She felt the bed shift as he rose, heard the soft sound of some item of clothing being shed. His breeches, almost certainly, for she had already heard his coat hit the floor. Oh, my. Heat rushed over her; the nighttime chill of the room was little more than a suggestion to be ignored. Once she was fully on her back, though, uncertainty nudged closer to her consciousness. She didn’t know quite what to do with her hands. Press them to her sides? Fold them primly in her lap?
A nervous sort of laugh bubbled in her chest at the mental image that arose. She felt the mattress sink again as Gabriel returned to the bed. “Something amusing, my dear?” His warm voice at her ear made her scalp tingle. The lingering hint of his cologne combined with the elemental scent of his maleness to tickle her nostrils.
“I was wondering where to put my hands,” she confessed.
“Mmm.” He nuzzled her neck and drew in a deep, hungry breath, granting her permission to do the same. “I have a few thoughts. But to start…” His fingers tangled in hers and he lifted her arms over her head, pinning them to the pillow as he came more fully over her. His mouth sought and found hers, his lips soft, his day’s growth of beard rough, his tongue sleek and demanding. And she surrendered to all of it with an eagerness that once would have made her blush.
As before, his kisses did not linger in any one spot. She felt his lips along her jaw, down her throat, over the ridge of her collarbone. What happened when he reached her—?
“Ahhh!” She bucked upward as his mouth closed over her breast. The flickering heat of his tongue was almost too much; then he began to suck. The wet sound filled her ears and spikes of lightning shot from the place where his mouth was through every nerve in her body. When she was absolutely certain she could not survive the pleasure, he shifted his ministrations to her other breast, freeing his hands from hers to run them down her arms and along her body, at last settling to cup the breast he had abandoned, to pluck her tender nipple between finger and thumb.
There could be no better feeling. She was sure of it. Another cry escaped her lips, this time a cry of despair as his mouth shifted once more, now exploring the valley between her breasts before grazing along her ribs and over her belly. When he lifted his body away from hers, she gripped the headboard so tightly the delicately turned spindles dug into her tender palms and gave her pain. Anything, anything to keep herself from begging.
He was at her feet again. A string of pretty little kisses, the scrape of his beard, the sweep of his hands, up her shins, over her knees, to her thighs. Then…
“Open your legs.”
Shock shuddered through her at his dark tone of command. That inner voice, the one the blindfold had temporarily succeeded in silencing, wrangled itself free of its restraint and urged her to resist, to maintain some semblance of control. But the second, secret heart at the joining of her thighs pulsed eagerly. Not surprised that it would betray her, she searched the heart lodged safely behind her ribs, the heart that had always been under her sole command. It too throbbed and leaped at his startling demand.
After the briefest hesitation, hardly worthy of the name, she slid one leg over the edge of the bed, opening her very core to him.
With a whisper of touch, his fingertips skated over the soft skin between her thighs, learning this part of her as he had learned all the others. The merest brush against those silky curls, up to the swell of her belly and back down again. Her flesh tingled, anticipating his playful tracery.
His kiss followed, as she had feared—nay, prayed—it would. She was on fire, and yet his mouth burned as it traveled up from her knees to the delicate skin where her thighs joined her body. Hot breath ruffled her curls, then scorched her navel as he rested his rough cheek against her hip and let his fingers slip into her wetness. His touch was sure and steady and maddening, seeking and finding the place where her pleasure was centered. The first few strokes were enough to leave her panting, but when he set his mouth to her there, her body grew rigid with passion. If she screamed, would someone come?
But she did not want to be saved from this.
Without conscious thought, her hands dropped to his head, tangling in his hair as he sucked and licked until she shattered and shuddered into release. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, but the blindfold wicked them away.
Her breath was still sawing in and out of her lungs when he reached up to push the cravat away so he could look deep into her eyes as he entered her.
She had not known whether to expect pain the second time, as there had been the first, so long ago. But Gabriel had been born to bring her only pleasure, it seemed. He held her gaze as he filled her, arms at either side of her head, his strokes slow at first, then building and deepening as her desire built and deepened again. Now she could see the slight sheen of perspiration on his skin, the straining and bunching of the muscles that stretched across his shoulders, the way the flickering light of the last candle picked out the coppery gleam of his dark hair, both on his head and on his chest. And his eyes, black now in the shadows, drawing her down into their depths. She could drown in them, and
