Dangerous to Kiss (32 page)

“I’m sorry,” she cried out, scanning his face anxiously, “I’m not very good at this.”

He breathed deeply. “You are better than you know,” he said, and drew her close again.

His kisses grew hotter and wetter. The hands roaming over her became less comforting, more erotic. Her skin was so hot, she was grateful when he slipped her dress over her breasts, then whisked it over her hips to drift somewhere on the floor. She was less grateful when he tried to do the same with her chemise. She felt suddenly shy, and her fingers closed around it, holding it to her breasts.

He didn’t argue the point, didn’t try to pry her fingers from the edge of her chemise. He simply fastened his lips through silk to first one erect nipple then the other, working at them with teeth and tongue, and while she moaned and panted, he relieved her of her drawers.

She watched mutely as he rose from the bed and began to peel out of his clothes. Not a word was said, but the air between them was charged with a dark energy.
He didn’t disrobe completely, but left on his shirt. It fell to his knees in folds and the sight of the hairy, masculine legs that stuck out of it made her lips twitch.

He was smiling too, as though he could read her mind. For a moment he toyed with the shirt buttons at his throat, then seemed to come to a decision. “No, not yet,” he said, mystifying her, and without removing his shirt, he stretched out beside her on the bed.

Her disappointment surprised her. She was curious, of course. She had never seen a naked man before, except in white marble statues that were to be found at Belvidere. She supposed he was deferring to her modesty, and she felt quite touched by the gesture.

His tone of voice was very serious, very matter-of-fact, and that got her attention. “I told you that the first time is sometimes, no, is almost invariably disappointing for a woman. I want this to be perfect for you, Deb. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.” He tunneled his fingers into her hair, and stopped for a moment to kiss her ardently, plundering her mouth with his tongue in some vague attempt to give her a hint of what was to follow. “Trust me, give in to me, and I promise you, it will go easier with you.”

Go easier with her?
Somewhere, in a corner of her mind, she puzzled over his words, but she couldn’t hold on to them. His hands had edged up her chemise and they were stroking along the inside of her thighs with tantalizing languor. She stopped breathing, then gasped when his fingers found her and probed gently. Time had no meaning. She was aware of nothing but the pleasure he was so skillfully building inside her. His slow, relentless caresses, there, between her thighs, gave her no respite, and her whole body tightened in anticipation.

She reached for him and tried to draw him over her. He resisted, and kept them both on their sides. His hand cupped the back of her knee and drew her leg over his flank. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he continued to stroke into her, stretching her tightness for his fuller possession.

“This way is easier for a first time,” he soothed.

She was too steeped in passion to recognize the
warning in his words. He braced one arm around her back like a vise. The hand on her leg fettered her in position. Then it came, the burning, stretching sensation as he imposed his body on hers. He silenced her cry with his mouth. She couldn’t move, couldn’t throw him off, and her struggles only seemed to drive him deeper into her body. She felt a tearing sensation, a flash of pain, and the torment was over.

Gray held himself rigidly in check. When he felt her body relax, he raised his head. Tears stood on her lashes, and he kissed them away. He didn’t give her time to speak, didn’t give her time to think. Locking their bodies together, he turned her on her back and rose above her, then he began to move, slowly at first, carefully, coaxing a response from her.

His patience was rewarded. Her breath caught on a wave of pleasure and she strained against him. She moaned. He smiled. Exultant now, he increased her torment, drawing her by slow degrees toward the edge of oblivion. When it came, she jolted beneath him and cried out in helpless abandon. He held back so that he could watch her face. Her eyes glazed over and her head thrashed on the pillow. The hands on his shoulders clenched and unclenched as the spasms shook her. She said his name, and her desperate plea was more than he could endure. As the rapture overwhelmed him and hurled him over the crest, he muffled his hoarse cry of triumph against her throat.

“I had hoped that I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Mmm?” Deborah slowly opened her eyes and looked around her. The fire in the grate blazed brightly, evidently with fresh logs, and Gray, now in a dressing robe, was at the washstand, pouring water from a china pitcher into a basin. She was under the covers and had a vague recollection of Gray putting her there as she was drifting off to sleep.

“I had hoped that I wouldn’t hurt you,” he repeated, and looked over at her as she struggled to sit up.

The smile in his eyes made her feel warm all over. She stretched languidly and smiled back at him. “You made up for it,” she said.

“I wanted to make it perfect for you.”

She glanced at the basin of water he had set down on the table by the bed. “It
was
perfect,” she said. “It was the most wonderful experience of my life. Was it … was it perfect for you too?”

He chuckled. “Not exactly. I hope I never have to go through that again.”

She was disappointed, to say the least. She almost pouted. “What did I do wrong?”

He sat on the edge of the bed and raised one of her hands to his lips. His eyes danced wickedly as he nibbled
on first one finger, then another. “You didn’t do anything. It was your first time. That’s what made it so difficult for me. Next time, it will be better, for both of us.”

Now she did pout. He was used to experienced women, women who knew everything there was to know about pleasuring a man in bed. She wished she were one of them so that she could have made it perfect for him too.

He had drawn one of her fingers into his mouth and was sucking strongly. She felt the tug of his lips as though he had fastened them to her nipples. Distracted, she brought an arm to her breasts and rubbed gently in an effort to quell the throb that had started there. The throb intensified and she let out a shivery breath. She didn’t want to appear gauche and inept. She wanted to please him. Should she suck on his fingers too?

She couldn’t hold on to that thought. He was fingering her ear, now brushing inside it, now slowly drawing out of it. She must be very wicked for the picture that flashed into her mind had nothing to do with ears at all. A jolt of heat raced from ear to loins, and another throb got started. Deborah squirmed and stifled a whimper. She was so hot, she could feel her bones begin to melt. If this went on much longer, she was sure she would set the bed on fire.

Gathering her scattered wits, she made a stab at introducing an air of normalcy. She indicated the basin of water on the table by the bed. “Is that for me?”

“Yes,” he said.

She jumped when he suddenly pulled back the bedcovers. Her chemise was around her waist, and she reached for the sheet to cover herself. He prevented it.

“You were a virgin,” he said. “This will make you feel better.”

Her eyes followed the path of his gaze, and she flushed when she saw the dried streaks of blood on her thighs. This was as nothing, however, when he wrung out a washcloth and she grasped his intent. She snapped her knees together and shook her head. “Oh no,” she said, “oh no.”

His voice was very soft and threaded with a shade of amusement. “Intimacy, Deborah. It’s natural between lovers. You mustn’t be shocked by it.” He waited an interval, then said even more softly, “There’s more to loving than joining our bodies. I want to know your body as intimately as I know my own, and I want you to know mine intimately too.”

His words did something peculiar to her insides. A melting sensation spread from her womb to the extremities of her toes and fingers. Her limbs felt weightless, and each breath became shallower, less regular. When he parted her legs and draped one of them over his thighs, opening her body to him, she threw back her head.

The cloth was warm, almost hot, and it registered dimly that he must have fetched the hot water himself from below stairs. None of the servants would be up at this time of night.

“Deborah,” he said, “uncover yourself for me. I want to see you naked.”

The words came automatically. “No one has ever seen me naked before.”

“I have, once. When I abducted you. You were asleep, and I wanted to examine your injuries. That picture has been branded on my mind. You’ll never know the torments I’ve suffered since then, watching you, knowing what was concealed beneath your garments.”

Deborah was suffering her own torments. The washcloth was between her thighs, rubbing, invading gently, parting the folds of her femininity to his questing fingers. Another jolt of heat shot through her. She stifled a moan and reached for the hem of her chemise. She was struggling to get it over her head when his finger flexed inside her. She could hardly draw her next breath.

“You are beautifully formed,” he said, “lovely, in fact. Especially here.” His fingers parted her.

The chemise came over her head, and she flung it to the end of the bed. She was panting as if she’d run up three flights of stairs. He was smiling his lazy smile, with his eyes half hooded, shielding his expression.

“Warm, Deborah?”

Hot as Hades, but she couldn’t tell him that. It was too embarrassing. “Actually,” she said, “I find it a tad chilly in here.”

“Then we must try to make you warmer.”

It wasn’t possible. Then she discovered it was possible. He planted a kiss on her abdomen, and trailed his lips downward, ever downward, to the triangle of dark reddish hair between her thighs. She watched in awed fascination as he kissed her there, in the secret place between her legs. This was intimacy with a vengeance. It was wicked. It was wanton. And it made her wild to have him.
Kisses.
She remembered his tongue, thrusting into her mouth, and though, in that moment, he did no more than lightly touch his tongue to her, her imagination did the rest. She cried out and arched off the bed like a tensed crossbow, burying his face between her thighs.

There was a moment when they both froze. He moved first. When he slowly raised his head to look at her, and saw the hot color that ran across her cheekbones, he wasn’t exactly laughing, but his amusement was patent.

“Ah,” he said, “I see you have already figured it out. God, you tempt me. But no, I think not. Not yet.”

She couldn’t hide her disappointment. “You mean, that’s it? You’re not going to … well … finish what you started?”

“What do you think?” he said.

He smiled at her eagerness, and swiftly rising, shrugged out of his robe. He turned to face her.

Though they’d made love once, this was the first time she had seen him naked. Her eyes moved over him slowly. Her first impression was of sheer masculine beauty, but as her eyes lingered, taking in the breadth of his shoulders, the hard muscular physique and the jutting sex, she became acutely aware of his brute strength. She wasn’t afraid; she was fascinated. In the act of love, all that beauty and power had been hers to command.

She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and looked up at him.

“What?” he asked, frowning at her.

He looked curiously uncertain, as though he feared she might not like what she saw, and that touched her. “If I’d known what
you
were concealing beneath your fine clothes, I would have seduced you long before now.”

He laughed and came down beside her. “You didn’t seduce me. Seduction implies reluctance, and I have wanted you for a long, long time.” She looked skeptical, and he nodded then went on. “Almost from the first, in Miss Hare’s parlor, with those atrocious girls. They were running rings round you, and I was sorely tempted to box their ears.”

Her fingers twined in his hair. “I think I lost my heart to that nice Mr. Gray.”

He kissed her softly. “But I really knew it was all up with me when you ran from me in Wells, in the cathedral. Do you remember?”

“How could I forget?” She stopped playing with his hair. “I was terrified of you!”

“I know.” He kissed her lips, softening them. “And I was angry because you didn’t trust me. I wasn’t thinking only of Quentin. I think I knew even then that I would never let you get away from me.”

She frowned, and sensing an argument, he kissed her swiftly. When she relaxed beneath him, he made love to her in earnest. He bent to take a nipple in his mouth, and sucked gently, then strongly as he felt her response. His fingers brushed through the hair between her thighs and slipped into her. He felt the liquid heat that both excited him and reassured him, and he came up on his knees. She was wet and ready for him.

“Oh Gray,” she said. “Oh Gray,” and she reached for him.

He pulled her to her knees, facing him. “It’s your turn. Touch me, Deb. Pleasure me. I’ve shown you how easily it can be done.”

Her eyes were drawn to his swollen sex. She didn’t know the first thing about pleasuring a man, but supposed that it wasn’t so different from what a man did to a woman. She grasped the length of his shaft in both hands and that’s as far as she got.

Gray came off the bed like a rocket. She was flung back, but he caught her before she went flying to the floor.

“What did I do?” she cried out, and grasped his shoulders to steady herself.

“What did you do?” He started to laugh. “You damn near castrated me! Your fingers closed around me like a steel trap. Here.” He caught her hand and guided it to the thrusting length of him. “Gently,” he said, “softly, like this.” He curled her fingers around him, showing her just what he wanted.

She was fascinated by the smooth, satiny feel of him, fascinated by the way his rigid staff pulsed and moved beneath her soft caresses. Wide-eyed, she looked up at him. His nostrils were flared; his lashes flickered against his cheeks; his lips were parted and she could hear the breath rushing in and out of his lungs.