How delicious was madness.
She rolled over, her hands as quick and fast as his, to drive him as he was driving her. Dangerous heights. Pleasure that was a shuddering kin to pain. She rose up. In the shadowed lights her skin gleamed like damp silk. Her eyes, wildly blue, locked on his. One heartbeat. Two.
Now. The demand seemed to shimmer in the air around them. In answer he gripped her hips, fingers digging in. In one fluid move, she took him deep, deep, holding there, holding them both trembling. On a long, feline moan, she arched back, skimming her hands over her own body, from center over torso to breast, where she felt her heart thundering. Slow, very slow, acutely aware of every tremor of her body, acutely aware that his eyes were following her movements, she trailed her hands down until they covered, caressed that mating of bodies.
Glorying in every breath, she sleeked her hands up again, lifted her hair. And began to ride.
The pace she set was hard and fast and merciless. He watched as she drove herself to the peak, shuddered over it. Sensations battered him like an avalanche, blurring his vision.
But he knew he'd never seen anything more glorious than Margo lost in her own passion.
When she cried out, flinging herself forward, her hands braced on his shoulders, her hair curtaining his face, he had no choice but to lose himself with her.
"Why do I always feel as if I've dived off a mountain whenever I make love with you?" Margo didn't really expect an answer. She thought Josh was asleep, or at least comatose, but he shifted, his lips brushing over the curve of one breast, then the other.
"Because you and I together, duchess, are a dangerous pair. And I want you again already." He nibbled his way up to her throat, found her warm, swollen mouth.
She was ready to float again, her arms light and limber as they lifted to circle him. "It's never been like this for me before." Through the daze of sensations building fresh, she felt the change. And understood the reason for it. "I know how that sounds."
"It doesn't matter." He didn't want to think about it. Only wanted to have her, to hold her.
"It does. To both of us." Suddenly unsure here, where she had always felt so confident, she cupped his face in her hands to raise it. His eyes were heavy with desire, a hint of irritation now working through. "I think we have to talk about it."
"Neither one of us took a vow of chastity."
That was true enough. She also knew that though she had taken lovers before, the press had gifted her with a libido and a trail of broken hearts that was well beyond reality.
"We need to talk about it," she repeated.
"I haven't asked you any questions, Margo. Whoever, how many ever, have been in your life before, there's only one now. There's only me."
The cool, possessive tone might have annoyed her under other circumstances. It was so Joshua Templeton—I see, I want, I take. But they were still linked, still warm from each other. "There haven't been as many as you might think. Josh, I didn't sleep with every man I dated."
"Fine. I didn't sleep with every woman I took to dinner." He snapped it out as he turned over on his back to drag the hair off his face. "It's now that matters, in any case. Are we straight about this?"
She wanted them to be. It was his anger, the cold control of it, that told her differently. "Josh, my reputation's never really mattered to me before. In fact, it only added to my bank account. But now… it matters now." Suddenly chilled, she sat up, wrapped her arms around herself. "It matters now because you matter now. And I don't know how to handle it. I don't know how either of us is
going to handle it. When it was just sex—''
"It was never just sex for me."
"I didn't know that," she said quietly. "I didn't know how you felt, or how I felt, until it was just there. And it's so big, so important. So scary."
It surprised him, not just what she said but the way she said it. Nerves, regrets, confusion. All those things were so rare in Margo when it came to the games men and women played.
"You're scared?"
"Terrified." She hissed out a breath and rose to yank a robe out of the closet. "And I'm not happy about it."
"So am I."
With the beginnings of temper simmering in her eyes, she looked at him over her shoulder. A long, lean male animal, she mused, his hands tucked behind his head now, the start of a smirk on that gorgeous mouth. She wasn't sure whether to slug him or jump on him.
"So are you what?"
"Terrified, and not happy about it."
She tugged the belt on the robe, kept her hands in place as she turned. "Really?"