he inched the sheer fabric up the length of her thighs, its touch dancing over her flesh like the flutter of a butterfly’s wing. Oh, but there was nothing whispery about the press of his broad palm. His stroke was firm. Possessive.
“Ohhh.” Her laugh deepened to a darker sound.
Marco slid his fingers through the curls between her legs. “You think I don’t want my wife, cara? I had better move to correct that impression right away.” Parting her feminine folds, he teased his touch into her wet passage and then drew it out, gliding a slick fingertip over her hidden pearl.
Kate gasped as a wave of honeyed heat washed over her.
“I wouldn’t want you to start questioning my manhood,” he said a little roughly. A hitch of his hips thrust his throbbing erection against the inside of her thigh.
“Then show me,” she demanded.
“Ahh.” A wicked gleam lit in his eyes. “Now you want me in your bed?”
“Yes,” answered Kate, wanting him desperately. “Yes.”
He lowered his lips, letting them hover a hairsbreadth from hers. Shadows skittered over his chiseled features, dark over light, swirling around a wink of blue.
Her pulse began to quicken.
“Va bene.” The wet warmth of his mouth was on her, searing and sensual. Yielding with a shivering sigh, she opened herself fully to his kiss.
The room began to spin, the age-dark beams and whitewashed plaster turning to a blur of hazy shapes. Was it the wine? Or the wildly wanton things he was doing to her body?
His tongue was gliding in and out of her, setting a shocking rhythm matched by his finger in her most feminine spot. The sensations were exquisite.
Explosive.
Surrendering to the searing fire, Kate came apart in a burst of pleasure.
“Ah, cara, cara,” he crooned, once her cries had subsided. “Now, we are going to do it again, but with both of us entirely naked. And with my cock inside you.”
It took every shred of self-control to keep from tearing her shift into a thousand tiny pieces and thrusting himself into her like a slabbering primitive beast. Slowly releasing her wrists, Marco slid the shift up over her head. Her loosened hair shimmered like a halo on the rumpled pillows, suffusing her face with a molten gold glow. Curling strands caressed her shoulders. Beneath the gilded flickers, her glorious body stretched out in sinuous splendor.
His beautiful naked wife.
“Undress me, cara.” His voice was a little shaky as he guided her hands to his trousers. “Please. I need to lie with you, nothing between us.”
“Oh, I should make you beg,” she murmured. “I should make you squirm.” She dragged the wool down his legs a little roughly.
His response was immediate.
“I’ve been tortured quite enough,” he rasped as she took his hardening shaft into her velvety grip. “Riding day and night in a closed carriage with your beguiling body rubbing up against mine. Dio Madre, it was enough to drive any man mad.”
Circling her thumb and forefinger around his girth, Kate feathered a stroke along his length. Her mouth curled in a sublime smile. “Why haven’t you touched me since our wedding?”
“I was…” Afraid. Dare he admit it? To care was to make himself vulnerable to pain.
“Unsure,” he finished haltingly. “Unsure how you felt about being forced into marriage.”
She turned on her side, the spill of her hair curtaining her face. “I didn’t have to say yes.”
“The other alternatives were even less appealing than I,” he said.
“Ah, but you are forgetting…”
His mind went a little hazy as the heat of her palm curled around his cock. Liquid fire flooded his belly.
“I’m rather clever at getting myself out of sticky situations,” continued Kate. “I wasn’t in any real danger.”
Ah, but he was in grave danger of losing himself altogether. As her touch played over his swollen manhood, he squeezed his eyes shut, savoring for the first time in ages a lightness untainted by dark, desperate fear.
Kate. His wild sea sprite, his beguiling, bedeviling Nereid. Conjuring up some secret science, she made the dead, black coal of his heart flare to life. A mad, hot, scarlet flame that warmed him to his very core. He found an indescribable comfort in her presence, some bone-shuddering force far more powerful than lust.
And yet, the feeling also kindled a sense of dread. Love? He couldn’t give way to it. He feared that he would only disappoint her. Hurt her. Let her ask for the sun and the moon, but not his heart.