Filled her hand with his length and heard the raspy breath he sucked in, felt him tense. Felt him wait as she decided just what she would do, then she closed her hand lovingly. Marveling anew at the contrast of silken softness enclosing such potent, patently masculine strength, she let her nails gently score upward.
She repeated the torture three times before he carefully disengaged; she didn't think he was breathing. Then he stepped back and sat on the swing, urged her to follow.
"Kneel astride."
She put one knee up, then the other, felt the damask cushion under both knees. She wrapped her arms about his neck, tilted her head and set her lips to his, then shifted closer, until her stomach met the wall of his abdomen, then she slid sensuously down. The touch of his clothes, rough against her soft skin, was a reminder of her nakedness, his relatively clothed state. Her vulnerability, his strength; her giving, his need.
He ravaged her mouth and urged her lower. His hand was beneath her, guiding her, guiding the head of his erection into the softness of her swollen flesh. She felt its touch, felt the strength as he pressed in just a little, just past the constriction. Her lungs seized and she stopped, then, slowly, slowly-as slowly as she could-she eased fraction by fraction down, taking him in, glorying in the pressure, the fullness, the ease with which her body adjusted, then closed lovingly about him.
She didn't stop until she was fully impaled, until it felt like he was nudging her heart. Her skin was alive, heated, nerves flickering.
His tongue thrust deep into her mouth, fracturing her attention. Then she felt his thigh, beneath hers, flex.
The swing started to rock.
Sensation washed through her. Surprised, she clung, pressed nearer, then she felt his hands on her legs, urging her to wrap them around his hips.
She did, and he was even deeper inside her; the sensations intensified, driven by the swing, by the increasing momentum. The swing was well oiled, well balanced; the occasional push from Martin's foot was enough to keep them whooshing gently back and forth.
Which one of them started the dance, she wasn't sure, layering one rhythm atop another, matching an effortless thrust and withdrawl to the swing's motion. Amplifying the effect. She controlled it, using her arms to ease herself up, using her locked legs for leverage. Once she had the rhythm established, once their bodies were merging freely, deeply, in absolute harmony, his hands left her hips, moved over her skin, caressing, knowingly stroking, igniting a million small fires that slowly, gradually, coalesced to a blaze. Then to an inferno.
A vortex of heat and movement that swept them up, then sent them whizzing dizzily down, that snatched their breath, pressed pleasure and yet more pleasure upon them, through them, one to the other, then back again.
The ultimate give-and-take, the epitome of sharing.
As she clung, her lips melded with his, her mouth all his, as was her body, Martin let past and present slide, let the future free, and gave himself up to this, to her, to what he now needed beyond all else.
This was what he had wanted tonight, this complete, unreserved giving. Her legs, naked but for her sheer stockings, wrapped about his hips, his hands on her skin beneath her chemise, able to touch and savor as he chose. Her body, slick, hot, all but molten, enclosing him, clamping down as the swing descended, easing as it swung up again. Open and generous and his.
Again, and again, and again.
The powerful repetition for once beyond his control held him captive, held his senses in unparalleled delight. Until they fractured.
She shattered in his arms, her cry muted by their kiss; he followed, unable to break the link that held them, that fused her pleasure with his, that made them one and the same. One whole-with one beat driving their hearts, one passion melding their souls.
One future. If he'd ever had any doubts, as the swing slowed and he caught his breath, held her tight in his arms and felt her heartbeat deep within her, the last moments had eradicated them.
The power that had flowed, briefly but so powerfully, that had so effortlessly fused them not just in this world but beyond it, was undeniable.
He had to accept it, which meant he had to find a way forward, no longer just for him, but for her, too. For them. He hadn't needed Connor's warning-he knew he couldn't risk losing her.
He dragged in a breath; his lungs were still too tight. He nuzzled the curls about her ear, struggled to speak the words he knew she wanted to hear. Couldn't get his tongue to do it.
"Marry me." Those words came a lot easier. "Soon. This game's gone on too long. We have to end it."
Sincerity rang in his voice. Amanda lifted her head from his chest, looked into his face, raised a hand to
his cheek. Tried to smile but her muscles were still too lax to do it properly. Her head was reeling-impossible to think. "Yes" hovered on the tip of her tongue…
She wasn't sure what stopped her from saying it, from agreeing then and there to marry him regardless. In faint moonlight and shadow, his face was stripped to its essential lines, to the harshly angular planes, an honest reflection of the man he truly was without the softening effect of his gold-tipped hair and the mossy shade of his eyes. He waited, a sense of darkness still inhabiting his face, a shadow of things denied, hidden. Suppressed, but not for his good-they were the burdens of others he yet carried.
Would he accept that he needed to give them up, that he needed to revisit the old scandal, open it up for investigation regardless of what they might find? If he did, then Lady Osbaldestone's caveat was met, and she could safely agree.
"I…" She paused to lick her dry lips, shifted in his arms, fixed her eyes on his. "I'm not saying 'No,' but…" She frowned; no matter how hard she stared, she could detect no sign of compromise. "I need to think."
His expression was not one of capitulation. "How long?"
She narrowed her eyes, but he was right; they had to bring this to an end. "A day."