The faint abrading every time they shifted, however slightly, felt unexpectedly erotic.
She’d barely absorbed that when he pushed up the front of her skirts and slid his hands beneath. And touched her.
Sensation stabbed through her, a delicious spike. On a moan, she closed her eyes, felt her spine weaken. He leaned forward and captured her lips, took her mouth in a slow, languorous claiming while beneath her skirts he traced, explored, fondled, and caressed.
Touched and stroked until she burned with a now familiar longing.
His hands were magic, pure magic on her skin. Strong palms intimately scuplted her curves, powerful, too-knowing fingers caressed and stroked, penetrated and retreated, until she was afire, until she thought she’d go mad with wanting.
She didn’t have the strength to pull back from the kiss and issue an order. Her hands were locked on his shoulders, gripping in near desperation; easing the grip of one, she slid it to his throat, found his earlobe, and pinched.
He drew back from the kiss. “What?” His voice was a gravelly rumble.
“Now!” She closed her eyes and shuddered as his fingers slid deep and stroked inside her. “Notthat,” she hissed. “You!”
For a moment, she thought she was going to have to drag her lids open and glare, and somehow take matters into her own hands…the notion was attractive—very—but courtesy of their position and her already too-fraught state, she doubted she could—certainly not in the sense of giving the moment its due, and properly learning from it.
But thankfully he comprehended that she was beyond being denied. She felt more than heard his irritatingly arrogant chuckle, but as he promptly shifted, one hand going to the buttons of his trousers, she decided to ignore it.
Then the rigid rod of his erection sprang free, effectively claiming her entire attention. He guided the blunt head to her entrance; his hand on her hip tightened, she realized how it would work, and eagerly, enthusiastically—with untold relief—embraced the moment and sank down.
Slowly.
The sensation of him filling her, stetching her, all under her control, flooded her mind. With him only an inch in, she drew a huge breath, and opened her eyes.
She had to see his face, had to watch as, inch by slow inch, she eased him into her body, enclosing him—taking him.
Not being taken.
The difference, she realized, eyes locked on his, her senses and all she was locked on the sensation of their joining, was profound.
Barnaby felt it. To his marrow. He’d never felt the like, not in all his years of similar experiences. He couldn’t count the times he’d been in a situation just like this; he’d never been backward in accepting the diversions the bored matrons of the ton had always been so ready to offer him.
But with not one of them had it been like this.
Not one of them had been her.
It was a battle to keep his eyes open, to focus on her face as she slowly, deliberately, took him in, encasing him in a slick, scalding heat that threatened to cinder every civilized instinct he possessed.
There was nothing civilized about the way he felt—the powerful gloating triumph that flooded him, that hardened every muscle and flexed in greedy anticipation.
She. Was. His.
Despite the steady awareness, the intelligence and will that watched him from the depths of her dark eyes, regardless of that, of anything she thought, he saw the moment as an elemental surrender.
A sensual sacrifice.
One in which she pandered to his desires and willingly set herself to sate his hunger.
His potent, unrelenting hunger for her.
It only seemed to grow with every day that passed, had escalated dramatically since the previous night.
She reached the end of her long downward slide, then shifted, pressing lower still to take him all.
Then she smiled.
In the dim light, the gesture was veiled in mystery, a quintessentially female smile. It deepened fractionally; still holding his gaze, she started to rise.
