Page 44 of The Autumn Wife
“Theo—”
“Let me touch you. All over. Yes?”
Yes yes yes yes yes.She seized his hand, intending to place it on her breast, but he resisted her pull.
“I’ve a stonemason’s hands.” He opened his palm so she could see the calluses and ridges. “Mortar is caustic. It hardens the skin—”
“I’m not that delicate.”
“In my eyes, you are.” He moved to the stove to dip a linen in a water bucket close to the fire’s warmth. He came back, slipped a hip on the pallet, and lay the damp linen against her collarbone.
“Too cold, too hot?”
The linen felt as warm as a kiss. “Perfect.”
Flattening his hand behind the damp cloth, he swept it into the hollow of her throat and then alongthe line of one collarbone. She swallowed hard, a burn of eagerness twining with a prickle of anticipation.
The moisture left in its wake cooled her skin. He repeated the motion on her left side, drawing the same warm path over her neck with a gentle stroke. He lay the warm cloth upon her breast, and those strangled noises threatened in her throat again.
“You fit in my hand,” he murmured, “so perfectly. Your breast belongs in my grip.”
When he squeezed gently, she arched her back, driving her nipple against his palm. Her breasts felt heavy, full and tender—and more so, when Theo removed his hand to blow upon the damp fabric separating her skin from his tongue.
“Open your eyes,” Theo commanded. “Look at me while I touch you.”
Her eyelids were lead-heavy, but she did as he bade, watching him as he slid the cloth over her ribs, around the indentation of her waist, to linger for a moment on her lower belly, just below her navel.
He paused there, looking her over for a painfully long time. Her thighs trembled with new ferocity. She bent a knee, then laid it flat, only to bend the other, the ache growing and, at the same time, sharpening to a point. She slid her own hands under her back to prevent herself from reaching down to ease that ache. For she saw, stiff inside his breeches, the straining member he would fill her body with, before this nightwas over. In that way, Theo would bring her the pleasure she craved.
She wasn’t sure she could wait.
“Theo.”
As if on command, he slid the cloth lower, between her thighs, pressing his fingers into the ache. She arched against his touch as he moved in gentle strokes. Little bolts of lightning shot through her. She vibrated along with a crack of thunder outside. He increased the pressure so she felt, beyond the linen weave, the ridges of the calluses on the pads of his fingers, then she pressed her head against the pallet and shouted as she became, once again, a writhing creature of light and fire.
Sometime later, the moisture of the linen cloth cooling, she managed to blink her eyes open. Theo, with a hip on the pallet, bore an intense, wondrous expression on his face.
She stuttered, “D-did I… Did I scream?”
“A little.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I’ll be making you scream louder than that before this night is through.”
She bit her lower lip, lost for words.
“Your skin flushes after your pleasure. You moan and throw your arms over your head.” His brows twitched as he shook his head. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
A weakness rippled through her, in body and spirit. Had he bathed her in warmed honey, she couldn’t feel more treasured. She gathered whatstrength remained to rise to a sitting position so she could touch his jaw. How could it be that she would find a man who was kind, patient and loving when she had felt, for so long, forsaken by both God and man? Was she dreaming? Would she wake up?
How could she ever let him go?
“No more teasing.” She surged close to his beautiful face and offered her lips. “I want you inside me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ihave nothing to offer you,Theo wanted to say.You deserve better.
His mind screamed those words, yet he had no power to retreat from her touch. She slipped her fingers along his jaw and then slid them deep into his hair. Her face, lit golden by the fire, pleaded for loving. Gilded hair tumbled over one shoulder to pool upon a naked thigh. Waves of scent came off that waterfall, of kitchen herbs and baby’s milk.
All resistance crumbled into dust.
