Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

She reached down to touch his erection. It was heavy in her hand, the head wet already. He hissed, his hands clutching her arms, as she stroked down his length.

She slid up onto her knees. One of his hands clasped her waist. He was the one to adjust his member into place, the one to set his hands on her hips. He was the one to apply just the slightest pressure. This wasn’t possible.

It was possible.

And then, it simply was.

His hands clenched around her arms. His breath came in explosive little gasps. His body entered hers—not in possession, but in desire. She could feel herself stretching around him. He was thick, hot.

“Jessica,” he said. Her hips sank to meet his; her body sparked above his. She could feel the tension in his arms, the tremble of his muscles as he held himself back.

It had never been like this before. His eyes met hers. He watched her intently, his gaze slitting as she rose up on him. His hands slid up her ribs to her breasts, touching her. Overriding her every thought. She wasn’t sure when she began to move, wasn’t sure when her need began to consume her, spiraling out from their joined bodies. Her hands clenched. Her toes curled. Every commingled movement sent an agony of pleasure through her, until she threw back her head and let out a little cry as ecstasy overtook her.

He grabbed her hips as she came, thrust hard into her. She could feel slick sweat on his shoulders, his entire body tensing beneath hers. He made a short, strangled sound in the back of his throat. His hips pounded into hers. He was hot, so hot, and yes, he was coming, too. He came to her without any lies between them.

He was still breathing heavily when his body stilled. His arms came around her, hard. His lips found hers in a long, drawn out kiss—the passion not the slightest dimmed by the act they’d just performed.

And Jessica still didn’t understand. She didn’t understand what had happened. Oh, she knew the mechanics of it. And she understood ecstasy. But this…this had been a new kind of pleasure. Something Jessica had never experienced before, something strange and inexplicable. She didn’t quite understand what it meant at first. Her fingers intertwined with his, her body wrapped around his. His forehead pressed against hers, and their mingled breaths waxed and waned in an intimate rhythm.

It took her a few moments to hit upon the difference. Normally, a man took, and she gave. He owned her, for those minutes. The pleasure was his. And if his desire provoked her physical response—well, that, too, belonged to him.

But this…this pleasure hadn’t been his. It hadn’t been hers, either.

No. It had been something that seemed both foreign and intimate all at the same time.

It had been theirs.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MARK TOOK HER to bed afterward.

There was nothing that quite compared to the glory of her bare skin.

In the tepid light of the candle, his fingers had to fill in what his eyes could not. The smooth curve of her shoulder. The silk of her hair, softer than he’d imagined.

He didn’t understand how men could flit from woman to woman. He had thought he was infatuated back in Shepton Mallet. That had been nothing compared to this—to the feel of her spine against his hands, each vertebra dear to him. Then there was the taste of her neck, subtly different than that of her collarbone. The flickering illumination showed bits of her in turn: pale skin and dark hair and pink lips, all enticing.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent afterward just touching her. Trying to memorize the feel of her. Long enough that the candle in the other room eventually guttered out. Long enough that wonder turned into lust once more, that he positioned himself over her, sliding into a heaven that he’d tried to imagine before and had utterly failed.

Her body. Her hands, grasping his. Every thrust he took, every gasp he wrung from her, was a precious gift. Her desire magnified his want. Instinct merged with intuition. He waited for the change of her breath, for the moan she tried to hold back. He waited until her body clenched around his, and he lost all sense of anything but her, her, her.

When sanity returned, he found himself collapsed atop her, chest to chest, her hands clasped around his lower back.

“Try as I might,” she said, “I can’t make you out.”

He caught her lips in his. “What’s to make out? I’m not so complicated.” He disengaged himself from her as best he could without relinquishing her. Now that he’d had her once—well, twice—he didn’t plan on letting go again.

She said nothing in response, simply waited.

“I suppose there are two things you really should know,” Mark said. “About the past. And about the future.”