Page 38 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
CHAPTER16
Mathias reacted quickly.
He knew better than to let a golden opportunity pass him by.
He tugged her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut behind her, all the while keeping her firmly in his arms, answering the unpracticed, fevered enthusiasm of her kisses. That incredible wealth of sable hair fell down her back, whipping around her waist as he moved her. She was wearing little more than a loose shift and a satin robe, leaving her skin and shape deliciously open for exploration beneath his hands.
He gripped her to him, walking her backward toward the bed propped in the corner of the room. He knew that this was the last place he should take her, but he was no more able to resist the direction of his feet than he was able to draw the moon down through the window and shatter it at their feet.
He had been wanting to get her alone for days, had been dying to taste her again since that stolen moment in the cargo hold.
He would enjoy this until she stopped him.
Surely she would stop him.
The sensible ones always did. And Jade Ferris was the most sensible woman he had ever met.
Jade was not giving any indications of her limits, however, and did nothing but moan softly into his mouth when he tipped her onto the mattress, climbing over her to continue to indulge in that sweet little mouth. She did not stop him when he kissed his way down her pale throat, nor when he pushed the fabric from her shoulder and sampled the bare flesh revealed there. Her willingness in the matter shot through him in a bolt of heat, his hands flexing where they slid downward to hold her at her waist.
She shrugged away the dressing gown, raising her arms to loop them around his neck. She pulled him closer rather than pushing him away. The arch of her foot slid along the muscle at the back of his calf. He moaned against her skin, trailing his kisses along the delicate ridge of her collar bone, tasting the little dip at the base of her throat.
She tangled her hands in his hair, giving a light tug to the strands as she arched her back, urging him down toward her breasts.
Christ.
Was this really happening?
He gripped her hips and used his teeth to pull down the lacy neckline, his temperature spiking at the way she gasped. He sampled indulgently of the soft flesh revealed to him as he went, each taste sweeter than the last, until finally his tongue was rewarded with the capture of a pebbled nipple and a gasp of pleasure from the creature beneath him. He drew it deeper into his mouth, sucking as he swirled his tongue around, lavishing in this forbidden fruit. When he left one breast to attend to the other, the little gasping sounds she made very nearly fractured his sanity.
He couldn’t rightly say he had any sanity left at this point. Those berry-colored nipples, exposed to him willingly and presented to satiate his carnal appetites, were enough to undo him completely. He rucked the shift farther down, sliding the thin muslin over the pale perfection of her skin. He revealed every part as he found a way to taste it, nipping greedily at her navel, at the curve of her waist.
God in heaven, wasn't she going to stop him?!
He hesitated at her hips and looked up at her where she sat watching him with hooded eyes and shallow breaths. "Jade," he managed, his voice coming out rough and ragged. How could he even phrase the question he needed to ask?
"Yes?" she replied, blinking those giant eyes at him. "Yes."
"Yes?" he repeated in disbelief.
She smiled at him then, the corners of her lips curving up into a divine little arc that rounded her cheeks and shone in her eyes. "Yes, Captain," she replied, having managed to both wholly misunderstand his confusion and knock him right over the tipping point.
He cursed, though the word that left his lips was likely unintelligible in his scramble to work the fabric over her legs and off onto the floor. She remained laying in a pool of satiny fabric, nude and fully on display for his pleasure. She seemed unabashed about it, reclining back onto her dressing gown, framed by the chaos of wildly curling hair. She let her eyes flutter shut, as though to indulge in the pleasure of his gaze, as though just his eyes could be felt on her skin.
He pulled his shirt over his head, wanting desperately to feel her skin against his own. When her eyes blinked open again, his breath hitched at the way they roamed over him, devouring him the same way he had done to her. He climbed back into the bed, his trousers now the only thing preventing them from being utterly consumed by this fire between them.
Little good it was doing, he thought, as he pressed his arousal into her and her legs came to wrap around his hips. If he had taken them off, he realized, he would already be inside her.
That thought also did nothing to quell the heat in his body or the singularity of his thoughts. He caught her mouth again with a demanding kiss, a plundering of her very soul. He ran his hands wantonly over her body, cupping one palm over her thigh where it wrapped around his hip and squeezing the soft, sweet flesh there.
He wanted to pleasure her. He wanted to make her weak, helpless with it. She made a small sound of protest when he broke their kiss, but it melted into a moan of approval as he dragged his mouth along her throat, beginning his path downward again.
Her hands came up to rest upon his shoulders, squeezing the muscle there in a way that he thought very well might break him.
He lavished attention on her breasts again, leaving them only to travel in the direction of the treasure he truly wanted. With great reluctance he pulled his hips away from her locked legs. He rested each thigh on the bed on either side of where he knelt, letting his hand find the center of her pleasure and test its willingness for exploration.
She was so slick, it made him feel weak. He stroked her in circles, testing her entrance with his fingers, and again he felt his own desire flare in the pit of his belly, his own thoughts reminding him that if he wished, he could be plunging into her right now, experiencing all that hot, wet warmth wrapped around his aching cock.
He forced himself to breathe, coming to kneel off the side of the bed, and used the strength in his arms to hitch her forward, supporting her knees with the width of his bare shoulders. He dove into her, likely far too fast and too enthusiastically for a first encounter, but he could not hold himself back. He moaned against her flesh, tasting her, teasing her with his tongue, lapping up the proof of her returned attraction for him.
