A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,51
whore. So, I suppose we should both be grateful you are not either of those things.”
She gaped up at him, astonished by his wicked candor. “What sort of thing—Oh!”
He snatched her off the ground with unsettling strength and swept her out of the chamber in a few strides. This time, he had to duck to get through the doorway and deposit her on the bed.
Vanessa was glad for the sturdy wood of the frame rather than creaking brass as he ripped his coat from his heavy shoulders and joined her there.
She had a feeling they would have woken the entire inn with what they were about to do.
He prowled up her prone body like a great cat until he settled fully upon her, his weight a delicious press as he took her mouth once again.
Ribbons of desire unspooled within her as she wound her hands around his neck, tugging the leather thong that caught his long hair into a queue. Releasing it, she twined her fingers into the silky mass at his nape, curling them into claws and nipping at his lip.
His lips tore from her with a ragged sound. “Fucking Christ, Vanessa, if you do that, this won’t last long.”
Vanessa tried to appear contrite, but she very much doubted she mastered the look if his urgent response was anything to go by.
He broke away from the circle of her arms to unlace his shirt, reach back and pull it over his head and down his arms in one graceful move.
Had she been less mesmerized by the magnificence of his figure, she might have been curious about the odd workings of his historical trappings as he divested himself of them.
But he loomed like Apollo above her, his skin like gold and honey poured over solid sinew and steel. The cords and veins in his arms danced and flexed as he worked his belt and trousers free.
Vanessa’s fingers lifted to the buttons at her throat, but he stopped her with a curt order as he bent to kick away his boots.
“The thought of your bare ass beneath that skirt has teased and tantalized me all night,” he said in a low rumble. “Now you’ll let me be the one to decide when to undress you.”
Dominance from any man had always caused a tight ball of frigid defiance to form in her chest, immediately freezing any warm feelings she might harbor toward him.
But his command released a flood of hot, liquid desire from her loins as she veritably bloomed beneath the intensity of his regard.
Vanessa let her hands fall demurely to her sides as she lay back on the coverlet. It was an excruciating exercise in a discipline she’d never actually possessed.
Her eyes touched him everywhere she could not, drinking in the fantastic breadth of his shoulders and the vast mounds of muscle that comprised his torso. She counted the obdurate ripples of his ribs and the corrugated plane of his abdomen before boldly following the vee of his hips to where his arousal jutted from a corona of dark gold hair.
Vanessa realized belatedly that one measly lover could never have prepared her for a man like Johnathan de Lohr.
She swallowed hard.
He groaned low.
And then his hands were upon her, circling her ankles and prying her legs open so he could fit between them. Rough palms rasped up the smooth swell of her calves, lifting the hem of her skirts, tracing those otherworldly sparkles of sensation in their wake.
He bent to kiss her in strange places she’d never imagined so seductive. The delicate skin on the inside of her knee, for example, as his questing fingers inched up her thigh.
Aroused and overwhelmed, she reached for him, tugging at his shoulders, needing the safety of his weight again. Craving the comfort of his kiss.
He obliged with a silent look of tender understanding, his lips returning to hers, one arm bracing his weight as his other hand resumed its wicked discovery of her.
She clung to him, greedy for more of the sensation sweeping like wildfire from his lips. From his fingertips as they glided over the thin skin of her inner thigh.
How could she have thought she’d known desire before? Never had it been like this with William. He’d been all charm and coaxing, evoking a maidenly curiosity from her born of innocence and not a little insecurity. This encounter was nothing like the weightless little butterflies he’d set free with his artless caresses and quick fumbles in the dark.