He was on her heels as she got the door open and all but fell into the room.
One quick glance confirmed that Parker was nowhere in sight and the lamp beside the bed had been left alight.
Then Devlin kicked the door shut behind him, spun her into his arms, and she forgot about everything else—ceased to be able to think of anything beyond him, beyond them, beyond slaking their ravenous need.
Lips locking, releasing, then hungrily fusing in a long succession of searing, open-mouthed kisses, they fell on each other, hands knowingly caressing, seeking, possessing, as driven by that unrelenting need, they divested each other of their clothes, peeling each garment away to reveal the prize beneath.
When, already nude, he spun her around to attack her laces, she tipped her head up and back, trying to drag air into lungs starved of that commodity. Kissing him always took priority over mere breathing.
Eyes open, she stared upward, but couldn’t focus on the ceiling. Her mind wasn’t engaged, yet words leapt to her tongue. “When you didn’t stay to share luncheon, I thought I’d read things—this”—with one hand, she waved over her shoulder, indicating what was between them—“wrongly.”
His attention locked on the desperately necessary task of loosening her laces, Devlin blinked. For a second, his fingers slowed, then he huffed. “I couldn’t trust myself to be in the same room.” He set his fingers frantically working once more, then glanced at her face, at what he could see of her expression. “I didn’t know how attached you were to that dress.”
Her features eased into a delighted smile, and she laughed, a tinkling sound of sheer happiness, and something in his chest heated and swelled.
Then she said, “Not that attached.” She paused, then twisted her head and glanced over her shoulder. “Next time…tell me.”
There was a wealth of sexual encouragement in her tone, which, at that precise moment, he really didn’t need to hear. He was rock hard and aching already.
He wrestled with the final knot at her waist. “I assure you I will, but equally, I fervently hope you won’t see the need to make another excursion to a place like Gentleman Jim’s.”
Finally, the last closure was free, and he peeled the light corset from her and cavalierly flung it aside as, clad only in a gossamer-silk chemise, she turned toward him.
The lamplight found her eyes, the silvery blue darkened by passion to a steely shade, as she boldly stepped into him. The silk screening her curves tauntingly caressed the heated planes of his body, then she pressed closer, and the tactile impression of her barely screened flesh sent a surge of heat to his groin as she draped her arms over his shoulders and, with those mesmerizing eyes locked with his, purred, “Well…if this is the result, I’m not sure I would go so far as to offer any firm undertakings.” Her lips curved provocatively as her lashes fell, and in seductive fashion, she whispered, “I certainly won’t promise.”
Lord, I’m well on the way to creating a monster.
He couldn’t find it in him to care.
Quite the opposite.
He waited until, wishing to gauge the effect of her teasing, she raised her gaze to his face, then allowing the true extent of his possessiveness to infuse the gesture, he smiled, closed his arms tightly around her, bent his head, and kissed her.
No reins, no restraint.
What followed was nothing short of a passionate conflagration.
He ripped away her chemise, and she urged him on. Urged him to take even as she claimed him.
With single-minded determination, they stoked each other’s fires. Their hands raced over already heated skin, stroking, fondling, caressing, then seizing. Possessing.
They fell on the bed, body on body, skin to skin, and the only thought in their minds was the overwhelming need to get closer yet.
Driven beyond bearing, they writhed and rolled, then taunted and teased each other’s senses until the hungry, greedy flames roared, and they burned.
Breathless and aching, they joined, and the moment threatened to incinerate every last vestige of control.
His and hers.
Therese had never experienced passion’s heat to this extent. Never plunged into intercourse, into intimacy, to such a deep level, to where there seemed no boundary, no barrier at all, between him as him and her as her.
They were one. Totally merged, their conscious minds subsumed by mutual need. By a hunger too elemental to deny.
Barely controlled, he thrust powerfully into her willing body, and she clamped her thighs to his flanks and rode with him. Even as the familiar landscape bloomed in their minds, that impossible-to-deny creation of their senses, she couldn’t believe how much more intense every last facet, every last scintillating sensation, was.
After five and more years, how could there be so muchmore?
She had no idea, but she felt that reality to her bones.
