Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [60]
“Dee, honey, open your eyes. Look at me; look at how I’m shaking. Touching you makes me dizzy,” he whispered fiercely. “I get drunk on the very smell of you.”
Dione’s eyes fluttered open, and she found that he’d moved closer, until his face was filling her vision. It was Blake’s face, not Scott’s, and his blue eyes were as dark and stormy as the sea, full of incredible hunger. His trembling fingers were still moving only lightly over her breasts, though the heat of his hand burned her even through her nightgown.
“That…that’s enough,” she said, her voice thin, wavering out of control. “This isn’t right.”
“I need you,” he cajoled. “It’s been so long…can’t you tell how much I need you? Please. Let me touch you, really touch you. Let me unbutton this granny gown and see you.”
Even as the words were tumbling harshly from his lips, his agile fingers were slipping the tiny buttons of her nightgown free of the buttonholes. The buttons ran down to her waist, and he undid every one of them while she sat helplessly transfixed by the primitive call of his need. Slowly, with rapt attention, he opened the gown and pushed it off her smoothly tanned shoulders, dropping the cloth around her arms and baring her to the waist.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispered harshly. “I saw you, that morning…. You were so perfect, so damned female, that you took my breath away.” Gently he cupped a breast in his palm, curving his fingers over its ripe curve as if he were measuring the heft of it.
Dione began to tremble, wild little tingles of sensation shooting through her body. She didn’t know what to do, how to handle him. She had no experience with men other than her husband, and that had been a horror from start to finish, nothing that compared to the sweet pain of Blake’s touch. Sweet, yes…and not really pain. Incredible. Unknown. A primitive exultation raced along her veins, heating her blood, making her feel stupidly, happily weak. She wanted to sink down beside him on the bed, but she couldn’t do that. Despite the joy her body was feeling, her mind was still locked away from even the possibility of it.
Now both of his hands were on her, holding her breasts together. His head bent, and she sucked in a convulsive breath, staring down at his dark hair with terrified fascination. His tongue darted out and washed a cherry nipple, then he blew his warm breath across it, watching with delight as it tightened and thrust out at him. “That’s beautiful,” he breathed, and tasted the other one.
At last she could move, and her fingers threaded through his hair. She thought dimly that she’d pull his head away, but instead her palms pressed against his warm skull and held him to her, held his mouth to the tender flesh he was suckling as fiercely as any starving infant.
He released her nipple from his mouth and lay back, his hands sliding to her ribs and drawing her with him, pulling her down until she lay half-across him. He began kissing her with short, hard kisses that stung her lips. “I need you,” he panted. “Please. I want you so much. Let me make love to you.”
Dione moaned, a high, keening sound that reflected both the tumult he’d stirred in her and her fear of going any further. “I can’t,” she cried, tears suddenly stinging her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
“Yes, I do,” he whispered, moving his mouth down to the line of her jaw, nipping at her with his teeth. “I’m asking you to let me love you. I want you so much that I’m aching all over. I can’t sleep for dreaming about you. Let me be a man with you; let me bury myself in you and forget about the past two years. Make me whole again,” he pleaded.
She’d spent too long nurturing this man, agonized over him too much, felt his pain, celebrated his triumphs, loved him. How could she refuse him now? She’d be leaving soon, and she’d never know the heady taste of him again. But she was shaking, almost convulsed with the fear of what he’d do to her. For him, she’d bear it, this one last time. The scars that Scott had left on her mind had ruined her forever,