Her response was instantaneous, undeniable, encouraging-a murmuring moan trapped in her throat. Her fingers tightened in his hair as his fingers played, learned. Seduced.
Deliah felt the wanton within her rise, felt her blossom and bloom with every evocative touch, with every heavy thrust of his tongue against hers, every increasingly flagrant caress.
No matter her memories, it had never been like this. Never so fiery, never so fraught. She’d never been so desperately needy.
Even through her pelisse, his knowing hands made her breasts swell and ache, a sweeter, sharper ache than she recalled. Griffiths, the bastard, had never made her feel like this. There was no comparison.
This was new, and she had to have. Better, more; she had to know. She reached for the buttons of his coat as he reached for hers.
The next minutes went in a blind flurry of hands and grasping, greedy fingers, of passion escalating degree by inexorable degree as this garment, then that, slid away.
Tugged, pulled, ripped away.
And blind need took over-infected them both, drove them, fired them.
His hands found her skin, hard, hot and urgent. Hers found his, greedy and grasping. The muscled expanse of his chest, his heavy shoulders, the shifting muscles of his back.
Then his lips left hers, slid lower. His mouth fastened over one nipple and she arched, cried out.
Discovery and demand, yielding, then seizing, insisting and commanding, they traded caresses, shared and challenged, uninhibitedly answered the other’s call.
Until they rolled on the bed, skin to naked skin, long limbs tangling, hands sculpting, urging, fingers searching.
Finding.
She arched beneath him as he stroked between her thighs. Lips locked with his, she burned, her hands gripping his sides, urging him over her.
Into her.
He complied. Lifting over her, he parted her thighs with his, spread them wide, set his hips between, and with one powerful thrust joined them.
She lost her breath. Every nerve in her body sparked, then whipped taut. She gasped, might have cried out, the sound muffled by their still rapacious kiss.
He withdrew and plunged in again, deeper still, steel encased in velvet shafting into her body.
And the wild ride began.
Pagan in its power, it held her, compelled her. She danced beneath him, rode with him, through the flames, straight into the heart of the fire.
And they burned. Hotter, more intense than anything she’d dreamed, a fiery need blossomed at her core. Relentlessly, ruthlessly, he fed and stoked the blaze…
Until that need became her all, until it throbbed beneath her fingertips, pounded in her blood, burned beneath her skin.
Silk and passion. She was that and so much more. Del had never known such urgency, such all-consuming, unwavering compulsion to have a woman-to take her and be damned. Regardless-despite-any and all restrictions.
Despite every last one of his rational reservations.
It was madness-this driving desperation, this compulsive conviction. Its claws were sunk deep, not just in his flesh but into his psyche, his soul.
He couldn’t live without having her-some part of him had accepted that as indisputable fact. That primitive side rejoiced as he pinned her beneath him, as her curves-those bounteous curves he’d coveted from first sight- cushioned him, cradled him. As, her long legs spread, she took him in, arched and took him yet deeper, all scalding slickness and wet, clinging heat.
She was tight, tighter than he’d expected, the walls of her sheath clutching, clamping, fisting him.
Taking him.
Lids heavy, breath coming in panting gasps, barely able to see, he was beyond all control, but so was she. This might have been unwise, but he didn’t care-and, thank God, neither did she. If he’d had any doubts, the half-moons her nails were scoring in his skin had banished them.
She was with him, urging him on even as he reached for her knees, and drew first one, then the other, to his hips, opening her to even deeper penetration. She only gasped, clung, rocked beneath him ever more evocatively, wordlessly pleading for release.
The roar in his blood grew, drowning out all but the need to have her climax. To see her surrender, to take her to the very peak of desperate sexual need, then tip her over into sexual bliss.
To feel her beneath him as he did, to sense that moment of absolute surrender.
To see her face, her expression, in the instant ecstasy took her.
He thrust deeper, faster, harder, more powerfully as he felt her rise.
Her fingers bit into his arms as she arched. She gasped into his mouth as her nerves drew that very last fraction tauter.
Then she shattered.
She came apart beneath him on a strangled cry, a sound that satisfied one of his needs. He’d expected to hold back, to take more of her, yet her convulsing sheath clamped tight, and she took him with her, pulled him over the precipice’s edge and on.
Release swept him; he couldn’t deny it. His roar muffled in the curve of her throat, he thrust deep and let go.
And joined her.
Felt her arms close around him and tug him down, wrap about him and hold him close as oblivion rolled in, over, and enveloped them.
For long moments, the heat held them, blessed and golden, a gentle sea.
Slowly, inexorably, satiation swept in, infusing them as they spiraled down, and drifted back to earth.
To the unexpected, unanticipated intimacy of each other’s naked arms.
Deliah woke to a gray morning and the rattling of coals in the grate. Heart leaping, she glanced at the bed beside her-only to discover it empty.
The bed was a four-poster, and at some point in the night Del must have drawn the curtains along one side and across the end; she could see the window and the leaden sky, but the hotel maid at the hearth couldn’t see her.
Or the rumpled, crumpled disaster of the bed.
Bess would be up shortly and undoubtedly would notice, but Deliah had no intention of explaining. Indeed, thinking back, she wasn’t sure she could.
How did one rationalize something so far beyond reason?
She spent two minutes trying, then gave up.
Aside from all else, she could not bring herself to regret a single moment of the night, something Bess would detect, and that would only lead to more questions. Difficult, prickly questions given Bess knew her history with gentlemen and was every bit as protective as Del wished to be.
Would he regret-was he already regretting-the interlude, their unanticipated explosion of mutual madness? Of shared insanity.
She knew he hadn’t intended it any more than she had, but they’d clashed, kissed fierily, and that had been that.
The firestorm of passion sparked by that kiss had swept over them and cindered all caution, and reduced all inhibitions to insubstantial ash.
The result…had been glorious.
Lying in the enfolding warmth, she replayed each scintillating moment, at least those she could recall.
Quite enough to heat her cheeks, to have her shifting beneath the sheet.
Then she remembered what had happened later, when he’d woken her in the depths of the night.
