“I’ll be as gentle as I can be.” His warm breath fanned skin that was already hot. “There’s no need to be frightened of me.”
Her mute nod of understanding was a hesitant movement of her chin. She heard his breath catch as his dark eyes probed hers. Her own glance drifted to the hard male lips, waiting for their touch with a fast-beating heart. Then they were coming down.
His mouth moved onto her lips in an unhurried and sensuous exploration, warm and without pressure. It teased her for a response, lightly brushing her lips, going away and coming back until her lips parted to invite the kind of deep kiss that had so thrilled her once before. The taste of him filled her mouth.
The flat of his hand spread itself onto her rib cage, so warm against her bare flesh. She felt the swelling thrust of her breast anticipate the possessive encirclement of his hand. When he took its weight, the sensation was so much sharper, skin against skin, without the protective barriers of dress and undergarments.
The solid outline of his male body was pressing along her length. She didn’t dare touch him as she ached to do, so she curled her fingers into the mattress cover to keep them from sliding up and down the sinewed flesh of his rib cage where his heart was thudding so strongly.
When his mouth slid hotly down her throat, Lorna turned her head aside, pressing her cheek against the mattress and biting her lip to silence the moan of raw pleasure. But the downward journey continued, and she stiffened in vague alarm when his lips moved onto the peak of her breast.
Babies suckled a woman’s breast, but it had never occurred to her that a man did. A spasm of erotic quivers splintered through her as his mouth opened to take her nipple into it. His tongue turned it into a hard point of pulsing sensation, until Lorna was driven nearly mindless. When he did the same thing to her other breast, his thumb rubbed the wet peak of the abandoned nipple, keeping it aroused.
A keening sweetness nearly shattered her control. She felt the moan building in her throat and pressed a tightly curled fist against her lips to smother it. His hand came to drag it away as Benteen shifted his attention back to her face, roughly brushing his mouth over her cheek.
“Don’t hold it in, Lorna.” There was a groaning quality to his half-mumbled words. “Let me hear you.”
“I can’t.” It was a moaned response that contradicted her answer.
She turned to seek his kiss and let his demands hold sway with her. The need to withhold her touch was forgotten as her hand curled into the thickness of his hair. Her sanity seemed threatened when his hands began to stroke and manipulate other parts of her body.
Primitive instinct held sway, wiping out the discretion that had dictated her reactions. Lorna yielded to the fiery sensations burning her loins and let her hips arch against the stroking pressure of his hand and the release of raw tension it offered. Sensation built upon sensation, until there wasn’t room for conscious thought in her mind. No directive was sent to keep her legs tightly together, so the space was invaded.
A wildness gathered force inside her, lifting Lorna into a frenzy. Distantly she heard Benteen murmur, “Enjoy it, my love.” Then she was convulsed by an eruption within, so intensely pleasurable that it rocked her.
Several minutes passed before she could open her dazed eyes. She lay there panting and exhausted, yet feeling absolutely wonderful. Benteen was smiling at her while his hands made slower work of their caressing moves. Lorna was conscious of a faint sheen of perspiration covering her skin. She wasn’t sure what had happened to her, but he seemed to know.
“Lorna, you have so much to give,” Benteen declared thickly, and began kissing her.
She had thought she was beyond feeling anything again, that all ability for sensation had been drained from her. Yet as Benteen started kissing her lips, her throat, and her breasts again, and his skillful hands resumed their stroking caresses, the threading excitement began knotting inside her again.
This time, his knees forced their way between her legs to spread them as he raised himself atop her. There was a vague awareness that the moment of coupling had come. Something warm and hard rubbed against her moist valley in search of its entrance. Unconsciously her gaze was drawn to the lower part of him.
A tingle of alarm ran down her spine at the sight of him. He wasn’t soft and small like the little boy baby she’d seen once. She hadn’t realized that part of his body grew over the years as well. The discovery was followed by a moment of panic, certain that she was too small to ever mate with him. The initial probe seemed to confirm it.
“No, please.” Her hands pushed at him, trying to lift his weight off her.
“It will be all right, Lorna,” Benteen tried to calm her, but she sensed his inability to control his lust as he continued to hold her down.
“No.” Her eyes appealed to him not to go through with this. Hot color filled her cheeks as she tried to explain what should have been obvious to him. “It’s … it’s too big.”
“No, it isn’t.” The corners of his mouth twitched before lust overruled the attempt at a smile and dragged a groan from his throat. His mouth opened her lips with hungry force and smothered any further protest.
There was a stab of pain as he miraculously entered her, but it gradually lessened under the rhythmic thrusting of his hips. Soon the pain was forgotten as those waves of sensation began to build to a climax within her again. His tempo increased to a faster rate, driving Lorna to that crazy, golden moment of explosive pleasure. There was a shower of aftershocks. Then a series of violent shudders quaked through Benteen before he relaxed onto her, breathing hard.
After a minute he rolled onto the mattress and opened his eyes to look at her. His serious expression made her
uncomfortable. When his hand reached over to idly cup the underside of her breast in his palm, Lorna became shy about his wandering gaze. She groped for the bedcovers and pulled them partially across her body and his.
There was a crooked slant to his mouth. “We are married, Lorna,” he murmured. “You don’t need to be ashamed to look.”
“I know.” But it was hard to break long-ingrained habits of modesty.
“How do you feel?” he asked, and let his hand slide onto the quivering muscles of her stomach.
“All right.” Lorna was conscious of blushing at his frank question.
“You were wrong, weren’t you?” His hand moved possessively onto her hipbone as he quietly mocked her. “I wasn’t too big for you.”