The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (Cynster #20) - Stephanie Laurens Page 0,95
him hers.
Lips curving as much as the overwhelming tension would allow, she whispered, “Thank you.” Blindly reaching for his head, sinking her fingers into his hair, she raised her head a fraction, whispered against his lips, “Now let go,” and kissed him.
Passion erupted. Held back for so long, it raged unrelenting, unforgiving. It whipped them along, harder and faster, whirling them through the age-old dance and straight into the flames and the fire.
Up, and higher, harder, and yet more furiously needy, they gasped and raced, driving for the peak, the ultimate pinnacle of intimate joy.
Their hearts thundered; their breaths came in raspy pants. Locked together, striving together, they yearned and stretched, reached and sought.
She was as caught as he, as subject to the passion they’d unleashed, yet she was aware and was with him, much more so than the first time, able to sense and feel, know and appreciate the turbulent power they’d evoked. Provoked.
Physical and ephemeral; even as they gasped and clung, she felt his hands on her, felt his awareness of her, felt how through his body he spoke to her, through hers, through her senses.
No words could breach this plane, could encompass this elemental reality.
Making love could, and did.
She tightened around him and they raced on through the searing wonder.
And in a heady rush of pounding joy they found that pinnacle, their oh-so-desired destination, without pause leapt past and on and flew.
Tension imploded. Sensation, molten and scalding, erupted and flashed outward from where they joined, flooding their veins, sinking deep into their flesh.
They shattered. She screamed; he roared.
Ecstasy speared through them, broke them, wracked them.
Caught by her own primal contractions, she felt him stiffen in her arms, felt the heat of his seed pulse deep within her.
She surrendered. Felt him do the same.
And ecstasy’s benediction flooded them, a blessing so richly sensuous it brought tears to her eyes and made her cling.
To that moment, so fleeting, so precious.
Then it faded, as it always would, yet even as she let go and, with him buried deep within her, connected beyond the physical, sank into satiation’s sea, she knew that it—that moment of ultimate intimate communion—would always exist, would always be there, waiting for them, forever a part of them.
Satisfied beyond measure, lips gently curved, she let bliss draw her into its embrace.
Ryder slumped on top of her, too wracked to move.
Too wrung out to think, to even care.
The danger had been there—and he’d fallen.
His last conscious thought before he surrendered was: Is this how it feels to be conquered?
There were only seven more days to their wedding—and those passed in a blur.
The morning after Henrietta’s nuptials, Mary found herself plunged into preparations for her own. Ryder had brought her back to Upper Brook Street in the small hours; sated and deeply content, she’d tumbled into her own bed, but her mother roused her early—much earlier than she’d hoped—to remind her that they had a fitting for her bridal gown that morning.
As the same modiste had so recently made her gown for Henrietta’s wedding, the fitting was more an opportunity for her aunts, her cousins’ wives, and some of the females of the next generation to ooh and aah over the fine Flemish lace and pearls, layer upon layer of which made up the delicate bridal gown.
Lucilla and Prudence, Demon and Flick’s eldest daughter, had stars in their eyes. “You look like a fairy princess,” Prudence said.
Viewing herself in the modiste’s cheval mirror, Mary had to agree. The gown played off her relatively small size and also her coloring. When the modiste set the fine veil in place, to Mary’s surprise, her eyes looked huge. Pools of pansy-blue.
The rest of the day passed in a whirl of female family interactions. With time so short, everyone claimed a role, parts they were eager to play.
Mary met Ryder at a ball that evening; while she’d thought to join him in Mount Street later, he suggested that, with the wedding only days away, perhaps they should simply wait. He waved languidly. “Rather than unnecessarily sneaking around.”
Mary wondered, but acquiesced and let him go. For that night.
Through the next two days, she, Louise, Honoria, Patience, and Alathea, aided by all the others, repeated their tasks from the previous week, arranging for flowers, food, wine, music. The seating in the church and at the wedding breakfast. The schedule, the carriages, the additional staff to be drawn from the family’s various households. Yet because this wedding was to be a massively larger affair, those tasks,