“But I leave you cold, do I?” He moved his hands down to her shoulders and drew her against him. “I must be losing my touch.”
“I very much doubt it,” she said, her hands—her cold hands—spreading over his chest.
“Come,” he said, leading her to the bed and throwing back the covers. “Let me warm you up.”
It did not take long. Not that he did all the warming. She had decided that she would let this happen, he had already realized, but there was nothing passive about the letting. She was going to make it happen, and abandoned herself to passion as soon as her back encountered the mattress. He doubted she even realized when her shift was peeled off over her head or that they had left the candle burning. She kissed him as though she would never have enough of him—just as he kissed her, in fact. And when his hands and his mouth explored every inch of her, teasing and arousing as they went, her hands and mouth were busy on him. They did not need either a fire in the hearth or blankets on the bed. They created their own roaring furnace of heat and desire and passion.
When his hand went between her legs, she opened and lifted to him. She was hot and wet to his fingers, and his thumb caressed her to an almost instant cresting and release. She sighed out loud and rolled into him, relaxed for the moment but unsated. Her mouth found his.
“Percy,” she whispered against his lips.
It tipped him over the edge—just that, the sound of his name on her lips.
He drew her beneath him, slid his hands under her as she lifted her long legs and twined them about his, and went hard into her. Experience almost let him down then. He almost went off in her like a randy schoolboy. She was hot and moist and welcomed him with a slow, firm clenching of inner muscles.
It took him a few moments to control himself while he held deep in her, in a near ecstasy of pain.
And then they made slow, deliberate, exquisitely satisfying love. He had never before thought of sex with that particular euphemism. There was no love involved with having sex. It was purely, earthily, wondrously physical. But with her—with Imogen—sex was more than just that. Not love, but . . . But there was a deficiency of language.
It was strange how the thoughts were present in his mind even while his body was fully concentrated upon the sex act. Or upon making love. Or whatever the devil . . .
Then her inner muscles clenched as he thrust but did not unclench as they had done for the past several minutes in perfect rhythm with his withdrawals. And it was not just the inner muscles. Her whole body was taut and straining and lifting harder against his. He pressed deep again and held still. And . . .
Good Lord. Heaven help him . . . Good Lord.
He had been going to wait for her to climax and then continue toward his own release. But there was some sort of explosion that happened simultaneously inside his head and in his loins—and in her too.
And sometimes there was no experience to draw upon.
And absolutely no vocabulary.
He lay spent and heavy and panting on her, and she panted beneath him, all relaxed and hot and sweaty, and what had happened to all her goose bumps?
“Sorry,” he murmured, disengaging from her and rolling off her and reaching down to pull the bedcovers over them. “I was squashing you.”
“Mmm.” She rolled into his side, all soft woman and warm, silky hair.
Maybe she had the same problems with vocabulary.
“Thank you,” he murmured. He was sinking fast into warm, comfortable oblivion.
“Mmm,” she said again. Very eloquent.
He shifted position, slid an arm beneath her neck to cup her shoulder with his hand.
“Do you mind if I sleep here for a little while?” he asked her.
“No.”
He was sliding deeper, as he guessed she was, when a trot-trot-trotting sound was followed by a great warm lump of something landing heavily on the bed and worming its way between their legs.
“Damned dog,” he muttered, but he was too sleepy to apologize for his language or to order the damned dog to get down and leave a man alone with his lover.
*
Imogen awoke when warm lips closed briefly over her own. She kept her eyes shut for a few moments. She did not want to disturb the dream. She knew it was not a dream, that it was real, but she half wished it were just a dream, something for which she need not bear responsibility.
But she only half wished it.
His face was above her own. She could see him quite clearly. The candle was still burning. She had no idea what time it was, how long they had slept. The dog, she realized, had gone from between them.