chapter ELEVEN
WITH her heart thrashing against her ribs and her breath a ragged counterpoint to her pulse, she looped her arms around his neck and returned his kiss in a tentative, nonverbal plea for more time. He remained perfectly still for one protracted second, before reaching for the curve of her hip, his fingers as light as a butterfly’s kiss as they settled against her. She knew she could back away, change her mind and break his cautious hold, but something about his uneven breath convinced her to stay.
“Is this your way to avoid giving me an answer?” he breathed, separating just enough to grant her space for second thoughts.
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Look at me,” he said, waiting until she reluctantly complied. “You might distract me with this right now, but I’m not going to stop asking. I want to marry you, Colette.”
Biting her lip, she acknowledged his words with a single nod. “I know.”
“You don’t know how hard these past few weeks have been, pretending that I don’t,” he said hoarsely. “Being with you and not being able to touch you.” His wide palm slid back and around to her buttocks, shaping the soft cotton over the quivering curve. He urged her closer with the slightest hint of pressure, inching her forward until their knees bumped. “It’s been hell.”
Hypnotized, Colette felt his large hands as he canvassed the landscape of her body: the curved line of her back, the notch of her waist, the swell of hip and thigh, the sensitive inner crook of her elbows and her limp, unprotesting hands.
Her pulse rushed within her ears and she tried to look away from him, to reclaim the emotional space she’d need if she were to survive making love to him again. She failed miserably. She couldn’t make her emotions obey, let alone her trembling body. It was if Stephen’s piercing blue eyes tethered her to him, building an inescapable heat as his dexterous hands slipped the top few buttons of her shirt free and then returned to cup her now accessible breasts.
The thin barrier of her lace and ribbon bra provided scant protection from the heat of his palms, from the drugging, drifting forays of his thumbs against her hungry flesh. She sucked in an oxygen-starved breath, her thighs trembling and her knees threatening to give way as he lifted the soft weight of her breasts, cupping the pale, lace-encased flesh.
His focus trained on the visible, hardening peaks of her nipples, he leant forward, buffeting the reaching tips with his hot breath. And then he closed that final, torturous distance between them and took her in his mouth.
Heat and moisture filtered through the web of lace, seeping pleasure through to her skin. His tongue stroked, circled, abraded, spearing her with pleasure while excitement gathered. Coiled. Climbed.
“Colette,” he whispered, his voice raw and scraping. “You’re so beautiful ….” He lost a degree of his smooth finesse, his hands fumbling with hurried urgency. Soon her shoulders were bare, the collar of her shirt spread wide enough to anchor her upper arms to her sides.
Beneath the opened blouse, she felt the edge of satin strap and cotton against her upper arms. “Stephen,” she said, her fingers plucking helplessly at his ribs. Whimpering, she tried to marshal her own flagging control. “I want …”
But then he released the last of her buttons and tugged her shirt free from the wrapped waistband of her skirt. His head dipped low while his fingers dispensed with her blouse and then returned to the tiny clasp between her breasts. Steadily, insistently, he tugged until satin and lace released its hold on her flesh entirely.
Dropping the combination of fabrics to the floor, he filled his hands with her curves, spreading damp kisses over her sensitized flesh. He caught a reddened nipple between his lips and sucked it deep within his mouth, his splayed hands lifting her bare breasts to his greedy worship. She shuddered, her hands fluttering helplessly at the sides of his cheeks.
“Tell me,” he said against her dampened flesh. “Tell me you want this …”
Colette couldn’t find the words, couldn’t find the thoughts when his lips and tongue and hands splintered her so completely.
Taking her silence as encouragement, Stephen growled in pleasure and lifted her within his arms. A series of steps later, he’d deposited them both on his wide, masculine bed. With his large body canted over hers and one hand cupping her face, Colette might have felt vulnerable. But instead she felt protected and safe. He lowered his head and claimed her lips in a hungry, desperation-flavored kiss, his tongue delving deep as it explored all the hidden coves and hollows of her mouth.
She moaned beneath him and lifted her hands to his wide, hard shoulders. Her fingers clung. Held. Pulled him closer. He hummed his approval, shifting his weight until he rocked atop her, his hips moving in subtle invitation until her thighs fell open to accommodate the press of his pelvis. He released her jaw and his wide hand tracked the contour of her side from rib to waist and thigh. Then his fingers trailed farther, reaching the back of her knee and cocking her leg high.
He lowered his head and pressed his mouth against hers, while his hand skimmed back up to bracket her jaw within his wide palm. Stephen didn’t just kiss her. He devoured her. His mouth demanded while his hand positioned her head for his ravaging. He tasted of barely leashed strength, of desire, and a spicy note of pent-up arousal.
Ripping his mouth aside, Stephen leaned back to look at her, his gaze trailing heat until, in a slow, deliberate motion, his hand found her right breast. Her nipple peaked beneath his touch, a hard knot of pleasure that grew tighter as his fingers closed around it and tugged gently, pulling and pinching until a whimper of pleasure leaked from her throat.
A strained huff of breath hissed between his teeth and he abandoned her breast to lower his hand to the hem of her skirt, before settling his palm against the cluster of curls hidden beneath a prim pair of white panties. She bucked toward his hand, and a low growl of satisfaction rumbled in his chest when he discovered the hint of betraying moisture between her legs. Crushing her mouth in another ferocious kiss, he curled his hand to cup her, his expert fingers delving beneath the cotton underwear.
She gasped and squirmed, the sweet torture of his touch climbing until he parted her flesh and stroked her with a delicate brush of his finger. She shuddered and then froze, every nerve coiling up tight. Her lungs seized, light gathered at the edges of her vision, and if she hadn’t already been horizontal she would have crumpled to the mattress with nothing more than a moan. He laughed with a confident huff of sound and simply stroked deeper, spreading her to his expert touch while his mouth ravaged hers.
“I want to kiss you there,” he breathed against her lips.
Heat flooded her as a frisson of pleasure rocketed through her womb. She pressed up against him while deep, deep within, she shuddered and trembled and wept. A single fingertip explored her with leisurely, focused intent, mimicking the rhythm of lovemaking while firing her desire for more.
More. He skirted the opening to her body, advancing and retreating, until she bit her lips and chased his hand with small, desperate nudges of her hips. Her body shuddered when his clever fingers skimmed the tiny, tight bud of sensation hidden within. Tremors claimed her limbs and she arched back into the mattress and clung to his shoulders, hanging on tight while an unbearable tension built and built and built.
“Tell me you want this,” he rasped, his low voice a hum of demand beneath the roar of her pulse.
“I …”
“Tell me you want more.”
He removed his hand and frustrated need clawed through her body.
He held her chin with his long fingers and forced her to look at him. “Tell me.”
Desperate now, she nodded within his palm, clinging to him and drawing him close with both hands.
“Yes?” he demanded, his touch still hovering an eternity away.
“Yes!” she gasped, pressing her breasts against his chest and cocking her pelvis toward his elusive hand.
She no longer cared about logic or reason. Everything had vanished beneath the burning need for release. Her second thoughts and caution were as elusive as mist. She didn’t care what happened afterward. She didn’t care about the future. As long as he didn’t stop, she’d give him anything.
A delicious quiver stole over her limbs and contracted within her belly as she felt his fingertip return home and dip a fraction of an inch inside her. “Yes.”
He withdrew to circle the entrance to her body, and then slid the full length of his finger inside. Each long, deep stroke brought her closer to the brink of rapture. Her head drifted to the side and her eyes closed while a coil of pleasure twisted so tight she thought she’d faint. Or scream. Or maybe even die. Shaking now, she felt a cluster of moans back up in her throat while she struggled for control.
Oh … The one finger turned to two and his thumb resumed its torturous teasing. Circling. Teasing. The delicious dance of his touch against her flesh made sparks ignite behind her eyes. Helpless before him, her hips thrust hungrily toward his hand, drawing him back from each retreat with greedy clamps of her inner muscles.
“Kiss me,” she panted, reaching to pull his head down to hers. She needed the taste of him, the pressure of his mouth on hers. “Please …”
He dipped his head, his breath skimming her swollen lips. “Marry me,” he told her, denying her.
She tugged on his neck, their mingled breath fracturing the air beneath his hovering mouth. Under her hands his neck was tense, his body taut with banked arousal.
“That’s not fair,” she panted as she arched up against his hand.
Her lungs seized as she felt his fingers abandon her again. She trembled as he caught both of her hands and pressed them back onto the mattress. Letting go of her entirely.
His blazing eyes demanded more than she’d thought herself capable of giving. “Marry me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut while the ache of unfulfilled longing muddled her thoughts. “I can’t!”
He shuddered and seemed to have trouble breathing. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and he exited the bed and moved toward the door he’d closed behind them.
“Wait!” Abashed, she surged from the bed, before realizing she was still naked above the waist. Embarrassed, and aching with need, she reached to cross her arms over her bare chest. “Don’t go.”
He turned, and his focus dropped to her canted arms and the pathetic way she tried to protect herself from coming pain. “Then make me stay.”
A torrent of second thoughts warred with the desires of her body, tossing her headlong into a sea of indecision and fear. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
“I know, sweet. I am too.” He said nothing more to convince her, remaining silent and still as he waited for her to make the decision that would direct their future.
And that, more than anything, spurred her into taking the leap. “Ask me again,” she whispered.
“Will you be my wife?”
Nervous but resolute, she lowered her arms to her sides, lifted her chin, and then strode to him. When she lifted her palms to the center of his chest, to the space where heat and desire and resolve beat beneath his white shirt, she could feel his apprehension in the rapid thud of his heart. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he asked huskily.
“Yes,” she repeated in an equally soft voice as she moved her hands to the small white buttons of his shirt and proceeded to slide each one from its hole. “Emma deserves an intact family,” she admitted as she dropped her gaze to her splayed fingers. “So, yes, I’ll marry you.”
“You won’t regret it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m willing to try to anyway,” she said.
When she reached the waistband of his denims, she tugged on the ends of his shirt, freeing its bottom edge so she could complete her task. Once she’d released the last button the shirt sagged open, revealing burnished skin and tense muscles that twitched beneath her intent gaze. Colette shoved the rumpled cotton back and slid her hands along his ribs, her thumbs tracking twin ridges of bone in soft, gentle exploration.
His eyes drifted to half-mast and his warm hands rose to cover hers. “Colette. I promise I’ll do everything in my power not to hurt you.”
Except love me. “I know,” she said, shaking off his hands and then trailing her fingertips up to his sternum, to the springy hair that was scented with the evidence of his earlier arousal.
He inhaled sharply, his hand rising to stall her exploration before she drifted any further. Gripping her wrists, he dipped his head to warn, “We’ll be married tomorrow. I won’t be put off.”
“You never were one to procrastinate.”
When he still retained her wrists, his thumbs pressing hard against the rapid pulse beneath her palms, she leaned forward and kissed his bare chest. She brushed her lips over the faint dusting of hair, touching, caressing, urging, until he released her wrists in favor of her head and dragged her up for a lush, voracious kiss. She welcomed the heat of his questing tongue, rejoiced in the avid pressure of his mouth. Her eager fingers, now freed, resumed their hungry exploration. She felt the tiny points of his flat brown nipples, tentatively skimmed her thumbs over both.
He growled, dipped his knees, and lifted her within his arms. She continued kissing him, leaving a damp trail on his cheeks, jaw and throat, until he laid her down on the bed. She reached for his neck, pulling him close and breathing, “Make love to me.”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” He deposited her on the bed and then straightened just long enough to tug free of his shirt before joining her.
She felt the mattress dip beneath his weight, then turned to welcome him with outstretched arms. He canted up onto one elbow and reached for the side of her face. Dipping his head, he covered her mouth with his, drawing her back into the compelling heat that made her heart thrash within her chest.
She curled toward him, her outside knee drawing up along his outer thigh. She marveled at the differences between before and now. Before she’d loved him they’d made love with wild abandon, two healthy adults in their prime, eager to experiment and explore. Now he touched her with reverence, his fingertips drifting over her skin as if she were a precious work of art too valuable to treat with anything but the utmost care.
It made it easier to pretend he loved her.
Closing her eyes, she surrendered to the sensations he wrought. He drew faint circles down her hip and thigh, slowly working his way down to the sensitive back of her knee. Shifting back onto his own knees, he continued his way south with his mouth, depositing butterfly touches and soft, glancing kisses on her sternum, her ribs, the tender cove of her stomach.
She hummed and arched beneath him, wanting more than just his mouth against her flesh. She wanted the weight of him against her, the hot, slick union of their most intimate flesh. “Hurry,” she murmured, reaching for his head.
He smiled up at her with glittering eyes before settling his face against the inner curve of her thigh. He moved his head slowly from side to side, skimming her flesh with an alternating press of lip and whisker. “You always were impatient,” he teased, tickling her.
“I just know what I like,” she said, flexing her toes as his mouth inched incrementally higher.
“As do I.” His hands expertly slid her underwear off her legs and then pressed her knees wide enough that his shoulders fit between them. “I remember everything that pleases you.”
He bent over her, his clever fingers opening her before him. She felt the startling slick press of his tongue, its wet, insistent stroke right at the apex of her thighs, and her body jerked in response. She whimpered, a terrified pleasure arrowing through her as he settled heavily over her, pinning her beneath him. He stroked her center again, his sinuous tongue paralyzing all thoughts of protest.
She gasped incoherently and he lifted his head. “You still like this, don’t you?” he asked with husky confidence.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s been a long time.”
“Good.” Stephen widened her legs even more, his mouth dragging heat and moisture in its wake while his hands soothed her second thoughts. She felt him everywhere: her ribs, her stomach, her thighs. He exhaled against her intimate flesh, cooling her before he dipped to taste and toy and tease. She surged up against his mouth, lost in a blaze of pleasure so sharp it brought tears to her eyes. All too soon, the steady, constricting circles he drew upon her had her bucking and shaking and pleading aloud for mercy.
And still he plied her flesh, his tongue invading her with devastating softness. The savage sensation of losing control, of quivering atop a chasm of release so acute, had Colette fighting for control at the same time as he urged her surrender. Her heart thrashed within her ribs, she could no longer keep her eyes open, and her knees pulled high as she rocked and rocked and rocked against his mouth. Exquisite pleasure twisted high as he consumed her, until the steady slide of tongue and lip and heat became too much, too intense, too … too everything. She catapulted into careening spasms of rapture, contractions cresting in wave after wave as she shuddered and groaned.
After the last ripple of release faded, Stephen raised his head to peer into Colette’s flushed face. Her eyes, wet with tears, were too blurred to see clearly. She felt his thumbs wipe the tears from her cheeks and she blinked, reaching to brush her fingers against his mouth. He moved up her body, bracing his weight on his elbows as he settled against her.
She parted for him without hesitation. She knew, down to her last cell, that he wouldn’t hurt her. Not now, at least. Not yet. And then he dipped his head to kiss her.
“Help me,” he murmured, shifting his weight as they worked to free him from his pants.
She heard the snick of a condom wrapper, watched as he rolled it down his jutting length, and then felt the heavy nudging pressure of his arousal. He rocked gently against her, entering her one slow, exquisite inch at a time until she’d stretched to accommodate his thick length. Adrift in the perfection of their fit, she tipped her pelvis, drawing him even deeper. The angle of penetration sent a new jolt of bliss through her. Eager to grant him the pleasure he’d granted her, she flattened her hands against Stephen’s buttocks and then dragged her fingers up the quivering cords of muscle along his spine as she tilted toward him again.
Buried to the hilt within her welcoming heat, Stephen reached for her hips to still their movements. “Just a minute,” he said thickly against the scented curve of her neck. “When you move like that, I—”
Lifting her hips, she offered another encouraging nudge as she felt his tension peak.
“Wait!” he gasped. “Colette … I can’t …”
She ignored him, pulling as much of his length inside as possible, and the silky slide of her acceptance sent him over the edge. He thrust once, twice, and then climaxed with a groan, her name ripping from his throat.
A long, breathless, shuddering minute later, he lifted his head and scowled at her. “You cheated.”
“And you didn’t?” she parried, feeling beautifully feminine and powerful beneath the long, lovely weight of his body. She nudged her hips toward his again and an answering tremor of response rippled through them both. “Two can play at this game, you know.”
Laughing, he rolled to his back, hauling her with him. He gripped her head and pulled her down, her blond curls making a fragrant curtain around their faces, and kissed her roughly before nipping her lower lip with his teeth. “Minx,” he teased.
Three hours later, after he’d taught her all sorts of delightful new variations in the rules of this new game of theirs, she declared a limp surrender. She was nothing but a sated, boneless heap of damp limbs, all hint of reserve and resistance vanquished.
She didn’t even think to turn off the lights before she drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.