“Like riding?”
Despite his impatience, he laughed softly. “Exactly like riding.” He paused. “No, more fun than riding.”
“That’s a big claim. I like riding.”
“So do I.” He leaned in to ravish her mouth. “I’m all yours.”
She looked dazzled. He loved the way she flung herself headlong into passion. Her thighs gripped him as she rose. Her torn petticoat hid their joining, but he felt every move. Dear God, how he felt her.
When her humid heat grazed his cock’s sensitive tip, he groaned and bit her shoulder. Her skin was dewy and she gasped in ragged little spurts.
“Take me, Genevieve,” he grated, and he wasn’t sure whether he meant answer this desire or take him forever.
Both.
“I take you.” It sounded like a vow.
The moment dissolved into bliss as finally she descended. She was wet and ready, although he’d done little to prepare her. Her body offered exquisite resistance. Her muscles clung and released. She paused, breathing in whimpers.
“Are you all right?” he asked roughly, seizing her hips in shaking hands. His injured arm objected, but he was past heed
ing anything but Genevieve.
“Yes.” She didn’t sound certain.
He felt her tension. She clutched his bare shoulders. The scent of arousal mingled with the dust of ages. He closed his eyes against the darkness, diving into deeper darkness inside his head. The need to thrust was a pounding demand. But he wanted to show her that in loving him, she lost nothing of herself.
“Do it, my darling,” he pleaded. She quivered on an instant of hesitation then sank fully over him, taking him deep.
Genevieve released her breath in a sob of satisfaction. The solid power of Richard’s body inside hers answered heart and soul as much as physical need. Her hands tightened on his shoulders, his skin sleek beneath her palms. He pulsed inside her, breathtakingly virile.
“I love you, Richard,” she said softly.
His expression was unguarded as it rarely was. She read wonder and joy in his eyes. “And I love you, Genevieve.”
With a naturalness she’d never have imagined moments ago, she rose, relishing the thick, silky slide of his body. Teasing, she lingered at the peak before slowly descending. Again that completion. She leaned forward and kissed him hard, a fierce battle of tongues, lips and teeth.
She became a creature of instinct, rising and falling like the tide, the rhythm pulsing through her blood. Her ears filled with the sounds of lovemaking. The succulent meeting of bodies. Hoarse breathing. Her thundering heartbeat. These tumbling, tormenting sensations still astounded her. Her body tensed, seeking its incendiary goal. Tighter and tighter. Higher and higher.
Richard sank his teeth into her shoulder again and she shivered, but still relief hovered beyond her grasp. She bent her face into his damp, tangled hair, inhaling male musk and lemon verbena. Her movements turned clumsy, frenzied. Then he lifted hard as she lowered, and blackness exploded into a million stars.
She cried out at the shining waves rippling through her. Her muscles clamped around him and he groaned against her neck as he juddered into her.
The sky rained fire. For an eternity, they joined inside the inferno. Then, shaking, she fell against him, his arms surrounding her with love.
Genevieve stirred without opening her eyes, not wanting to shatter this moment. She draped across Richard. His scent filled the air the way his love filled her heart. She kissed the hard slope of his chest.
All her life, she’d feared love as a trap. She loved her father and had paid with years of thankless service to his causes. However much she’d resisted the prospect of marriage, she’d occasionally imagined falling in love with someone ordinary and malleable who shared her intellectual interests. “Ordinary” and “malleable” didn’t describe Richard at all. So why, despite physical captivity, did she feel so free now? As though the world opened up before her like a book and she could turn to any page she wanted.
“Why are you smiling?” Gently he brushed aside the untidy mass of hair concealing her face.
“I never imagined it was possible to feel the way I feel right now.”
“Me either,” he responded softly. “You’re my whole world.”
Very slowly she raised her head. “I should be terrified, stuck here in the darkness.” She met his unwavering gaze. “I’m not frightened because we’re together.”
His embrace firmed and he kissed her thoroughly. “We’ll get out of this.”