He groaned and barely ground out. “Everything.”
“Slowly?”
He growled this time. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She knew pain. The entire last year, even the grand parts where she’d opened a London shop, had been shadowed in it. So, she knew this, what they were about to do, would not bring her pain. Besides, they had missed time to make up for.
“You won’t hurt me. Besides, we’ve waited an entire year, Grayson.”
“We have time to make up for it.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t quite believe there would be more time, that this was the start of their future and not an anomaly, a beautiful but singular moment in a story where they could never be together.
His serious eyes considered her another moment, considered the question of pace a few seconds longer, then he grinned. “Why don’t we do both. Slow and fast.”
His wolfish smile stole her breath, and she answered breathily, “A good compromise.”
He tugged his hand free from hers and pulled her body flush with his. He placed his lips on her neck near her ear. “First, we go slow.”
She shivered.
“I’ll kiss you everywhere until you’re trembling off the bed.”
Part of her wanted to laugh, but the heat on her neck, his deep voice low in her ear, they prompted other reactions. She had no time for laughter, anyway, because true to his word, his lips began their work, alighting everywhere, tasting every inch of skin and covering her body with scalding impressions, brands, until she gasped, her hips arching off the bed.
He’d lowered his lips to her nipple. First his tongue darted out, circling. When he gently nipped the impossibly tight bud, she closed her eyes, throwing her head back and bucking her hips again. But this time, they met his as he moved his body over hers. She pressed her hips into his once more.
“Still slowly, Hen,” he chided.
No. The urge to move flooded her. She needed to touch him. So, she did. She could explore him slowly as well. She wished the contours of his body were well known to her by now, but she’d missed a year of getting to know them. However, she did delight in new adventures, exploring new territory. She let her hands join the visual feast she’d enjoyed since he’d disrobed, and they grew drunk on hard muscle and velvet skin. She flatted her palms against him, roaming over his shoulder, down his taut back and curving over his even tauter… what to call it? Rump? She giggled.
He nipped her earlobe.
Back to business. She excelled at focusing on business. She marched her fingers down the hill of his rump and contemplated its golden color. “I knew you swam regularly,” she breathed, “but I did not know you did so nude.”
“Nude and hard. From thinking of you.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.” She traced a hand over the side of his hip and toward the apex of his body, the part of him she made so hard certainly stiffened now. She hesitated, for a moment only, before sliding her hand between their bodies and grasping the appendage in question. “Do you need a swim now?”
“I can think of better ways to solve the problem.” He rolled them until she sat astride him, straddling his hips, and the sudden rush of air on her skin prickled all over.
He grasped her hips and his eyes drank her in.
Their bodies stilled, and she blushed under his perusal.
Mercy, his gaze roaming over her breasts, her belly, her hips felt delicious. Her belly wound tighter and tighter, waves of electricity coursing through her body. She thrummed with the need for movement, so she leaned over him and opened his mouth with a kiss. “Fast now?” she breathed.
He pulled her down to him, spooning her back against his front. His hand stroked the outline of her body from breast to hip then snuck around the top of her hip to cup the curls at her center. “Not yet,” he panted. His fingers parted her curls and played—stroking, circling, diving deep.
She squirmed. Her heart raced. Surely, what he did, touching her so intimately, was wrong. Did she care? No. She’d only ever cared about propriety as long as it furthered her own goals and plans. She desired at this moment only to feel everything he could make her feel, propriety be damned. “Mercy,” she hissed, pressing her backside into his front. “Now?”
“Now.”
She turned in his arms, pressing against him and cupping his jaw in her hands to drink from his lips.
When he pressed his shaft to her center, she nearly popped off the bed in pleasure. But when he eased carefully into her, she stilled.
“Gray,” she breathed, wincing at the tightness between her legs. This wasn’t the tightly-wound ball of pleasure he’d been stroking within her for the last several minutes. This felt distinctly uncomfortable.
