Heiress (24 page)

"It runs in the family."

The little finger appeared perfectly normal except for its jutting angle. As Abbie started to study it again, a lock of hair swung forward into her eye. Before she could reach up to push it back, she felt the brush of his fingers across her brow and temple as he lifted her hair back. She looked up, feeling the warm tingle as his fingers lingered to caress her cheekbone lightly. The intensity of his gaze, heavy-lidded, revealed a man's interest. Abbie recognized it instantly, and it ignited a breathless excitement in her.

"You have the bluest damned eyes," he murmured.

"I know."

His hand slid to the cord in her neck where blood throbbed in her vein. The pressure was light yet insistent, guiding her to him. But Abbie didn't need its direction as she moved to meet him, closing her eyes when his mouth was finally too close to see. The soft hairs of his mustache tickled the sensitive edges of her lip an instant before his mouth covered hers.

She explored the gentle contours of his mouth in the most tactilely stimulating way, satisfying the curiosity that had merely been whetted by the brief meeting of their lips several days earlier. His kiss was more than she'd expected, warm and firm, persuasively arousing in its devouring investigation of her own lips. Desire was building inside her, her breathing deepening, and her body straining to move closer still. Abbie realized how easily this could get out of hand, and she wasn't entirely sure that's what she wanted yet.

With an effort, she broke away from his spellbinding kiss and pushed herself back a few inches to bring his face into focus, discovering that at some point she had braced her hands against his chest for balance. She was beset by a whole new awareness of him—the natural heat of his body burning through the cotton of his shirt, the faint ripple of powerful muscles drawing breath into his lungs, and the heavy thud of his heart beating beneath her hands. Then she felt the weight of his hands on her, one resting idly on her lower ribs and the other absently massaging her upper shoulder.

It was crazy. All this time she thought she'd been in control of everything that was happening. Only now did she realize how totally absorbed she had been by the kiss. She studied the strong lines of his face in wonder, stunned by her response to him. His gaze traveled over her face.

"Now that was a kiss." Her voice sounded just a little throaty to her ears, as she subtly reminded him of the violence of their previous encounter.

"I wondered if you would notice the difference." His husky voice was like a caress.

As his dark eyes focused their attention on her lips, a faint tremor of want quivered through Abbie. "This is much better, MacCrea," she murmured as his hands exerted pressure to draw her back to him—not that she needed their coercion.

Her lips parted when they met his mouth, inviting the full intimacy of his kiss. When it came, she drank him in, letting his tongue mate with her own and probe the recesses of her mouth, a rawness sweeping hotly through her that made her ache for more. A storm of sensations buffeted her—the taste, the smell, the feel of him—and she let them engulf her.

His hands shifted their hold on her, now gripping and pulling. Abbie felt oddly weightless, boneless, as he effortlessly lifted her onto his lap. She slid her hands around his neck and into his thick hair, unable to remember the last time she'd felt so alive. Ever since her father had died, she'd been filled with so much pain and bitterness. Now that was gone, and it was as if she was being reborn in MacCrea's arms, her senses awakened again to all the exquisite pleasure of life and living—of love and giving.

How long had she ached to love and be loved? It was happening to her now. Each caress, each response, each demand she made was diminished by the magnitude of his. And Abbie didn't care why. If it was merely lust, it didn't matter. Selfishly, she wanted to feel more of these sensations—of being needed and wanted.

His arms bound her tightly to him, fitting her snugly into the cradle of his body, while his hands stroked her body, exploring the curves and hollows of her, the roundness of her hips, and the firmness of her thighs—always stimulating, always arousing, always urging closer contact. And all the while, the kiss went on and on, their breath rushing hotly together, their throats swallowing the intoxicating taste of each other.

When at last he moved his mouth from her lips and brushed it along her jaw to the sensitive hollow behind her ear, Abbie exulted in the low groan that came from his throat and turned her head slightly to allow him to kiss her neck. Quivers of sheer pleasure danced along her nerve ends as he nibbled at her skin, taking exciting little love bites. She felt his fingers at the buttons of her blouse and breathed in sharply when the pleasing roughness of his hand met her bare skin and cupped her breast. Desire seemed to throb through every inch of her body. It was like being consumed by a fever that heated every inch of her flesh, and MacCrea offered the only relief.

"You know where this is leading, don't you?" His thickly spoken question was slow to penetrate her sensation-riddled consciousness. MacCrea lifted his head to look at her face, resisting the pressure of her hands to pull him back to her.

She wasn't sorry he'd partially broken the spell of passion to question her intentions. It would have happened at some point, mentally if not verbally. Very early in her sexual experiences with men, Abbie had recognized that it was invariably the woman who controlled the situation and determined the degree of intimacy. Most men went no farther than the woman let them, stopping, however reluctantly or angrily, wherever she drew the line. Abbie had never made love to any man unless it was what she specifically wanted.

His question hovered in the air. Abbie bridged the space between them and nuzzled his ear, lightly rubbing her lips over its inner shell. When she answered him, her voice was barely a whisper. "I hope it's leading to the bedroom." She darted her tongue into the dark opening and smiled at the raw shudder that quaked his body, enjoying her ability to arouse him sexually.

A second later, his fingers dug into her arm as he forced her away from his ear. Desire had darkened his eyes to black, yet amusement lurked in them, too. "You do, do you?"

"Yes. Don't you?" she murmured.

"It would be a helluva lot more comfortable than this."

"I agree." She touched his face, exploring the high ridge of his cheekbone and tracing the slanted line of his jaw, then directing her fingertips to his mouth, which fascinated her so.

He caught hold of them and pressed them to his lips, then gently scooted her off his lap onto the sofa. As he stood up, he kept hold of her hand, as if unwilling to break contact. Abbie wondered if he thought she was going to back down. She wasn't. Once she made up her mind about something, she never changed it. But she let her actions tell him that as he pulled her up to stand in front of him, actions that she regarded as neither wanton nor brazen, but merely reflection of her feelings.

His arm circled the back of her waist, drawing her against the length of his body and lifting her onto the toes of her boots as he bent his head to reach her mouth. She leaned into him, arching her back and pressing her hips against his thighs, conscious again of the difference in their heights, but more conscious of the differences in their bodies.

After kissing her thoroughly, MacCrea straightened and let her rock back onto her heels. Turning, he kept an arm around her waist to draw her along with him, and guided her toward the bedroom.

Abbie paused, aware of MacCrea behind her, and started to undo the rest of her buttons, the ones he hadn't bothered to unfasten. This was always the awkward time, the moments spent apart undressing. It always took the bloom from her passion and turned it into something calculated.

"No, you don't." MacCrea caught her by the arm and turned her around to face him. Startled, she looked at him in confusion, then he pushed her other hand out of the way and unbuttoned the last two buttons of her blouse. "I'll have this pleasure, thank you."

Abbie doubted that he intended to undress her fully. Maybe the blouse and her brassiere, but after that, he'd become too impatient. Strip and hop into bed, that had been her experience—and that of her friends as well. It didn't matter. This was more than she usually got.

He pushed the blouse off her shoulders, taking the bra straps with it, and bent to nuzzle her neck and the ridge of her shoulder. Abbie shivered at the delicious shudders that raced through her body, ignited by his nibbling kisses. Slowly, he pulled the blouse down her arms, caressing her skin as he went. Then it was free. She caught a flash of white out of the corner of her eye as he tossed her blouse onto a chair.

Then he turned her away from him, but the exciting nuzzling didn't stop. She felt his fingers at the hook of her brassiere and unconsciously held her breath, waiting for its release. It came a second later and her breasts hung free. As the brassiere went the way of the blouse, one of his large hands glided around her ribs and cupped the weight of one breast in its palm. The second one was quickly claimed by his other hand. Abbie couldn't stop the sighing moan of pleasure that rose from her throat.

Fighting the weakness that attacked her limbs, Abbie leaned against him and turned her face toward his chest as his thumbs drew lazy circles around her nipples, stimulating them into erectness. Her stomach muscles tightened, and a hollow ache started low and spread quickly.

All of a sudden she was lifted into the air and turned. Abbie wanted to scream in frustration, knowing this was when it would stop, that his own desire demanded consummation at this critical point when her arousal had just begun. So certain was she about his intentions that she wasn't surprised to find herself seated on the edge of the bed.

When he picked up her leg and started to tug off her riding boot, she stared at him, not knowing what to think. The second boot hit the floor soon after the first one. Her, heavy socks followed them, each slowly peeled away, allowing him to caress her feet in the process. Until that moment, Abbie had never considered her feet to be a part of her body that she wanted caressed, never regarding them as particularly sensual. MacCrea showed her otherwise.

After that, she didn't know what to expect from him. He pulled her upright, then spanned her waist with his hands and lifted her up to stand on the bed. As his hands slid to her breasts, she breathed in sharply and deeply, then couldn't quite release it as he nuzzled one of her breasts, rubbing his lips over its roundness and across the nipple, his tongue darting out to lick it and making it harden even more. Moaning at the exquisite torment, Abbie dug her fingers into his thick hair and urged him closer.

As his mouth opened to take in the point of her breast, a searing pleasure rocketed through her. She forgot all about his hands until her lower stomach muscles contracted sharply with their contact with his flesh. He'd unzipped her jodhpurs. Shot with frissons of raw passion, Abbie knew she'd never felt so weak with desire in her entire life. He pushed the pants off her hips and the weight of the material slid them partway down her thighs. A boneless feeling nearly overwhelmed her as his hands glided over her bare bottom and paused to knead the soft cheeks, then moved on, down the backs of her legs, dragging the jodhpurs with them. She felt her knees start to buckle under the warmth of his hands. When he swung her off her feet, Abbie instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck and curled her body against him. One final tug stripped the jodhpurs from her.

Totally enraptured, she studied his profile, his face so close to hers she could see every pore in his leather-tan skin, his hair all rumpled and furrowed by her fingers, and his mustached mouth still moist from sucking her breasts. The slanted angle of his forehead continued along the straight ridge of his nose and ended with the natural thrust of his chin. Despite all the aggressive lines, MacCrea suddenly seemed incredibly handsome to her.

She watched his gaze wander over her nakedness. When he turned his head to look into her face, she saw the desire that darkened his eyes and weighted their lids. She wanted him. She wanted all of him. Slowly he set her onto the floor, his hands trailing over her skin as if reluctant to release her.

"Now, it's your turn." His voice was low and deep, its huskiness belying an otherwise even pitch. "This is the part I enjoy."

For a split second Abbie didn't catch his meaning, then realized she was supposed to undress him. Her own desire was so strong at that moment that she wanted to protest the delay in consummation. But she knew she wasn't being fair.

Trying to speed up the process, she practically ripped the buttons from his shirt, but when she bared his chest, she was overwhelmed by the need to touch him, to press her own body against his muscled torso and feel the wall of his chest flatten her breasts. She discovered how exciting, how stimulating it could be to run her hands over him, to let her lips explore his hard flesh, and to taste the faint saltiness of his skin.

As she slid his shirt down his arms, she began to appreciate the sensual joy to be found in unveiling him a little at a time, feeling for herself the bulge of his biceps and the sinewy cords in his forearms. She could tell that he was enjoying it, too, by the faint tremor that shook him when she unfastened his jeans and unzipped his fly.

At last the moment came when his Jockey shorts were the only article of clothing that remained. She was conscious of the trembling of her hands as she slid her fingers under the elastic waistband and pushed them slowly down—conscious, too, of his erection straining against the confining cloth. Her throat was tight as she watched it spring free when she slid his shorts down.

Bending, she continued to pull the shorts down his legs, not stopping until he stepped free of them. She straightened and lightly, very lightly ran her fingers down the underside of his shaft, smiling at the convulsive leap it made into her hand, and the hiss of his indrawn breath that muffled his half-curse.