Julia James - The Lady Most Willing

He had never lost control during a sexual act. Yet with Fiona, the slightest kiss brought him close to the limit of that control. She made him feel like a madman, crazed with the wish to possess her, to make her his . Knowing that was stupid didn’t help.

She would end up with abrasions on her back, and he had just enough control left to want to avoid that. He picked up her soft body and rolled backward, letting her down on top of him.

She balanced her weight by catching herself on his chest and then pursed her lips in the most carnal pout he’d ever seen. “What are you doing?”

Byron traced the line of her deep bottom lip with a finger. “I thought we’d try it this way for our first time,” he said, trying to disguise the keen ache that he felt at the mere sight of her breasts . . . and utterly failing. They were ripe and full, the perfect size to drive a man to his knees with lust. The groan that broke from his throat was more like a growl as he curled up to draw one pink nipple into his mouth, pleasuring first it and then the other.

She liked it. Her fingers clenched in his hair and broken cries flew from her mouth. Through the roaring fog of lust, he spared a thought about his good fortune to find a woman who was not afraid of marital congress. Who wasn’t pushing him away and shuddering in disgust the way most virgins did, or so he had been reliably informed.

When he could hardly breathe, and his loins were on fire, he said in a gravelly voice, “ Now! ”

Her head was thrown back, all that gorgeous hair tumbling to her bottom, but at his command she straightened and braced herself on his chest.

There was something odd and tentative about her expression, and Byron realized in a blinding flash that dim-witted Dugald had not only denied his ostensible beloved an orgasm of her own, but that he had apparently made love to her only in the most conventional of ways.

Which left more for the two of them to discover together, he thought with a rocketing streak of pleasure, his tool hardening even more at the thought.

He put his hands on Fiona’s lush hips and lifted her up, positioning her carefully, and then let her go.

He was desperate with need, mad to be inside her. Her mouth formed a perfect circle as he thrust upward. She felt like liquid silk, hot and tight.

She was so tight that his vision went white as a voluptuous fog of pleasure enclosed him. He threw his head back, his fingers flexing on her hips and arched so that this time, this first time, he was surrounded by her. A groan burst from his throat as he withdrew and thrust upward again, even the tiniest movement sending a blast of pleasure down his limbs. She was so tight. Very tight.

Byron’s eyes flew open.

Fiona was leaning forward, braced against his chest. She didn’t look precisely as if she was in pain, but her face was tentative.

He froze, his back still arched, his hands gripping the curve of her hips. A good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon curse erupted from his lips.

Fiona blinked and said, “There’s no need to speak in such a fashion.”

“You . . . You . . .” The word came out strangled, harsh and dark.

“I’m a virgin,” she said helpfully. “Or perhaps I should say that I was a virgin.” She wiggled her hips, and he swallowed a groan, his fingers tightening on her hips again. “It doesn’t feel terrible.”

“The window,” he gasped. “The—the ivy ?”

“Do you really believe that I would be stupid enough to invite a lover to enter my bedroom by horticultural means?”

Her eyes were sparkling, although a tightness around her jaw told him that the snug fit that was making him tremble from head to foot was not as delicious for her. He began to lift her away from him, but she curled her fingers against his chest and said, “No!”

He stopped instantly.

She slipped back down until he was snugly hilted inside her. Byron couldn’t help it: his hips arched and he gasped her name.

“Did you like that?” she asked, her voice changing from its usual calm, dry amusement with the world to something different. Nearly a purr. She braced herself against his chest and lifted herself a bit and then slammed back down.

A ragged cry broke from his lips and he thrust into her again, taking that last millimeter, burying himself in her slick heat.

Fiona laughed, and the sound fell on him like a blessing. She leaned forward and did it again, and he finally regained enough control to release her hips, though he was pretty sure he’d left bruises on her skin. His hands free, they went naturally to her breasts.

He had his control back now, even if it was held by a thread so delicate it might as well be a strand of her hair. She had to come with him into the intoxicating, ravenous pleasure that beckoned.

She had her eyes closed, swaying a little on top of him, her hands covering his as he shaped her breasts, rubbing those beautiful nipples again and again. Every time, he felt a delicate little shudder go through her body.

Fiona was in the grip of a feeling so sensual that she didn’t even know how to name it. It was like the storm outside, as if she’d been caught up in something so powerful that the essential her was lost in the middle of a whirl of wind. Where there had been nothing, there was suddenly this hard, hot . . . this . . . She couldn’t think of the word.

And Byron was caressing her breasts, and every time he rubbed a thumb past her nipples, he would nudge upward, just the smallest amount, just enough to remind her that he was there.

Part of her.

The very thought ran like liquid gold over her skin. She, Fiona, was finally not alone any longer. Even though they’d known each other for almost no time at all, she knew it with a certainty that flooded her whole body. His face, that beautiful, beautiful face, was contorted, savage, not graceful . . . because of her.

“You will always love me, won’t you?” she asked, the words coming out with a gasp. Every time he moved, it made spirals of heat shoot through her legs.

He opened his eyes at that. She knew instinctively that there wasn’t a woman in London who would recognize, who had ever seen, the look of savage possession that she saw now on the face of the cultured and urbane Earl of Oakley. “Always. You are mine,” he snarled, thrusting up again. Her body had adjusted now, accepted him.

More than that, it welcomed him, sent a shudder of heat through her. She swayed, caught herself on his chest, her fingers curling against hard muscle.

Her eyelids dropped closed. It felt as if her body was narrowing to one point, to this—

His big hands caught her hips and lifted her easily in the air, away from him, into unwelcome coolness. She let out a sobbing cry, but he was moving like a whirlwind, throwing down the fur cape, laying her gently on her back, bracing himself over her.

“I have to have you,” he said, his mouth just touching hers, his voice strained but gentle. “It’s this bloody possessive side of me, Fiona. I need to—I need to—”

She looked up at him, feeling the fever race through her blood as he started to come to her, and knew that this would always be their fulcrum point.

He would need to possess her, to know that she would never leave him, to believe it with every speck of his soul. And she would need just as desperately to know that he loved her. That he would be tender, and stand between her and the world’s opinion, and always defend her.

It was the blazing truth in his eyes, clear in the way his huge body was frozen over hers, even as he obviously struggled to control himself. He was braced on his elbows, his hands clenched beside her head.

Fiona drew her fingers voluptuously down his back, all the way to the hard muscles of his buttocks. “I want you,” she whispered, her voice aching with the truth of it. “I am not complete without you.”