Then again, maybe it was just the premeditated aspect that bothered her?
Under the circumstances, there was a lot to be said for Kadin’s approach to the situation even though, at the time, she’d been outdone about it.
A little refection, though, was all it took to convince her that was the real problem. If it had just been spontaneous, with no time to worry over it, she thought she would’ve been very open to intimacy with any or all of them.
This was just a totally bizarre situation all the way around.
And the lack of an actual choice—as in she could just decline—fed her reluctance.
It didn’t matter that it wasn’t Gaelen forcing her.
Well, it did matter, but the problem was that she had no free will to choose—not Gaelen.
Resolutely dismissing all of the doubts circling in her mind, like black buzzards over a rotting carcass, she met Gaelen’s gaze.
“My … hesitance isn’t because of you,” she said quietly. “You know that, right?”
His lips curled into a faint smile. “No know, hoped not.”
She scanned his face. Up close, really looking, instead of merely glancing, she saw he was remarkably handsome. “I know I’m nothing like your women. Will that … uh … create a problem for you?”
His smile died. “No.”
Emma smiled at him with an effort, trying to cut the tension with a touch of humor. “No bags here. You’ll just have to close your eyes.”
He looked confused.
Which wasn’t surprising. “To cover my head so you can pretend I’m somebody else.”
He shook his head and lifted a hand to touch her cheek lightly. “No want oddur.”
That was really sweet and surprisingly, touchingly romantic and she felt a lightening of her doubts. She’d seen how gentle he was with Nye. There was no doubt in her mind of that, at least, that he was as capable of gentleness as he was of fiercely defending.
Not that she thought Kadin and Hauk weren’t equally capable, but she hadn’t seen them interact with the baby as often as she had Gaelen. He was usually the one that came to the cabin to feed the baby.
He distracted her from her thoughts by leaning closer and brushing his lips against hers.
Her lips tingled.
Instinctively, she sucked in a sharp breath, inhaling his scent.
The tingling seemed to follow it down into her lungs and then flow through into her nerve endings.
She hadn’t noticed that she was chilled from being naked—she’d been too distressed by her circumstances—but shedidnotice when warmth followed the wave of awareness.
He shifted closer as his lips melded with hers, molding his form against hers as he drew her into his arms. She lifted her hands instinctively, palm out, as he did so, pressing her palms against his sculpted chest muscles.
Pleasure and regret warred within her—pleasure at the feel of his warm skin and toned muscles against her palms and regret that she’d blocked him from pressing her fully against his length.
He diverted her almost immediately by deepening the kiss, infiltrating the exquisitely sensitive cavern of her mouth with his taste and touch with the sweep of tongue. It sent a fresh wave of intoxicating endorphins through her system that was like nothing she’d previously experienced. She didn’t enter the almost drugged state of arousal she’d felt with Kadin, but it was far and away more intense than any other lover’s touch. His skin was silkier, the muscles beneath harder, less yielding.
She felt surrounded by him, inundated with him, and it felt so wonderful she began to feel the fever of want almost at once, to feel a thirst for his possession.
She sensed a similar impatience in him in his touch, and yet he held himself back, stroking her, exploring her with his mouth and tongue and hands with languorous thoroughness when he’d had his fill of exploring her mouth.
She was feverish, pulling at him in demand long before he seemed to grasp her desperation and moved over her, probing her flesh with his, stroking her cleft from front to back and back to front with the head of his cock until she was near to passing out from gasping for breath. Relief filled her when he began to fill her channel with his turgid flesh. Not even the fact that he stretched her until she felt the burn of tender flesh near the breaking point squelched the desperation to feel full penetration. She found herself feverishly pumping against him, trying to engulf his flesh.
Profound satisfaction filled her when her lubrication finally yielded the path to him and he sank deeply inside of her.
It was wondrous and a sense of surprise flickered through her that it could feel so completely right to feel him as part of herself, but his movements toward nirvana swept such lofty sentiment aside in favor of carnal pleasure. She focused on reaching her own paradise before he could leave her behind, countering each thrust, holding her breath as she felt the burgeoning inside of her and then gasping for air until she was dizzy.
And then, as abruptly as the climb had begun, her body reached a surfeit of tension and released in convulsive waves of purest joy. She caught the nearest pec with the suction of her mouth to prevent herself from crying out—though she was only dimly aware of the need to keep her enjoyment to herself. The expulsion of passion seemed to trigger his release, he drove into her in swift strokes and then she felt his great body convulse with his release, felt the heat of his seed as it bathed her womb.
It bled the tension from both of them at almost the same time. The tension expelled, they collapsed weakly against one another, gasping for air.
Gaelen grew heavier the more he relaxed. By the time he came to himself sufficiently
