“I’ll be a moment,” he told her, left her there.
He had candles. For emergencies rather than atmosphere, but a candle was a candle, wasn’t it?
He might not be a romantic sort of man, but he knew what romance was.
He unearthed three candles, brought them in, set them around. Then remembered matches. He patted his pockets. “I’ll just find the matches, then . . .”
She trailed a finger through the air, and the candles flamed.
“Or we could do that.”
“I’m not sure what we’re doing, but you’re making me nervous.”
“Good.” He went back to her, ran his hands down, shoulder to wrist and back again. “I wouldn’t mind that. I’d like feeling you tremble,” he murmured, opening the buttons of her shirt. “I’d like looking in your eyes and seeing you can’t help yourself. That nervous or not, you want me to go on touching you.”
“I do.” She reached up, managed to open a button on his shirt before he stopped her.
“I want you to take what I give you tonight. Just take, just let me give. I’ve missed seeing the shape of you,” he continued, and drew her shirt off her shoulders. “Missed the feel of your skin under my hands.”
He circled her nipples with his thumbs, then gently brushed the pads over them, over them until the tremble came.
He took his hands over her, took her mouth with his—everything slow, everything dreamy, even the thick thud of her heart against him.
“Take what I give.” He backed her to the bed, brushing, stroking, eased her onto it. Watched her in the candlelight as he drew off her boots, set them down.
“Come lie with me.”
“Oh, I will. In time.”
He unbuttoned her jeans, drew the zipper down. Slow. Followed its path with his lips.
What was he doing to her? She found herself clutching at the bed covers one minute, going limp as water the next. He undressed her so slowly, inch-by-inch torture. And yet the pleasure was sumptuous, a banquet of exotic delicacies. The heat of it enervated. The weight of it left her arms too heavy to lift.
She knew nothing but the feel of his hands, his lips, the sound of his voice, his scent. Him. Him. Him.
Once, twice, a third time he guided her to the shuddering edge, held her there, poised, desperate for the leap, only to ease her back again until her breath sobbed with need, with the speechless desire for the next.
Then with lips, tongue, ruthlessly patient hands he slid her over that edge.
Not a leap, but a fall—breathless, endless, a tumble of senses and sensations. And the world revolved.
“Oh God. God. Please.”
“What do you please?”
“Don’t stop.”
His mouth, on her breast, her belly, her thigh. Then his tongue, sliding over her, into her until she fell yet again, then mindlessly craved the next climb.
He hadn’t known he’d wanted her helpless, or what it would do to him to know he’d made her so. But to see her alight—she couldn’t know she glimmered like one of the candles—to feel her body rise up to take what he offered, to feel it fall again as she grasped that pleasure. It
was more than he’d known, more than he’d imagined.
And the wanting of her filled every part of him—mind, body, spirit.
“Look at me now, Iona. Would you look at me now?”
She opened her eyes, saw his in the candle glow. Saw nothing else.