Genuine Lies

competently, to undress her. The tension in her shoulders began to ease. The fluttering in her stomach changed from that hollow motion of stress to the warming movement of anticipation.
    It was magic. Or he was. Here, with him, she could erase the past, forget tomorrow. There was only the everlasting now. How could he have known just how much she’d needed that? In the now there was the feel of tight muscles under her dancing fingers, the perfume of moon-dusted flowers, the first stirrings of hunger.
    Lost in him, she let her head fall back, made soft, helpless sounds deep in her throat as his lips trailed down to cruise over her breast.
    “Tell me what you like,” he said, and his voice echoed inside her head. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”
    “Anything.” Her damp palms slid down his flesh. “Anything.”
    His lips curved once before he rolled his tongue over the heated point of her breast, caught it between his teeth on that delirious edge between pleasure and pain, drew it into his mouth—hot, firm, fragrant—to suck his fill.
    He would take her at her word.
    It was as if it were the first time she’d been with a man. She shook her head to try to clear it so that she could give back. But he was doing things to her, wild, wonderful, wicked things to her. She could only shudder at burst after burst of pleasure.
    Her head lolled back as she struggled to gulp in air that was suddenly too thick. Her breasts were so heavy, the nipples so hot, that when he flicked his tongue there again, she cried out in astonishment at the good, hard orgasm he gave her.
    “I can’t.” Dizzy, she braced her hands on his shoulders as he burned a line down her torso. “I have to—”
    “Enjoy,” he murmured, nipping at her quivering flesh. “You only have to enjoy.”
    He knelt in front of her, his hands gripping her hips to hold her in place while he dipped his tongue along the juncture of her thighs. He could feel each ripple of sensation that passed through her, and his body was hammered by the same dark delights that rocketed in hers.
    She came again, and with a half sob clutched her fingers in his hair to drag him closer. Now her hips were moving, quick as lightning, urging him on. When his tongue speared inside her, she went rigid, stunned by the jolt of heat. Her knees went to jelly. She would have fallen if he hadn’t grasped her hips and forced her upright.
    Relentless, he drove her up again, his desire feeding greedily on hers. He wanted—wanted to know her system was a jumble of sensation, that her nerve endings sizzled to the touch, that her appetites matched his.
    When he knew, when he was sure, he dragged her down to the floor with him and took her further. Showed her more.
    He had to stop. She would die if he stopped. While they tumbled over the rug she clung to him, her body limp one instant, tense the next. She had thought they had given each other all there was long before this. Now she knew there was yet another level of trust. There, in the deep shadows of that room, there was nothing he could have asked of her, nothing she wouldn’t have given willingly.
    But before it was done, it was she who asked. She who would have begged. “Please, now. God, I need you now.”
    It was all he’d wanted to hear.
    With his eyes on hers he brought them together, torso to torso. Slowly, watching the pleasure and confusion flicker in her eyes, he wrapped her legs around his waist. He filled her, inch by trembling inch, until he was plunged deep. Gasping, she reared back, accepting him, absorbing him, enjoying him.
    When the first shudders had passed, she came back, bringing her lips to his even as they began to move together. Through the excitement, the passion, the clutching hunger, came a new sensation—one that settled and soothed and healed.
    Lips curved, she held him close until there was nothing left but velvet darkness.
    Later, much later, when she slept, he stood by the window, looking out at the single light he could see through the trees. Eve was awake, he knew, even as her daughter slept. How could he, a man so firmly tied to each of them, find the way to comfort both?
    He went in the side door. Before he had crossed through the parlor with its scent of fading roses to start up the front stairs, Travers was there. She hurried down the hallway to him, rubber-soled slippers flapping.
    “This isn’t the time for visiting. She needs her rest.”
    Paul paused, one hand on the newel post.