Page 71 of An Extraordinary Lord

She cupped his face between her hands and leaned in to kiss him, granting herself this lingering taste of him before she let go completely of her heart and made love to him.

She began to pulse her hips against his in small but eager thrusts. He murmured her name and clasped her hips to help guide her in their quickening tempo as she rocked herself over him. These small plunges and retreats were nothing but a tease of what she knew would come, of the desperate desire brewing in both of them that would eventually be satiated beyond the edge of control. But even now, her body tingled from the small jolts of electricity that pulsed into her belly, from the way the tiny muscles inside her deliciously clenched and released around him.

“Jesus!” He sat up, startled, and his hips froze beneath her. He craned his neck to stare at her side where his hand rested on her hip, where dark stains had seeped through her dress into the white cotton shift beneath. “Blood.What the hell happ—”

She kissed him, then rasped out against his lips the terrible confession, “Not mine.”

For a long moment, he didn’t move as understanding of what she meant fell through him.

She felt his shock fade into acceptance as his lips slowly relaxed against hers. But only for a moment before his kisses turned hungry and fierce, hot and openmouthed, as if he knew the absolution she sought in him for everything she had done, and not just tonight but for years before.

Yet the initiative had to be hers to take. So she broke the kiss and pushed him down onto his back. She peeled her shift up her body, over her head, and off, exposing herself completely to his gleaming eyes.

The heat of his gaze raked over her. He stirred up goose bumps across her skin and drew her nipples into tight points. When he caressed her breasts with his hands, a whimper of such unbearable need escaped her that she shuddered.

Unable to restrain herself any longer, she placed her palms flat on his chest and rode him hard and fast. His pulse pounded wildly beneath her fingertips, and she dug them into his muscles as the pleasure grew inside her. With every forward slide up his abdomen, she felt the loss of him inside her, only to give a soft moan of joy when she slammed back and brought him once again inside her to the hilt.

Tossing back her head, she welcomed the swelling need that overwhelmed her as her body spasmed around his. All the muscles inside her clamped hard around his length, and her thighs shook uncontrollably as they clasped like a vise against his hips.

Pleasure pounded through her, from that place of pulsating heat where their bodies joined straight out through the top of her head. She cried out as bliss overtook her, only realizing after she’d collapsed upon his chest that she’d screamed his name into the darkness. An unconscious attempt to brand him onto her soul.

His arms tightened around her as she struggled to regain her breath. The decadent pleasure washed over her in waves. All of her tingled, all of her belonged to him. In her heart, she knew she always would.

He buried his mouth in her hair and whispered between panting breaths, “Are you all right?”

Unable to find her voice, she nodded against his shoulder.

“Did you enjoy that?”

Enjoy?Her soul laughed! The shattering had been so much more than mere enjoyment. Yet she nodded again.

“Good.” Not withdrawing from her, he flipped her onto her back and pinned her arms against the mattress over her head. His eyes bore into hers with a look of such wicked intensity that she trembled. “My turn now.”

Her heart leapt into her throat. She couldn’t move except for a small wiggle of her hips that only served to elicit a groan of wolfish pleasure from him. “Merritt, if you—”

He thrust into her with a hard swirl of his hips that pressed his pelvic bone against her already sensitized sex and ripped her breath away. He prompted devilishly, “If I what?”

He did it again, and stars flashed before her eyes.

“If I make love to you slowly and relentlessly, for hours and hours and hours?”

He darted his head down to lick at her nipples, and every teasing flick of his tongue drove her mad. She could do nothing more than moan out his name in soft protest and intense yearning.

“If I told you how much I want you to surrender to me, to give yourself to me in every way?”

He took her nipple between his lips and suckled, long and hard and worshipping, until her breaths came in panting gasps. She arched her back off the mattress to bring herself even tighter against his mouth.

“Because that’s what I want, Veronica.” He placed a tender kiss to her nipple. “I want you to surrender to every pleasure I plan on giving you.”

The only reply she could manage was a shuddering whimper of capitulation.

He reached down to slip his arms beneath her legs and hook them over his biceps. Then he placed his hands flat onto the mattress at her shoulders. When he locked his elbows, he rolled her high onto her upper back beneath him and lifted her hips completely from the mattress. In this new position, she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his neck and cling to him as he began to move inside her.

Each plunge and retreat created a seesawing motion that rolled her back and forth along the length of her curled spine, from her shoulders to her buttocks. With each long and smooth rocking motion, he went impossibly deeper inside her until she felt as if she might slip completely beneath his skin and become part of him forever.

She let go of his shoulders and grabbed for the headboard. “I can’t—I can’t hold on…”

“Then let go,” he ordered huskily as he released her legs and let them wrap around his waist, to hold him clenched in the cradle of her thighs. “Let go and claim your pleasure.”