spiraled through him, but he feared it was no use. His arms circled her waist and he groaned aloud, the sound catching like a sob in his throat as he fought valiantly to weather the unholy torment. Servanne shuddered and writhed and he heard her gasped plea, acknowledging it with an even hoarser groan as he gave her hips their freedom to plunder his flesh with their own merciless ingenuity.
Servanne’s upper body arched back and her hands clawed into his shoulders. She moved blindly against the hard fullness of him, the rapture engulfing her in waves of heat so intense she continued to quake with shock and pleasure long after she had lost the ability to govern her actions. She had to rely upon Lucien’s hands to reclaim their authority, Lucien’s arms to bring her to a dazed, quivering halt against him.
Limp and drained, she collapsed into the welcoming comfort of his embrace. Stunned by the depths of her own passions, she panted lightly against the curve of his shoulder and was thankful for his solid presence supporting her. His skin was hot beneath her cheek, and, with the slow return of sensation to her body, she became aware of the pounding beat of his heart against hers, and the fiercely possessive way he held her.
She dared to look up and their eyes met. Incredulously, she felt the wolfish fur at his groin chafing her and the deep, moist pulsations of his flesh sliding, stroking between her thighs.
“I am still there,” he murmured tersely. “How, by God’s splendour, I shall never know, but I am still there.”
He bowed his dark head, his words sounding like oaths where he pressed them against her breasts. Servanne squeezed her eyes closed and a glistening, fat tear splashed onto the back of the hand she curled around his neck and shoulders. Beneath her fingers were the welts of raised scar tissue; beneath her lips the taste of salt, musk, and leather. Deep inside her was the aching heat she had so shamelessly longed for, and she half-laughed, half-cried at her own foolish innocence. He had wanted her as much as she had wanted him and she wept for the joy of it, the wildness of it, the passion that coursed through her veins like rivulets of fire.
Lucien’s hands raked up into her hair, scattering the remains of the neatly plaited braid. He dragged the heavy woolen cloak closer and lowered her swiftly onto the padded folds, his body driving into hers with a hungry violence, his mouth eagerly sharing her renewed cries of awe and wonderment.
21
Servanne opened her eyes slowly. She had been oblivious to her surroundings, oblivious to everything but the power and the passion of the man in whose arms she lay. The tiniest shiver of fear chased along her spine when she recognized nothing familiar in the surrounding gloom. Could it all have been a dream again?
No. No dream had ever felt like this. No dream had cradled her body with such contented bliss. No dream had ever provided a shoulder of steely muscle for a pillow, or arms of warm marble for a blanket, or a body of such magnificent textures and essences for a mattress. No dream had ever supported her head when she could not, nor had there been hands half so bold or loving to gently draw her mouth around to his that they might savour the last ebbing shudders of spent ecstasy together. Spent, yet not spent. Drained, yet full to bursting with his life-giving strength.
Moaning softly to express her disappointment as he released her lips, she kept her pale, lovely face level with his. Her hair was spread every which way over her shoulders, with fine, damp tendrils clinging in misty curls to her temples and throat. Strands of it were tangled into the dark mat of hair on his chest. Filaments were tossed over his shoulders and curled around his arms to all but encase them in a gossamer cocoon. And, feeling safe and protected within their golden cocoon, Servanne lowered her cheek and rested it against the hard plane of muscle that breasted his chest.
“I would stay here with you, bound together like this forever, my lord,” she whispered dreamily. “Let someone from some future time discover our bones melted together and envy us that we died of such pleasure.”
Lucien ran his hands down beneath the silky veil of her hair, but where he should have insisted they at least retrieve their clothes