers. Her breath grew more ragged yet, but he could barely hear it over his own. She pushed backwards against him in thwarted need.
He swore aloud; he wasn’t going to last. He thrust again. Again.
She sobbed out a breath.
Again. He couldn’t delay his crisis much longer; it was bearing down on him inexorably, a white haze that blinded him.
Again. Again.
Nothing in the world but the slap of flesh and her wet warmth. No finesse now. He gritted his teeth as her body shook beneath him, and then—Thank Christ.She arched backwards against him, her body spasming around him as she cried out.
As she went limp beneath him, he gripped both breasts,anchoring to her. One, two, three shallow thrusts, her body squeezing his cock, and his own climax tore through him.
He rested his forehead against her back, gulping oxygen. Her ribs communicated her own desperate need for air. She made no move to retreat. Both their frames were trembling still, the aftermath of frenzy and hurtling from the cliffs against which they’d dashed themselves. He endeavored to steady his breath.
He was still half hard, still buried in her. He hadn’t withdrawn. Hadn’t even tried.
Careless. Reckless. Selfish. His mind tried to prompt him along those lines.
He didn’t have it within him to castigate himself.
No going back. No going back from the moment he’d followed her on rue Montmartre.
Slowly, in stages, awareness returned.
There had been the fevered reach for release, then the blinding climax that seized and flung her beyond pleasure with a white-hot explosion. And then she’d floated somewhere in a nothingness for a time.
Sense of touch returned first. Their bodies were still joined, his cock still partially hard. His chest rested on her back, hairs scratchy against her skin. Both of them were slicked with sweat. He still held some of his weight braced on his elbows; she could appreciate now as she had not in the moment that he had been mindful of her smaller frame. His head was turned so that one of his cheeks was resting just towards center of her right shoulder; his stubble prickled as he breathed through his mouth.
His hands were still on her breasts. He seemed to become aware of the last at the same time she did for his thumbs stroked slowly once, lightly, over her nipples, and then again. A weak stabof pleasure pulsed through her despite the languor engulfing her body. She shifted slightly beneath him. The wetness of their coupling, his and hers, was between her thighs.
She smelled faintly but not unpleasantly the sweat from their bodies; under that the fading scents of their soaps and over it the sharp smell of sex. His breath, warm and still somewhat labored, was near enough to catch traces of liquor from earlier.
Nothing, absolutely nothing in her marriage to Jamie, mutually pleasurable as it was, had prepared her for the sheer carnality of what had just happened.
She hadn’t any idea what to say.
After a few more minutes, during which time she became aware of distant noises from the floor below, Nathaniel disengaged from her. He left the bed. Water splashed in the basin. He returned with a damp flannel; at this domestic nicety, her cheeks grew incongruously hot given what had just occurred.
He extinguished the lamp beside the bed and then his body was against hers, the blankets pulled up against the room’s chill. He was warm and solid; she clutched onto him. She was grateful to be held. She had the wild thought that if it weren’t for his arms anchoring her, she might fly off into the ether. Even though he was part of the reason why.
