He traced with a finger the delicate bones of her wrist. The pearly underside of her arm. He felt saturated by the beauty of her body, this glorious secret hidden by her clothes, the textures and curves of her, the sweet, satiny curve of her breasts with their rose-colored nipples, the triangle of dark fluff at her legs.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “While you are with me, you do not have to be strong. Cry. Laugh. Scream. Be whoever you are. Feel whatever you feel. I am strong enough for both of us.”
She turned to him. She touched his face.
“Make me scream again,” she whispered.
He was undone. He had never felt so simultaneously weak and savage.
He traced the contours of her kiss-swollen lips with a single finger.
Then he laid his mouth against hers softly.
In him warred two impulses: devour or cherish. The instinct to take what he could before it disappeared, before it could be taken from him, before he could be told such beauty, such bliss, was not for him, burned powerfully. But she had taught him to savor. She had shown him he had the right.
And so, as if by sheer force of will he could alter the flow of time enough to make this interlude of discovery and desire last the rest of their lives, his hands moved over her slowly. Revealing to her that every bit of her skin could be a source of pleasure.
“You can tell me how you like to be touched,” he murmured, as silently, slowly, his rough palm skimmed over the unthinkable softness of her skin. Tracing the sweet dip of her waist up over the slope of her hip. Dipping to glide over the curve of her belly. To lightly, tantalizingly, tangle in the damp curls between her legs.
She half sighed, half moaned. Sounding somnolent with pleasure.
“I like...” she murmured, tracing his eyebrow with one finger, “watching the way your expression changes when you touch me. And the way it changes when I touch you.”
He was too moved to reply. He felt a little raw, knowing that she could see so clearly into him. He was a little in awe of her.
With delicate fingers she followed the bones at the base of his throat. Then circled the bump ofhis nipples, which she then licked. She smiled with a vixeny delight when his breath hitched and he hissed in a pleasured breath. She followed the furrow between his muscles on his chest, his abdomen. She marked him out like a cartographer, her face a study in wonder. Reveling in her power to quicken his breathing, to make him sigh, make his muscles tense with pleasure beneath her questing hand.
When her hand slid down to his cock, he covered it with his own. Then wordlessly, he showed her how to stroke him.
She circled him in her hand and obeyed.
“Is this right?” she whispered.
“Dear God, yes,” he groaned.
In silence, her fist dragged the length of him, harder, and harder still, as she responded to the sounds of his pleasure. She explored the smooth dome of his cock, lightly combed through the curly nest of hair, reveling in all the exotic-to-her textures of him, her eyes never leaving his face. Until he was shifting restlessly, and groaning from the heretofore unimaginable pleasure. Need was like a spear through him.
He rose up over her, and she instinctively slid beneath him so he could enter her again.
He rolled the two of them gently so that they moved, side by side together, their bodies fused and rippling.
The scream of her release ebbed into a little sob, as if such pleasure, such happiness, surely could not be borne.
And as she rested her head on his chest, herbreathing settling, he stroked her hair, and he felt his own eyes burning with tears.
She’d closed her eyes, and he watched her face in the lamplight. Make this night last forever, he willed. But he’d watched her lose her battle to sleep, and he was about to lose his. They slept holding each other, entwined, skin to skin.
They woke to bright light shining through a parted inch of curtains.
The rain had finally stopped.
Chapter Twenty
Between them, there could only be this—this island of time, the strange stolen interlude at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
And they only had it because they were pretending to be what they were not.
She knew this, and so did he.