And then he did not have to imagine any longer because he put his lips where his thumb had been and traced the path. As he’d thought, her skin was as soft as a flower petal and as delicate too. He hadn’t expected the scent of her to waft past his nose and snare him. She smelled of vanilla and sweet cream and something else uniquely her that made him hungry for far more than food.
His lips skated to her ear so he could bury his nose in her hair. The scent was pink and light and womanly, a fragrance he now knew was hers alone. He pressed a kiss to her ear and felt her shiver, not from cold this time. “Enough kissing?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her voice low and husky but ever so definitive. He almost laughed again. He had known that would not be enough for her. Nothing would be enough until he plundered her body and left her limp and exhausted with pleasure.
His cock, hard now and at attention, approved heartily of that plan, but Ewan had grasped for his lauded control. At a young age, he’d learned to harness his strength and control it, and his desires were under those same taut reins. He would kiss her. Nothing more.
He pulled back slightly to look in her eyes. It was too dark to discern the color, though he knew it well, but he wanted to see the look in them. As he’d expected, there was no fear, only wide-eyed curiosity and the barest hint of heavy lids, indicating the beginnings of arousal.
Ewan traced a thumb over her lips, parting them slightly, and then pressed his mouth to hers.
Seven
Lorrie was in a state of acute shock. Her entire body quivered, and she knew it was no longer from the cold. The man holding her against him was as hot as a furnace. He was almost too hot, and she felt a single bead of perspiration trickling down her back. She did not know why she quivered except that she was giddy with anticipation. The Viking was kissing her. She hadn’t known she wanted him to kiss her until he’d pulled her against him, and then she did not know how she had ever wanted anything else.
Even before his lips drove her to madness with their slow, tickling path to her ear, she knew this would be no chaste, perfunctory kiss like those Francis had given her. The Viking was not civilized. He would not kiss her like a gentleman, an assumption he proved when he growled in her ear. The heat that shot into her body at the warmth of his breath on that tender flesh had made her knees buckle. Her belly had soared and dipped and then coiled tightly as if waiting for something.
And then he’d pulled back and looked at her with those icy blue eyes. Except they had not looked icy at all. They’d been the blue of a lake or of the sky on a perfect summer day. His large, rough thumb scraped over her lips, and the gesture itself felt so incredibly wanton that when he kissed her, it almost felt sweet.
But that was just the initial press of his lips on hers. She’d been kissed like this before—lips upon lips, mouths locked in a fleeting embrace.
Then his lips moved. He kissed one side of her mouth and then the other. Her head reeled and she felt dizzy until he took her bottom lip between his teeth and nipped. Lorrie opened her eyes—eyes she hadn’t even realized she’d closed—and gasped. What sort of man bit her? But she could not begin to object because he’d taken advantage of her open mouth to slant his mouth over hers.
His open mouth.
Lorrie stiffened, uncertain what she should do next. Keep her mouth open? Close it?
That was when his tongue moved inside and slid across the roof of her mouth. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest and she tightened her hands on his coat both to hold herself upright—though his hand remained firmly on her back—and to keep him from stopping. She did not ever want him to stop. His tongue tangled with hers, and spikes of pleasure zinged through her body.
This was indeed the most wanton thing she had ever done, and she never wanted it to end. The Viking—my God, she was kissing the Viking—plundered her mouth. There was no other word to describe what he did. He kissed her so deeply she could scarce remember to breathe. Her head felt fuzzy and too heavy for her shoulders, while at the same time she was aware of a growing ache between her legs. The more he slid in and out of her mouth, the more he toyed with her tongue, the more the ache grew and spread. She felt it in her belly and her breasts, which grew swollen and tender. Her nipples had hardened into points that chafed against her stays.
She wanted to throw her head back and allow him to do what he would with her, as long as he never stopped kissing her.
And then suddenly there was that nip on her lower lip again, and sharp focus returned. He’d pulled back, and she opened her eyes and stared at him.
“Enough?” he asked.
She should say yes. It was more than enough. It was too much. Instead, she shook her head. “More.”
He looked at her as one might look at a child who had eaten four biscuits and asked for yet another. Her lungs tightened with fear that he would cease kissing her. That he would end the magic that was this moment and she would be thrust back into reality. That she would never kiss him again after tonight. And that would be the greatest injustice of all.
“Kiss me back,” he said in his usual gruff way.
Joy surged through her. He would not deny her! And yet she had no idea how to comply with his demand. “I don’t know how to kiss like this,” she confessed. “I’ve never—”
He silenced her by tracing his tongue along her upper lip, an action that made her catch her breath. Then he pulled back and raised one brow in what seemed to be a challenge.
“Oh, you want me to do what you do,” she said.
He didn’t answer, not that she’d expected one, and she rose on tiptoe to run her tongue along his upper lip. At the moment before she touched his mouth, she felt rather foolish. She had never licked anyone before, but as soon as their flesh met, she forgot all about foolishness. She learned the shape of his lip with her tongue—first his thin upper lip, then the fleshier lower lip. He was clean-shaven, but the first hints of stubble tickled her tongue. She closed her mouth over his lower lip, sucking on it gently and then biting it sharply as he’d done to her.
Suddenly, she felt herself lifted off the ground, his hands digging into her buttocks and pulling her against his hard chest—but no, that was not his chest. That was—his mouth crashed down on hers and if she had thought she had been senseless before, she lost all capacity for thought now.
Her ears rang with the sound of blood rushing to her thudding heart, she did not know if her eyes were open or closed. All she knew was his mouth on hers, his body pressed to hers. All she knew was that in that instant, she was his completely.
And then she was not.
He set her down roughly, and she stumbled, hands stretched out, fingers groping wildly until she caught the back of a bench.
“Bloody fucking hell.”