The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (Cynster #20) - Stephanie Laurens Page 0,108
before his momentum tipped them both off the bed. Growling in warning, he fought to get his hands on her skin, pushing up her flimsy near-translucent chemise, all she currently still had on bar the sapphires and diamonds he’d given her.
He succeeded in getting his hands on her lush, naked curves. Her skin, soft, smooth, silken, acted like an aphrodisiac, one he most certainly did not need. Clenching his jaw against the resultant throbbing ache, he rolled to his back, wrestling her atop him long enough to rip the distracting chemise away.
As he flung it aside, she slipped from his arms, scooting down his thighs as she tugged his trousers to his knees. On a curse, he shifted his legs and finished the business for her, pushing his trousers to the end of the bed, but before he could roll again and put her beneath him, she slapped her palms to his chest, leaned her full weight on her braced arms, and gasped, “No!”
No? He stared up at her. The necklace and earrings fractured the light, glittering about her throat, dangling from her earlobes, marks of his ownership. He wanted to claim her, ravish her. “No” didn’t, to his mind, fit anywhere in their current situation.
She wanted him; he wanted her.
He could easily have tipped her and put her on her back. Reining in the raging urgency that insisted he do exactly that made him ache, but something in the searing blue of her eyes held him immobile. “What?” he managed to rasp.
“This is about me thanking you.”
“You can do that best by—”
“How do you know?” Her voice was a breathy thread, desire pulsing in every word. She licked her lips; the sight nearly made him groan. “How do you know what is best if you don’t know what I want to do? To you.”
He’d been aching before; now he was in agony. “Mary—”
“This is our wedding night, and the boon I ask of you is for you to lie back and let me give to you . . .” She held his gaze, then her lips faintly curved. “Exactly what you wish to give to me.”
He knew he should refuse, but . . . looking into her eyes, he was passingly sure that she’d already realized that he was constitutionally incapable of refusing her anything she’d set her heart on . . . and just that thought—that she had set her heart on this—made him haul in a huge breath, then nod. “All right—but only because it’s tonight.”
She smiled as if she saw straight through that lie, but then she slid her hands up over his shoulders, letting herself down fully atop him. Sliding sinuously up to bring her head above his, she paused to look into his eyes, then bent her head and kissed him.
Like a houri. Like a woman whose life held only one aim—to please and pleasure him.
He had no real notion of where she’d learned to do as she did, but he suspected that she’d learned from him, then extrapolated.
Each caress, every wet lash of her tongue, every subtle but deliberate pressure of her hands and drift of her fingers was laced with a potent mix of innocence and concupiscence.
He had no real idea how long the excruciatingly exquisite intimate torture lasted, for how many heart-pounding, senses-stealing minutes she practiced her magic, only knew that by the time he finally broke, when, biting back a curse, he released the powerful suction of her mouth, drew his iron-hard erection from that hot, wet haven and hauled her up to straddle him, he was long past thinking.
She was no better, but with the sudden gripping of her knees about his waist, an almost violent tossing of her tumbling curls, and the sharp bite of her nails sinking into his forearms, she made it perfectly clear she wasn’t yet ready to give up the reins.
Quite the opposite. Before he had time to do more than drag in a breath, to fight against the tension and fill his chest, she positioned herself and sank down, slowly, inch by inch impaling herself on his aching shaft, enclosing that oh-so-sensitive part of him in scalding glory—stealing his breath. Stealing his wits and every last ounce of his will.
By the time she pressed fully down, enveloping him to the hilt, he was lost.
Then she rode him and shattered him utterly.
Rising and falling, her lids low, the light from the lamps occasionally glinting in the intense blue of her eyes, with her hands