The Earl of Christmas Past (Goode Girls Romance #5) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,24

when to undress you.”

Dominance from any man had always caused a tight ball of frigid defiance to form in her chest, immediately freezing any warm feelings she might harbor toward him.

But his command released a flood of hot, liquid desire from her loins as she veritably bloomed beneath the intensity of his regard.

Vanessa let her hands fall demurely to her sides as she lay back on the coverlet. It was an excruciating exercise in a discipline she’d never actually possessed.

Her eyes touched him everywhere she could not, drinking in the fantastic breadth of his shoulders and the vast mounds of muscle that comprised his torso. She counted the obdurate ripples of his ribs and the corrugated plane of his abdomen before boldly following the vee of his hips to where his arousal jutted from a corona of dark gold hair.

Vanessa realized belatedly that one measly lover could never have prepared her for a man like Johnathan de Lohr.

She swallowed hard.

He groaned low.

And then his hands were upon her, circling her ankles and prying her legs open so he could fit between them. Rough palms rasped up the smooth swell of her calves, lifting the hem of her skirts, tracing those otherworldly sparkles of sensation in their wake.

He bent to kiss her in strange places she’d never imagined so seductive. The delicate skin on the inside of her knee, for example, as his questing fingers inched up her thigh.

Aroused and overwhelmed, she reached for him, tugging at his shoulders, needing the safety of his weight again. Craving the comfort of his kiss.

He obliged with a silent look of tender understanding, his lips returning to hers, one arm bracing his weight as his other hand resumed its wicked discovery of her.

She clung to him, greedy for more of the sensation sweeping like wildfire from his lips. From his fingertips as they glided over the thin skin of her inner thigh.

How could she have thought she’d known desire before? Never had it been like this with William. He’d been all charm and coaxing, evoking a maidenly curiosity from her born of innocence and not a little insecurity. This encounter was nothing like the weightless little butterflies he’d set free with his artless caresses and quick fumbles in the dark.

This. This was a tempest as powerful and encompassing as the one raging outside. Her belly quivered, her limbs trembled, and her breath caught on little gasps of need that he took into his own lungs as if to lock parts of her inside of him.

His kiss was ferocious where his fingers were not. He dominated her mouth once more, his tongue flexing and exploring in decadent strokes reminiscent of the act itself.

Gentle fingers petted through the intimate hair at the apex of her parted thighs, finding abundant moisture there.

They gasped against each other’s mouths when he split the silken center of her with one lithe stroke.

Reflexively, her thighs clamped together, imprisoning his hand there.

William had struggled with her pleasure, had become frustrated with how complicated sensation had been to evoke from her body. He’d written about it. Told the world she was impossible to please.

That the fault had been hers.

And she’d believed him.

She understood now it was because she never wanted him like this. She never felt anything close to this unleashed frenzy of mindless, animalian need.

Sparks already threatened to take her over the edge as she realized that whatever miracle of magic and energy that made John corporeal also produced that strange, indescribable vibration wherever his skin connected with hers.

Against the sensitized flesh of her sex, it was an ultimately unparalleled sensation.

His finger slid easily between the slick ruffles, testing the damp folds and swirling her liquid desire around the little bud that throbbed with such fervency it bordered on pain.

“John,” she implored against his lips.

“So wet,” he groaned, his eyes unfocused as if he didn’t mark her plea.

“John, I’m already going to—”

“Yes,” he agreed fiercely. “Yes, you are.”

With a couple expert flicks of his finger, he blew her entire world apart.

Vanessa felt as if the storm outside now originated from somewhere within her. The climax whipped her this way and then that, pushing and pulling her in powerful gusts of pure extasy.

Hoarse cries were ripped away from her throat as she threw her head back into the mattress, whipping it from side to side as if to escape the overwhelming intensity of the pleasure.

He seemed to instinctively understand when it became too much, and he slowed his lithe ministrations, bringing her back