Stephanie Laurens - The Edge of Desire

She knew what it felt like to touch his skin, to feel it against hers. The memories surged, brilliant moments that had tided her over all the long years since. They erupted into her reeling consciousness, and compelled.

Then his hands were on her, closing about her breasts and kneading, sculpting her body, blatantly possessive, and she had to respond.

To his heat and his need and his desire.

To the passion he pressed on her through the kiss, through the commanding, demanding caresses that set her skin afire, that flayed her nerves with sensual pleasure, and an explicit promise of more to come.

She had to have that more.

Had to make him want as she did, make him desire as she did. To strip away the studied calm with which he faced the rest of the world and touch the real man-the warrior, the ruthless demanding conqueror-beneath.

The knowledge that she could had always thrilled-a thrill she’d never thought to feel again. But he was there, arms like steel trapping her, his lips on hers, his tongue plundering her mouth, his large hard hands sliding down to cup her bottom and shift her provocatively against him again…and nothing else mattered.

She pressed his coat wide, fell on the buttons closing his shirt, returned his kiss with a fervor to match his. To taunt, to incite, to demand.

And he gave her what she wanted, dropped every last shield and joined her on that primitive sensual plane on which they’d always danced.

She wasn’t even aware when they sank to the floor, to the silk rug that lay between the sofas.

Christian drew her down beside him. Thought had long flown. Instinct ruled.

In asking for a kiss, he hadn’t expected this-an explosion of need, his as well as hers, a raging fire in his blood he was unable to deny, to control, to even guide. A conflagration from which there was no drawing back.

She was the heat he’d been searching for, the warmth, the life. She was raw passion and need, a bright, slender, scorching flame he’d never been able to forget.

Yet he’d forgotten the danger of playing with fire.

She’d set him alight, and now he burned.

No other woman had ever been able to cinder his control, not in any circumstances and certainly never with just a kiss.

His only consolation was that on the plane of need they’d breached, she had no more control than he.

She wanted him with the same urgent scorching passion as he wanted her. In that, nothing had changed.

As he slid free the last button closing her bodice and yanked the fabric aside, slid his hand beneath and with a flick of his fingers dispensed with her chemise, and finally, finally, after twelve long years, set his hand to her firm flesh, she arched into him, then sighed.

So did he. For one finite moment he savored the silken skin beneath his palm, then she wriggled, urgent and demanding, and he bent his head and set his lips to her flesh-to taste and possess and drive her wild.

How long he managed to string out the heated moments, he couldn’t tell, but he doubted it was long; they were both too hungry-their passions too long denied-too desperate for all that they both knew could be to linger.

As he pushed up her black skirts and exposed her long legs, ivory pale and so familiar just a glimpse of them sent yet more heat racing to his groin, he didn’t even wonder whether she would stop him.

She’d found the buttons at his waistband, then she found him-and his world rocked. He paused, eyes closed, felt every touch of her too knowing fingers, their hungry, greedy stroking, felt her simple possession like a brand, not just on his skin but in his brain; head back, he groaned.

Heard the delighted chuckle she gave.

That acted like a spur, pricking sharp and deep, as she’d known it would. In this arena, they’d always wrestled for supremacy, and while he usually won, she held enough power in her Vaux soul, enough passion, to challenge him.

To provoke him as no other woman ever had. Ever could.

Even as he thrust one knee between hers, forced her legs apart and touched her, even as his fingers delved in her wet heat, stroked, then penetrated, then thrust more deeply-even as she gasped and clutched his upper arms, a supplicant surrendering to her master, breathlessly, wordlessly, begging him for more-he knew it was all illusion. That he was as much her slave as ever she was his.

He yielded to the urgent tug of her hands, yielded to his own raging desire, and moved over her, spreading her thighs and settling between.

The jolt to his memory of being there once again, his flanks clasped by her long, firm thighs, his hips cradled by hers, the blunt head of his erection bathed by the scalding heat of her welcome, might have been powerful enough to jerk him back to sanity, but she raised her hands and framed his face-and drew his lips down for a searing kiss.

Cindering any hope of rational thought.

Trapping him once again in their mutual conflagration. She shifted beneath him, and the flames roared.

He reached down, found her knee and lifted it to his hip, opening her beneath him.

Then he thrust in.

Thrust home.

Her body arched under his. She moaned, the sound trapped in their kiss; her body clutched his, tightly, then beneath him she melted.

A small climax, he realized, but he’d be damned if he let her escape with just that.

He needn’t have worried. The instant he started to move within her, each stroke slow, long and deliberate, she was with him again.

Although a touch surprised by the small explosion-just because he’d entered her, for heaven’s sake-Letitia had no intention of settling for just that. Now she had him exactly where her body craved him, she was determined to wring every last iota of pleasure from the event.

From the chance that had somehow materialized to give her senses, for so long starved, succor.

So she reveled in the sensations of him, so rigid and heavy, so incontestably male, moving within her. She met him and matched him, wound her leg about his hips and drew him still deeper. Gloried at his moan, at his surrender as he took every last inch she offered and filled her.

Opening her senses, she drank in, soaked up, every little pleasure-the weight of him pressing her to the floor, his hips pinning hers as he drove repetitively deep within her, his chest heavy against her aching breasts-a delicious ache she’d all but forgotten-his lips still locked over hers, his mouth still feasting on hers, his tongue mimicking his possession of her in a flagrantly erotic way.

With joyous greed she grasped every chance to let her rejected, shriveled, almost moribund passionate soul milk all it could from the encounter, all it could of what he and circumstance had conspired to deny her for twelve long years.

All his thirst for revenge and her dramatic temper had today, between them, unwittingly unleashed.

So she strove for no control; she simply wanted.

She made no effort to guide or direct; she simply urged him on. Urged him to ride her as hard as he would, as deeply as he wished, amazed to discover that he seemed as desperate, as driven, as she.

To revisit all they’d had. To touch the heat, the incredible flaming peak, again.

To at the end, all flushed skin and damp flesh, hands grasping, locking, fingers clenched, lungs so tight they burned, lips fused, mouths melded, blind and desperate searching for release, let desire wield its whip and drive them the last little way, to crest the peak together.

To together soar over the edge and into the void.

To fracture and fall, in passion’s embrace to let pleasure claim them.

To shatter them, and fill them.

With a golden glory she hadn’t felt for so long it made her weep.

Spent, he slumped upon her. She could feel his heart still racing, pounding in his chest, feel the tempo echo where they joined.