She tugged him to his feet and led him to her bedroom. At first she was tempted to leave the light off. But she wanted to see every inch of him. And if she was to give herself to him, body, heart, and soul, then he had a right to see what he was getting, flaws and all.
So she undid the pretty shoulder clasps of the blue gown and let it fall to the floor in a puddle of silk around her feet. She stood there in her plain white panties and her support bra, then forced herself to meet his eyes.
“You are beautiful,” he whispered.
His utter sincerity rang through her. His gaze overflowed with the love, tenderness, and desire she had never truly had. He cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her brow, her eyelids, the corners of her mouth.
“Every line and curve of you is a crown,” he murmured. “Beauty and wisdom combined.”
“After two kids and a lot of years,” she whispered. “There’s no getting around gravity.”
But he just gave his head a shake. “In the culture I grew up with, age is cherished. Your goodness of spirit is drawn in every line, more lovely than mere art, because it is the truth of you. There is no one,” he breathed, “more beautiful to my eyes.”
She choked on a laugh that was part sob, and suddenly wanted to be free of her clothes, and to rip him out of his, so they could get skin to skin.
“Let me,” he murmured, his hands caressing slowly, carefully, sweetly over her shoulders, down her arms, and then he folded his arms around her, and she stood in their shelter as his fingers caressed up and down her back until at last they arrived at the clasp of her bra.
She had always been comfortable in her body, until marriage with Bartholomew had made every aspect of life a competition. Suddenly she wasn’t thin enough, shapely enough, never enough . . . but after that encounter earlier in the evening she had begun to understood the hollowness inside of Bartholomew. No longer shackled by his disdain, she had space for pity, but no regrets.
She was free.
She was free, and as that last bit of uncertainty washed away in the blissful tide of eagerness, her breath caught as Mikhail bent to kiss each of her breasts, lingering kisses that tightened her nipples to peaks of sensitivity. Her stomach muscles tightened, shooting darts of heat down to her core as he caressed, kissed, and played.
Finally she stood in nothing but her sandals, her skin sensitive to the air. His hands roamed her body, loving each fold, and he bent to kiss every place he touched. Each press of his lips shot liquid light into her core until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She needed him now.
She pulled apart his coat and began to work at his shirt buttons, desperate in her desire to touch him everywhere. He laughed low in his chest and stopped caressing her only long enough to help her by pulling free the loosened tie and dropping it on the floor beside her dress. Jacket and shirt followed, as her fingers dove for the buckle of his pants.
He stepped out of his shoes as she yanked his pants down, and her mouth rounded with appreciation as she freed him. She was breathless by now, desire running thick as molten silver through her veins as she caressed his length, the skin so soft over iron hardness, glistening at the tip.
“Let me,” he said again, and knelt to undo the buckles of her sandals. When she stepped out of them, he stood and swept her up, and laid her gently on the bed. Then he stretched out beside her.
“I have a trick knee,” she said, her voice high.
He chuckled, stooped to press a kiss beside it, then worked burning kisses up the inside of her thigh, causing an avalanche of ache deep within. She had been trying to find a delicate way to point out that nothing but vibrators had been near her for almost three decades—and little enough of that in recent years—but every thought shattered before the building tension throbbing in her.
Mikhail kissed his way up to her mound. Her belly trembled with the towering wave of need, and by the time he pressed a kiss there, she discovered that her body had not forgotten what to do, not at all. She was as slick as she’d been at twenty-five. In fact, she thought as stars exploded behind her eyelids and she floated on a wave of bliss, this was far, far better.
Her previous sex had been with someone who did what was necessary.
She had never, until this moment, been worshipped.
The first kiss into her most tender place was a salute, the second plundered her, demanding. She opened gleefully to his demands and he answered by plunging deep, tongue, lips, teeth launching that driving, aching need into orbit so high and fast she was dragging her nails in the bed sheets and whimpering.
She opened her legs their widest, abandoning herself utterly as pleasure mounted impossibly fast, impossibly high, then crashed around her in waves of chiming sweetness—leaving every bone and muscle unstrung on a floating tide.
That only lasted a breath or two, leaving her hungry for more, for him. It was her turn to learn, and to celebrate, every inch of his body. It wasn’t always easy—that knee did tweak—but she ignored that as she explored the contours of his muscles, the soft hair growing over his breastbone, then leading down to his hardness. And it was her turn to play, teasing with tongue, with lips, and with little nips that brought out gasps from him that made her feel more powerful than any dragon.
He caught her hands.
“Now,” he husked.
She was already lying back.
“In me,” she commanded.
And exulted as that tidal wave of passion and generosity welled upward, bringing them both soaring—she was no longer on a bed, but had been transformed to a creature made of light, as boundless as all the sea as he eased into her as if she had been made for him, and him for her.
She arched her hips, pulled him closer, and he slid home.