Page 68 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Beneath the skin, she was as wild as he, as unfettered. As unrestrained in her pleasure, as open in her ardor.
Angling his head, he found her lips, supped, then sank deeper, another element of this untamed mating.
And suddenly they were there, teetering on the cusp of paradise.
He hung back for one second, and she sank her nails into his back—in desperation, scored his skin.
He thrust deep and she shattered.
And took him with her.
Straight over the edge into the blinding heat of ecstasy.
And on, on. The cataclysm wracked them, wrung from them the last drops of their passion, then left them limp, clinging to each other as glory bloomed, spread, and dragged their senses down.
* * *
Sprawled on his back with Lucilla slumped across his chest, her long hair in glorious disarray, the tendrils warm where they caressed his body, he slowly returned to the land of the living, his mind swimming up from the depths of satiation.
A satiation deeper than any he’d previously known.
He frowned as his mind fully re-engaged. Eyes still shut, he considered, compared.
He’d never experienced anything remotely similar in his not-uneventful, considerably varied, and extensive sexual life.
He didn’t understand why that should be so; they hadn’t done anything he hadn’t done countless times before, yet…
The notion that the quite startling result might be because it wasLucillahe’d finally indulged in the act with wasn’t one he wished to examine too closely.
The truth hit him like a brick. He’d finally succumbed and had surrendered to the attraction between them, and to her, and let both lead him here, to this. They’d shared their bodies; he was sharing her bed. Very definitely the last thing he’d wanted to do and the last place he’d wanted to find himself.
Yet despite that…he didn’t regret it. Couldn’t even pretend enough to conjure the emotion. Even so…
Opening his eyes, he glanced at her, but her head was tucked down, her cheek resting on his chest; he couldn’t see her face. “That was your first time.” He didn’t make it a question.
“Yes.” The admission sounded…dreamy. She was clearly still awash with pleasure.
He tried not to feel smug, but failed.
Slowly, languorously, she rolled over in his arms until her breasts were pressed once more to his chest. Her still naked breasts; he wasn’t about to complain.
Finally lifting her head, she looked into his face, into his eyes. He couldn’t guess what she saw there, but after several moments, her lips slowly curved, then she patted his chest, turned again, and settled as she had been, her head over his heart.
“My decision,” she softly said. “Not yours.”
He wasn’t sure he liked that; wasn’t sure he liked the implication. He’d been very much an equal participant.
That said, despite the extreme provocation of the situation they’d been plunged into earlier that night, with her so shaken and him so ridden by a protective possessiveness he even now didn’t fully comprehend, he would have done the gentlemanly thing and walked away—if she had let him. His resistance would have held if she hadn’t demolished it with her insistence.
Only hours prior to that, he’d done the right thing and told her, clearly and unequivocally, why he and she could never develop a formal relationship. Why they could never marry. There had been several strands in his reasoning, all contributing to that conclusion, and she’d understood them all. More, she’d said so.
She’d known he and she would never wed, yet she had—as she’d just confirmed—made her own decision to take him to her bed.
To demand he share it with her.
She—and the situation—had made it well-nigh impossible for him to refuse.
He wondered what that meant in terms of where they were now.
