Once Upon a Castle - Jill Gregory [93]
As her blood heated and her body pulsed, Felicity experienced needs she’d never even known existed. This, then, was why she’d been born. For this man. This moment. Nothing else mattered.
She needed to touch him as he was touching her. With quick, hurried movements she slid his shirt from his shoulders and bent to him, brushing her lips across his chest. She heard his little gasp of surprise and thrilled to it. It excited her to please him as he was pleasing her. Drunk with power, she reached for the fasteners at his waist. When her fingers fumbled, he closed his hands over hers, helping her, until his clothes lay discarded alongside hers.
He was magnificent. Muscles rippled along his chest and arms. He had the contoured body of a warrior. She traced a finger over the flat planes of his stomach and was rewarded by his sudden intake of breath.
Desire smoldered in his eyes as he pulled her against him and devoured her mouth with his. All the while his fingers worked their magic, until her body was a mass of nerve endings.
How could he be otherworldly, when his heart beat the same as hers? When his body fit so perfectly to hers? When his hands, his lips, could weave such magic?
This was no ghost, she told herself. He was a man, and he was hers.
Ensnared by her newly awakened passion, she felt her hands clutching the cloak beneath her as she reached the first unexpected crest. It rippled through her, leaving her gasping.
He saw the way her eyes widened, then darkened with desire.
“Please, Gareth. Now. I want you now.”
Instead, his hands tangled in her hair, and he savaged her mouth with bruising kisses. All the tenderness, the gentleness, the patience he’d demonstrated earlier were gone. In their place was a primitive darkness, a relentlessness, that left her stunned.
So this was why he’d resisted. This was why he’d tried to warn her.
Instead of being afraid, she found this dark side of passion deeply arousing, secretly exciting. Following his lead, she began, with lips and tongue and fingertips, to explore him as he had explored her.
Gareth’s body hummed with need, but still he held back. There was so much more he wanted to give her, to show her, and he knew that after tonight it would be too late.
He feasted on her breasts, nibbling, suckling, until she moaned with pleasure. But though she arched toward him, he refused to offer her the release she sought. Instead, he brought his lips lower, drawing out every sensual pleasure.
A breeze rippled through the branches of the trees, but it couldn’t cool their overheated flesh. The heat rose between them, shimmering like a cloud, filming their bodies with a fine sheen.
Felicity was beyond thought now. There was only Gareth and the pleasure he could bring. A pleasure that was close to pain.
She writhed and trembled as he slid along her body. He took her higher, then higher still, keeping release just out of reach.
Her hands clutched at him as she felt herself reaching another peak. He gave her no time to catch her breath as he brought his lips back to hers. She cried out his name as he entered her.
Her body sensitized, completely aroused, she wrapped herself around him as he began a slow descent into madness. He filled himself with the taste of her, the fresh, clean scent that would always be her. And he knew that for an eternity to come, he would hold this memory of paradise in his heart and be warmed by it.
The need for release clawed at him until he felt himself exploding. The madness was complete. He no longer existed, and neither did she. Now they were one. Joined. Forever changed.
Then she soared with him, climbing