a fiery path from the tender underside of her chin to the silk-encased tautness of her breast. She gasped without sound as the moist, suckling heat closed around her nipple. A curse and the sigh of tearing silk brought the heat closer, gave bolder texture to the rolling, kneading thrust of his tongue. She shook her head as if to deny the shock and the pleasure, but her own voice betrayed her. Pleas and clawing fingers guided him with shallow, urgent cries of assent when he lifted his mouth from one trembling peak and gallantly went in search of the other.
He also seemed to know the exact moment when her legs could no longer support her. With the ghostly vapours of steam cushioning her descent, the Wolf drew her down beside him, to where the water was a thin, warm sheet over the fine sand, and the sweet green moss was the perfect pillow for her head. Half in, half out of the water, he lowered his mouth to her body again, his hands raking into the golden mass of her hair, spreading it beneath them with a reverence that caused his arms to tremble.
A gust of hoarse incredulity acknowledged the lusty imprint of his flesh where it intruded, swollen and impatient between her thighs. Her limbs were coaxed wide by a body that had difficulty disguising its eagerness, and she gasped again, clutching frantically at the muscles that tensed across his back as his weight bore down over hers.
There was none of the gentle, apologetic hesitation which had marked Sir Hubert’s couplings. The prideful thrust of the Wolf’s flesh was like the man himself—wild, savage, primitive, unyielding. It breached her hard and fast, stretching, swelling, filling her to the bounds of reason, then surging even deeper, deeper, until she could feel him touch upon the very depths of her soul. And when he moved within her … dear God, when he moved within her, she had no more thoughts to waste on pride or shame, only the desire, the need to clasp her arms, her limbs tighter around him so that she might know the glory of total possession.
The Wolf heard her cries of awe and was conscious of his own astonishment as he felt her lithe young body strain and arch to accommodate him. The velvety fist of her womanhood closed around him without guile or avarice, and for the first time since he had vowed to close his heart and mind to any soft intrusions, he felt the formidable barriers of ice and steel threatened. The loner, the renegade, the black knight within him fought the encroachment with as valiant an effort as any he had put forth in the lists, knowing the dangers of falling blindly into the chasms of emotion. The man in him, the ardent lover of so many years ago, succumbed to the heat and the drenching oblivion, he stumbled and fell headlong into the misty well of imploring cries and passion-haunted eyes.
He slid trembling hands beneath her hips to raise her, brace her as he felt the tide of pleasure begin to swell and burst in scalding founts of ecstasy. Servanne’s head thrashed against the moss, her eyes wide and staring as she soared through peak after peak of rapture, each one higher, sharper, brighter, hotter than the one before. She thought she heard someone screaming, the sound as shivered and splintered as the shafts of fiery consummation that ravaged her body with unending spirals of flame.
The Wolf groaned and rolled onto his back, carrying her wet and streaming body with him, seeking to hold her steady until he could collect his wits and will about him again. But she was already far beyond the authority of his hands and, challenging his efforts to hold her still, she curled her hips forward and slid them back, forward and back, shamelessly triumphant to discover she was not dependent upon his permission to exploit the deep, throbbing friction within her. The rough, calloused hands were clamped rigidly around her waist, but they could no more resist the succulent temptation of her breasts, than her hips, once free to obey her instincts, could fail to quicken to a blur as their ecstasy reached another shuddering crescendo … and another.
It had been his intention to brand himself on her mind and body forever, but in the end, clinging to her as desperately as she clung to him, he feared she would be the one seared into