Evine stiffened and lifted her head then, but he returned to kissing her lower stomach, and then ran his tongue along the top of where the tunic had gathered, and she gasped and jerked beneath him as her muscles jumped in response. When he went lower though and pressed his mouth against the loose material gathered between her legs, she stiffened, and opened her eyes, struggling with an urge to scramble away from him until he blew his breath on her, warming the material he was dampening, and the eager flesh beneath.
Swallowing, Evina caught her hands in the linen on either side of her and waited, breathlessly, and then gasped in surprise when his mouth dropped lower to press kisses to her knees below the hem of the tunic. When he began to trail kisses up one thigh, pushing the tunic ahead as he went, Evina cried out, and shifted her legs as she began to tremble. By the time Conran’s mouth reached her core, she was strung as taut as a bow and tugging viciously at the linen. But when his mouth settled there and he began to kiss her most intimately, she cried out and rose halfway up on the bed, her hands reaching for his head.
Conran didn’t try to stop her, but he didn’t halt what he was doing either. Ignoring the fingers that caught in his hair and tugged, he pressed deeper, his mouth sliding between her folds to lash her sensitive flesh with his tongue.
Evina cried out and dropped back to lie flat on the bed again. Eyes wide open, she stared blindly up at the bed drapes overhead, her body shimmying under his attention as he kissed and licked and teased, whipping her into a frenzy of desperate need. Evina was hardly aware of what she was doing when she raised her knees, planted her feet flat on the bed on either side of him and pressed down, lifting her hips up into this new pleasure. Her body was responding of its own accord, seeking the tongue that was rasping across her aching flesh, and the lips nibbling and sucking eagerly. But when his tongue slid out, pressing into her there as it would if he were kissing her mouth, Evina screamed and bucked as her body convulsed with the pleasure she’d experienced so briefly before.
This time it was not brief, and there was no pain to follow. Conran continued to lash, suckle and nip, driving her over the edge again and again, until she lost her mind a little. Literally. By the time he stopped, she was a shuddering, mindless mass in the bed, aware of little else but the way her body was pulsing in the aftermath.
When Evina regained awareness, it was to find herself curled up against his chest in the bed, Conran still fully dressed, and her with her tunic tangled around her waist leaving everything else bare but for the bandage on her one breast, held in place by a strip of linen that ran along the tops of her breasts and around behind her and back and another along the bottom of her breasts. She was lying on her uninjured side, with her leg thrown over both of his, and his arms were around her as he rubbed her back soothingly, careful to avoid putting any pressure on her bandaged wound.
At first, Evina just lay there in his arms, unsure what to do or say. What she’d just experienced had been . . . well, it had been stunning, amazing, mind-shattering. But now she was more than a little embarrassed and unsure how to proceed. The man had just . . . and she had . . .
Good Lord, that brief bit of pleasure she’d experienced in the clearing had been nothing next to this. It had been like a peck on the cheek compared to a proper, full-mouth kiss with caressing hands and grinding bodies. She had never imagined the marriage bed could be as mind-blowing as that, and wondered what other pleasures there were to enjoy there.
“I should let ye rest.”
Evina stilled at those soft words, unsure how to respond. Before she figured it out, he had eased her from his arms and was sliding out from beneath her to stand up.
“I’ll visit ye again later, after ye’ve rested,” Conran murmured, already heading for the door.
Evina watched him go silently, her wide eyes on the way his plaid was tented in front.