The Obsessions of Lord Godfrey - Stephanie Laurens Page 0,108

Then she turned and drew him into her arms, and he finally knew what it felt like to come home.

Stepping into her embrace, he bent his head as she stretched up, and they kissed—unhurriedly sinking into the moment and savoring it. Savoring the sense of embarking together on a voyage to a destination both familiar and desired.

Metaphorically hand in hand with her, he reached for that, along the way acknowledging the slow but steady escalation of their hunger, the welling expectation of fulfillment, and the turbulent stirring of their passions. Yet tonight, he sensed a change—a sharper edge to passion, an extra bite to need, both his and hers.

Compelled, he angled his head and deepened the kiss, and she framed his face, met his questing tongue with hers, and urged him on.

Then her hands were pushing his coat off his shoulders.

His fingers found the buttons closing the back of her gown and deftly undid them.

In a flurry of increasingly heated kisses and frantic, grasping hands, they stripped the layers from each other until only skin remained.

Wrapped in each other’s arms, they tumbled onto her bed, rumpling the covers, then urgently, blindly, pushing them aside. And suddenly, going fast wasn’t enough. Didn’t promise satiation enough.

Drawing on every ounce of expertise he possessed, he caught their flapping reins and hauled. He rolled her onto her back, wrenched away from the all-consuming mating of their mouths, bent his head, and set his lips to her breast.

She stilled, panting. Waiting.

He closed his lips about one turgid peak and suckled, and she arched beneath him.

Ellie’s eyes were wide, yet she was blind—oblivious to everything but the sensations that welled and washed through her, evoked by his touch, sure and true, and by the scorchingly hot caresses of his lips and tongue. Scintillating, exhilarating, galvanizing—the thrills streaked down her veins to stoke the fluid heat welling at her core.

He paid due homage to her breasts, and all she could do was wallow in the moment, in the glorious realm of passion and desire to which he had taken her.

Then he skated lower, savoring her silken skin, tracing the indentation of her waist; her whirling awareness tracked his touch as he explored each dip and hollow with lips and tongue. Meanwhile, his hands boldly sculpted her curves, until, driven beyond passivity, she shifted restlessly, moaned, and sank her nails into his shoulders.

He hummed in wordless response, then set about methodically working his way farther down her body. She wasn’t sure whether to sigh in delight or gasp in expectation when he parted her thighs, wedged his shoulders between, and set his mouth to her slick softness.

At the first lick, she writhed. When he suckled, she panted and sank her fingers into his hair.

Godfrey gave no quarter. Pleasure flooded him at the taste of her nectar on his tongue, and her responses, wordless, incoherent, yet clear in their demand, impelled him to push her on—to make her writhe and gasp and clutch at his hair, before he sent her flying on her first foray into paradise.

As the last of her tremors faded, with her fractured breathing filling his ears, he raised his head and looked up the length of her body, then rose still farther to drink in the full sight of her with the aftermath of ecstasy still stamped on her features.

His gaze locked on her face, pleasure-ravaged beauty personified, and something moved inside him, like a seed unfurling under the sun. That she was his sun came as no surprise, but as that new growth thrust up—powerful, resilient, enduring—the façade the years had sealed over his heart cracked and fell away.

And emotion erupted, pure and powerful.

Struck by the force of it, with his wits and senses reeling, he couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes and tried to contain the maelstrom, tried to push down the raging tide of feelings swirling, unrestrained, through him, but the emotions he’d earlier corralled and locked away had broken loose and now demanded, commanded…

He opened his eyes and found her watching him, as if she could sense the turmoil inside him.

Then she sat up and reached for him, and he seized her and clung.

He drew her close, then shifted so he could clutch her still tighter and buried his face in her hair. “I thought I’d lost you.” His voice was gruff and guttural, the words dragged from his depths. “In that instant, when you dashed across and the shot rang out… It felt as if my world was just about