‘Good...then help me out of it.’
She heard him swallow as he hesitated. Heard his indecision. Could imagine how his nobleness and need to always do the right thing warred with the base urges all men suffered from.
She smiled as she removed a pin from her hair and the fat curl bounced against her shoulder, enjoying leading him into temptation. ‘I am inviting you to bed, my Luke...exactly as you requested.’
His fingers were clumsy on the laces, his soft breath uneven against her neck. Twice he gave in to the urge to press his lips to where her pulse beat but the effort it took to stop at that was palpable. As soon as the bodice was loose he stepped several feet back. Rescuing her again in case she had a change of heart and she loved him all the more for that selfless gesture.
As he watched her, she slid the garment from her shoulders until gravity took it to puddle on the floor around her feet. Only then did she turn around, suddenly feeling every inch the sultry vixen or Aphrodite she had so often been called. Only this time, she wanted to be those things, expressly for him. She had never stood quite so confidently in only her undergarments before, usually loathing the sight of her cumbersome breasts trying to break free over the top of her stays. But Luke’s eyes were on fire as he took it all in and tried and failed to keep his gaze fixed on her face.
Yet his lust-filled stare didn’t feel the least bit like a violation, more like a benediction, because he wanted all of her.
For ever.
When she walked towards him this time, he didn’t hesitate at all. He hauled her into his arms and as he poured his heart into the kiss, he allowed his hands to wander, filling them with her still-bound breasts while the stark, impressive evidence of his desire pressed insistent and proud against her.
In a frenzy of lips, tongues and teeth, they stumbled backwards on to the bed. His fingers found every other pin in her hair until it tumbled wildly around her shoulders. Hers tugged his shirt up his body and over his head before they headed to his waistband and she undid that too, pausing only long enough so her stays could be tossed to the floor and she could tug the tight fabric from his hips. Then, as she sat back on her heels as his manhood sprang free, her nerves finally got the better of her.
They must have shown in her expression, because tenderness instantly replaced Luke’s fervour. ‘I won’t hurt you, Hope. I couldn’t...’ He cupped her cheek, looking every bit as overawed as she. ‘I love you.’
‘I know.’ It wasn’t that which had brought her up short. ‘I love you too, Luke...so very much.’ So much, it rocked her to her core. ‘And I am not scared.’ Not of that at least. But now that he was naked—at her instigation—he would expect her to be the same, and she wasn’t sure she was brave enough, and certainly wasn’t confident enough, to show him everything as brazenly as he.
To cover it, she leaned over him to kiss him again, intent on distracting him from the fear he had seen in her eyes, but as she reached for the lamp to snuff it out, he caught her wrist. ‘It hardly strikes me as fair that you get to see me, but I am denied the pleasure of seeing you.’ From beneath her, two dark and much too clever eyes seemed to bore into her soul as his hands smoothed the last layer of her chemise from her shoulders, then he smiled when she clutched it tight to her chest.
‘And there I was thinking you were fearless.’
‘Frankly, there is just too much of me to be fearless.’ She didn’t have the compact and neat figures of her peers.
‘Thank goodness.’ He was smiling. Amused by her sudden prudishness. Above her hands, he traced the top of her breasts with his finger. ‘Don’t judge me, but it is one of the things I have always liked about you.’
‘And the thing about myself I most dislike.’
‘I know...but for all the wrong reasons. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, blessed with the most sinful and tempting body.’ He wound a finger in one of the curls that rested against her nipple, purposely grazing it as he did so. ‘And I am going to need to kiss it all if I’m going to make love to you properly.’ Looking her dead in the eye, he grinned and tugged the fabric some more. ‘Or is it your plan to keep your breasts hidden until death do us part, because I can tell you now that isn’t going to happen as I’ll hatch a cunning plan to get my wicked way soon enough. I am resourceful like that.’
He was and when he put it like that, her reluctance to bare all now did sound a bit daft. ‘I have fantasised about this moment for months, Hope, but I am happy to wait a few more to consummate our love if you think it might improve your self-confidence.’
Then to vex her, he folded his hands under his head, his cocky, lopsided grin letting her know in no uncertain terms that he knew she couldn’t go another hour, let alone another month without feeling him inside her.
She let the flimsy garment fall and he almost groaned aloud as a painful bolt of lust ricocheted through him. Instead, he sighed as his eyes drank her in. Her breasts were full and round and perfect, capped with dusky nipples which he was desperate to taste. The trim waist flared over the generous hips he loved, and as she primly knelt on the mattress awaiting his judgement, only the top of the red curls which nestled between her pale thighs were visible.
‘The fantasy was outstanding...but you are better, Hope. So much better than I could have imagined.’
When he could stand it no longer, and had to touch, he did so with reverence, knowing he was indeed the luckiest man in the world but that she wouldn’t believe him if he said that. ‘Look what you do to me.’ He took her hand and wrapped it around his erection. Then caressed one of her sensitive puckered nipples so that she could feel his body twitch and pulse with need. ‘What on earth makes you think that you do not please me? I am overwhelmed, Hope. A lost cause. All yours to do with as you please.’
It was pure torture watching her hand explore the shape of him, and he had to close his eyes because the pleasure was so intense. Because he had to, Luke kissed her lips again, dragging her on to his lap so that skin touched skin. Her breasts filled his hands, the saucy tips pebbling as his thumbs gently traced them. Only when he felt her sigh into his mouth did he lower them both to the mattress so that he could carry out his promise.
He trailed his lips over her shoulders first, then down her arms. Kissed every finger before he moved to her stomach, and down her legs, then took his own sweet time retracing the route, waiting until she was moaning, impatient, before he finally allowed himself to taste her breasts.
She groaned when he finally sucked her nipple into his mouth, and seemed delightfully surprised it brought her pleasure too, until the quest for pleasure took over and she anchored his head there with her hands. Sensing she needed more, he allowed his fingers to wend a lazy trail to the seductive triangle of curls, her hips instinctively rising to meet them.
She trembled at his first touch. Her body soft. Already wet and ripe. As he stroked her and that tight bunch of nerve endings awoke, she struggled and writhed, murmuring nonsense as encouragement until she forgot to be embarrassed about her beautiful, lush and overtly feminine body and thrust her breasts towards his mouth demanding they be worshipped too.
In mere moments, she was on the cusp, her muscles tense and her hips straining against his touch. He had never seen anything so alluringly erotic in his life as Hope in the throes of ecstasy. And she was his.
All his.
‘Don’t stop, Luke...please don’t stop.’
‘I won’t, love.’ Her eyes fluttered closed, and as her hips bucked he gathered her close and kissed her as she came apart in his arms, capturing her cries in his mouth as she violently shuddered her release and collapsed boneless against him.
