Private Scandals

When they slid up to circle her breast, her body curved to welcome them.
    Like warm rain, this pleasure was soft and quiet and soothing. She accepted it, absorbed it, then ached for it, as he slowly undressed her.
    The heat from the fire radiated out, but she felt only his hands, molding gently, exploring, arousing. His touch lingered, then moved on, lighting flames in which those tiny raindrops of pleasure began to sizzle. When she trembled now, she trembled from the heat. And her breath strangled in her throat.
    He no longer felt the beast clawing at him. There was a sweetness here, and a power. He knew as his lips roamed from hers down to the swell of her breasts that she was his, as completely, as absolutely as if they had been lovers for years.
    Her body was like water in his hands, rising and falling with the tide of pleasure they brought to each other. He heard the wind scraping at the windows, the spit of the fire in the hearth. And the sound of his name whispering from her lips.
    He knew he could make her float, as she was floating now, her eyes like smoke and her muscles like warmed wax. Andhe knew he had only to inch her higher, just a bit higher, to watch her break through those clouds into the storm.
    She felt his teeth scrape over her hip, and the hand she was stroking through his hair went taut. Heat coiled hot in her belly as his tongue streaked over her. She shook her head to refuse it, to will away the sudden, uncontrollable quivering. Then the furnace of pressure built so quickly. She writhed, struggling toward it, struggling away. She tried to call out, to tell him to wait, to give her a moment to prepare. But the pleasure geysered through her, spurting molten through her system.
    He watched the instant of frantic denial, the stunned panic, the mindless pleasure. Everything she felt echoed inside him. As breathless as she, he levered himself over her, raining kisses over her glowing face until she was wrapped around him, until her movements grew frantic and his own churning need demanded release.
    “Look at me.” He fought the words out of his burning throat. “Look at me.”
    And when she did, when their eyes met, held, he slipped inside her. Slowly, his hands fisted in the rug as if he could grip control there, he lowered to her, felt her rise to meet him until they moved together silkily.
    When her lips curved, he pressed his face to her throat and took them both over the edge.

Chapter Sixteen
    S till dreaming, she turned to him, and he was there. Arms moving to enfold her, body ready to possess her. As the warm light of dawn slid lazily into the room, they joined again. Rhythm fluid, flesh warm, passions met. It was so easy, so effortless, to glide together, without hurry, without thought, while the air throbbed as steady as a pulse.
    The ebb and flow of their bodies, the movement of sex as simple as breathing, had her lips curving before they met his in a long, deep, dusky kiss.
    When their needs peaked, as gentle as the morning, she sighed out his name and drifted from dream to reality to find him still pulsing inside her, a second heartbeat.
    “Finn.” She spoke again, smiling into the quiet morning light. The cross he wore pressed against her skin, just below her heart.
    “Hmmm?”
    “This is an even better way to start the day than fishing.”
    He chuckled, nuzzling at her neck. “Yesterday morning all I could think about was crawling into this bed with you.”
    Her smile spread. “Well, you’re here now.”
    “It seems I am.” He lifted his head, studying her as hetoyed with the hair at her temple. Her eyes were big and sleepy, her skin glowing with that translucent polish that was the afterflush of good sex. “We overslept.”
    “No.” Delighted with how easy it was, she ran her hands down his back to the taut skin of his buttocks. “We slept perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
    “You know . . .” He cupped her breast, rubbing his thumb over the nipple and watching her lips part on an unsteady breath. “I was going to teach you how to fly-fish this morning.”
    At his gentle tug, fresh arousal settled in her belly. “Were you?”
    “A dry fly-fisherman is the aristocrat of angling. It takes . . . a master’s touch.”
    She turned her head when he lowered his mouth to her throat. “I could learn.”
    “I think you could.” He scraped his teeth over the pulse that fluttered like bird wings. There was nothing, he decided, more erotic than feeling a woman open