A Lady of His Own

  With him, she’d never felt alone in her need, never vulnerable because of it. It was and always had been something that affected them both—a madness they both endured, and both had to slake.

  He pressed her into the bed, his long hard body settling partially over hers. She expected him to spread her thighs with his, expected him to enter her; she was already tensing, memories hovering at the edge of her mind, when he tore his mouth from hers, and she realized he had other plans.

  His lips briefly traced her throat, then slid lower to once again torment her breasts. To feed, it seemed, the urgency that racked her, that seemed to well up and spill through her, speeding her heartbeat until the thudding compulsion thundered through her veins, tightening her nerves…

  She arched beneath him, why she didn’t know, her hands desperately clutching his shoulders, sliding into his hair as he left her breasts and moved lower. To press hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses over her midriff, over her waist, down across the taut, quivering skin of her stomach.

  He grasped her knee, opened her wide.

  The candles were still burning. Lungs starved, breasts rising and falling rapidly, she forced her lids up enough to look, enough to take in the harsh planes of his face, etched with blatant desire as he looked down at her.

  He’d slid far enough down the bed that his shoulders were between her thighs. She waited, breath bated, for him to shift back up, to—

  He bent his head and set his mouth to her. Pressed his lips to her already throbbing flesh, sucked lightly.

  Shock lanced through her. Her heart stood still.

  Then she felt his tongue, and she nearly died.

  “Charles!” She bucked, but he held her easily. She reached down and tugged at his hair, to no avail. There was no way she could dislodge him, no way she could prevent him…from dragging her under.

  His mouth moved on her, and a wave of sensation breached her guards, grabbed her, captured her. Pulled her under a roiling, tumultuous tide built of fire and flames and sharp, searing heat, of desperate intimacy and welling need.

  She couldn’t breathe enough to gasp, moaned instead, and, eyes falling shut, closed her fists in his hair.

  The fiery tension mounted, escalated, coiled tight. And still he pressed her, not gently but ruthlessly, relentlessly, as desperate, as driven, as she. As urgently needy. His lips moved on her, evocative, provocative, his tongue traced, caressed, then slowly swirled…probed, and entered her.

  She fractured, broke apart.

  He called it touching heaven; to her it was more like touching the sun. Heat flared, brighter than a starburst; tension locked her heart, her lungs, her nerves, her every awareness, held all immobile for that blessed instant before the heat imploded and shattered, sending shards of glory flying under her skin, then washing in a wave over and through her.

  Leaving her at peace.

  But not him.

  Blindly, she reached for him, and he came to her. Spreading her thighs wide, settling between, his heavy body angled over hers as he reached down between them, opened her, and pressed in.

  Her hands clenched on his upper arms in mindless anticipation of pain. She started to tense against his invasion—wanted to, but her lax muscles refused to cooperate.

  He didn’t go any farther, but settled more fully atop her; she felt his hand smooth back her hair, then cradle her face. “Not this time, mon ange.”

  Then he kissed her. Filled her mouth, distracted her for the instant in which his spine flexed, and he thrust powerfully into her. Not quick and hard as she’d expected, but slowly, steadily—inexorably. Even as the reality of what he was doing impinged, that he was stretching her, filling her, and wasn’t going to stop—that she didn’t, even then, want him to stop—she was held captive.

  By him. By the sheer sensual pleasure of the feel of him, hard, rigid, hot as forged steel, heavy and foreign yet immeasurably welcome as he slid farther, deeper, pressing so slowly into her despite the muscles that jumped in his arms, despite the cording of the tendons in his neck as he fought against the demons she’d met years before.

  She felt her body give and take him in, and gloried in the slick, silken glide. She felt him sink home, filling her impossibly full, felt the engorged head of his staff abut her womb.

  Charles inwardly gasped, held still, then felt her, very gently, tentatively, contract around him, and nearly lost what little control he still possessed. Her sheath was scalding hot, tight as the proverbial nun’s, and he’d stretched her fully, intentionally seizing the single moment of sanity remaining to him to sink into her to the hilt.

  It was a moment he’d promised himself, not consciously but in his wildest dreams, for the past decade. Now it was here, and felt even better than his fervid imagination had painted it.

  She was relaxed, heated and open beneath him, the cradle of her sleek body soft and accepting, but with that tempting feminine strength still lurking, investing her spine and the taut muscles of her thighs and the hands that moved lightly on his shoulders.

  He wanted, ached, needed to engage with that feminine counter to his own driving need, but he had to hold back, hold still, for just a minute more…

  With a supreme effort, he pulled back from the kiss and lifted his head enough to look into her face. “Are you all right?”

  Her lids lifted just a fraction; her eyes met his.

  Then her lips slowly curved, and his control quaked.

  “Yes.” She raised her head and closed the gap between their lips. Kissed him like the siren she truly was.

  Drew back to whisper against his lips. “Now ride me. Please.”

  “With pleasure.” The words were so guttural, it was just as well he’d spoken in English. He caught her eyes. “But only if you ride with me.”

  Her lids lifted more, her eyes widened.

  He didn’t wait for her to ask, but kissed her, and showed her.

  Showed her how much more there was to experience. To enjoy. Better than any other, he knew what would draw her, entice her, and bind her to him. He deployed every ounce of his expertise to ensure he captured her, that at this level at least, the success of his wooing of her was a foregone conclusion.

  In other areas he might have a harder time, but in this, he’d always had her measure, even though he hadn’t, long ago, had his own.

  Even now, she surprised him; after that initial hesitation, she accepted his invitation wholeheartedly. She followed where he led, met and matched him, too quickly learned the knack of using her body to caress his and drive him wild.

  And wilder.

  It was a shuddering shock to realize that control had slipped away from both of them. That something stronger, more vibrant and powerful had slid in and filled the void. That it was that instinct, wild and unfathomable, intense and true, that drove them, that fueled the passion with which their bodies slickly joined.

  That pushed them both on, through soul-deep kisses and shared gasping breaths, through the repetitive rocking of their joining, to that exquisite peak of sensation beyond which sweet oblivion lay.

  They reached the peak, first she, then he, her release sweeping through her and triggering his. Hands locking, fingers linking, they gasped and clutched tight as their senses soared through the flames, then fell away.

  Into that landscape where souls communed and hearts beat as one.

  On the plane where that wild instinct reigned.

  He couldn’t think of any words in English or French to adequately describe what he felt in the moment when, rousing, he lifted from her, came down beside her, and, sated and replete, she curled into his arms.

  Hardly daring to believe that he’d cleared what had loomed as a major hurdle so easily, he slowly, carefully, closed his arms around her, settled them both in the rumpled sheets, and pulled the covers over them.

  Too precious to break, he let the moment lengthen, breathed deeply, and let it, and all it implied, sink to his bones.

  No homecoming had ever been so sweet.
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  So intense, so passionate. So much what he’d needed.

  He acknowledged that last, understood what it meant, tried not to dwell on it. Pressing a kiss to the silky veil of her hair just above her temple, he sank into the bed and relaxed.

  Penny wasn’t sure if she’d fallen asleep, or…been elsewhere. Rocketed into another sphere of existence by all she’d felt, all he’d shown her. Rather than awaking in the normal way, her senses returned bit by bit, coalescing and realigning to finally function again.

  The first fact they reported, the most overwhelming, was the blissful sense of aftermath that coursed through her veins, through her flesh, to her bones. Every corner of her being, physical and mental, seemed to glow with glorious delight, with a golden satiation, a far more powerful cousin of the sensation she’d touched in passing before.

  To use his words, it seemed there was heaven, and Heaven.

  Lips curving, under cover of her lashes, she glanced at him, at what she could see without shifting. The candles were only half-burned; they shed a warm steady light across the bed. He’d pulled the covers to below her shoulder, halfway up his chest. Beneath the sheet, her arm lay across him, her hand lightly gripping his side; her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder. She felt more comfortable than she could remember ever feeling.

  Her body thrummed, the hardness, power, and sheer masculine strength of his imprinted like some elemental memory on her senses. On her very female senses. With him, she knew what she was, could be all she was; she could deal with him confident in herself, and him. He’d always been the same, male to her female in some preordained way neither he nor she had ever questioned. She wasn’t about to start questioning now.

  Shifting her head, she moved her hand and spread it over his heart. It thudded sure and strong beneath her palm. The crinkly dusting of black hair that laced across his chest, then arrowed to his groin, was a tactile fascination. She played, and knew he watched.

  She didn’t stop, but pushed the covers down to his waist, baring his chest—and her own, but as to that she no longer cared. His body had always fascinated her, an illicit desire, one she’d denied, then suppressed for years. She didn’t need to suppress it now; spreading her hands, she gave it full rein.

  And he let her. Remained supine in her bed and let her trace the broad, heavy muscles of his chest, run her palms over the curves of his shoulders and upper arms, then draw her fingers down to outline his ribs.

  Then she pushed the covers farther still, down to his hips. Traced the long muscle bands, strong as steel, that bracketed his navel, then reached farther. Ran her palm down along his hip, down to his thigh, down to where the crisp hairs grew thicker again.

  He’d tensed, unmistakably; she didn’t prolong the torture, more for herself than him. Gliding her hand up, she found him, boldly cupped him, took his scrotum in her hand and let her fingers explore, learning the weight, the texture, even as, with her forearm, she nudged the covers lower still, so that when she stroked upward and closed her hand about his erection, she could see as well as feel. Could use her eyes to guide her fingers as she stroked the ridged length, lingering over the thick, pulsing veins, then with her fingertip traced the circumference of the broad head.

  He shuddered, caught her hand.

  She looked up; he met her eyes briefly, his nearly black with just a hint of blue remaining. He looked down at her breasts as he laced his fingers with hers, then, pressing her hand and arm back and around, slowly rolled her onto her back.

  “My turn.”

  He lay beside her, one arm beneath her, still cradling her, while with his other hand he traced her body. Lightly. From her jaw, to her shoulders, over her breasts, around their ruched peaks, he drew slow whorls with his fingertips, barely touching.

  Long before he sent those trailing fingers questing lower, her breasts had swollen and heated, her body had come alive.

  Tantalizing. His touch was a promise, evoking sensual memories, yet leading her senses to dwell, not on what had been, but on what might be.

  His fingers brushed her curls, danced lower, tracing the sensitive inner face of her thighs almost to her knees. Her skin, taut, nerves alive, flickered as he slowly returned up the other thigh, but instead of diverting inward, he took the outward track, following the outer line of her hip up to her waist.

  Dragging in a breath, realizing she’d stopped breathing sometime before, she looked up at him.

  He was waiting to catch her glance, to smile—devilishly—in complete understanding. “I have a proposition to put to you.”

  “What?”

  He closed his hands about her waist, shifted back and lifted her over him. She ended straddling him, rather lower than before.

  “Let’s try it this way.”

  It took an instant for her to realize what he meant, then she felt the head of his erection nudging against her. He gripped her hips, eased her back. Flattening her hands on his chest, she shifted, wriggled, found the right angle, and leaned back, slowly sat. Slowly, inch by inch, took him into her body.

  The most amazing sensation, she savored it to the full, eyes half-closed, senses focused. She sat still for a long moment, simply wallowing, then the rigidity that had afflicted him registered; opening her eyes, she looked down into his. Noted the tension in his face, around his lips, evidence of the control she could sense holding back the wildness she knew was in him.

  Unsure how his script read, she raised her brows at him.

  With one hand, he gestured. “The reins are yours.”

  Her brows rose higher. Indeed? How satisfying it would be to shatter that smug male control of his—in more ways than one.

  She took him at his word and rose upon him. His hands rode lightly about her hips; he gave her little direction but allowed her to experiment, to explore the possibilities as she would. His grip tensed—she suspected involuntarily—when she nearly rose too high.

  So that was the limit in that direction. In the other…

  She settled to her purpose with a will, surprised to learn just how much pleasure she derived from using her body, under her will alone, to pleasure him. His comment about reins proved apt; she was accustomed to riding, and in many ways it was like that, rising up, sinking down in a deliberate rhythm.

  But the contol over both rhythm and depth, over, it seemed, the very nature of their joining, was exquisite; she employed it, enjoyed it to the full. Rode him fast, then slow, then at the gallop again. Sensed the different ways she could use her inner muscles, use her hips and bottom to pressure him.

  To fray those reins.

  Once she was well embarked on her game, his hands rose to her breasts, to fondle, at first gently, then rather more explicitly.

  Fingers flexing on his chest, her breath coming in increasingly rushed pants, she looked into his face, saw concentration, and more, possessiveness and something close to devotion. And wondered…

  There was a glint in his dark eyes that was secretly triumphant. Had he been pleased she’d been with no other man, that he was the only man ever to have her? The thought focused her mind on where they joined; she shuddered, had to close her eyes for a moment, sink her nails into his chest, until the sharp temptation faded and she could pick up her reckless pace again.

  She reminded herself of the questions he’d asked. Given his past, strewn with conquests she had not a doubt, had he assumed she would be the same as he? Had he cared in any possessive way about her answer? Or had he asked purely to decide whether to feel guilty or not?

  He was watching her closely, pandering, expertly as the tangle of her nerves testified, to her senses, each sweeping touch of his long fingers heightening the delight she received from feeling him, hard, rigid, and hot, sliding into her body. Again, she caught an impression of orchestration; he was focused on her, on ensuring she achieved the maximum pleasure. His pleasure was not incidental, yet secondary and dependent, as least as he saw it.

  He was very very good at pleasuring women. She felt th
e heat rise inside her, felt her nerves tighten. His reins were nowhere near frayed enough.

  “You’ve changed,” she gasped, surprised at how thready her voice had become. “You’ve been with dozens of women—are you always like this, devoting yourself to their pleasure first, rather than your own?”

  She’d asked the question to distract him, also because she wanted to know. She was surprised to see a hint of wariness creep into his eyes.

  “I’ve always liked women.” His hands slid back to her hips, gripped; he started to undulate beneath her. “You know that.”