Page 70 of Single Desire
His knees spread her wide. Her gaze was riveted to his rod, thick and fever hot, the swollen tip buried within damp feminine folds.
Maura flinched. She couldn’t help it. She buried her face against the side of his neck, aware of a deepening pressure. She could feel herself being stretched. Widened. Instinctively she sought to clamp her thighs together.
“Alec—” His name was half choked. “Alec, I…we did not—”
“I know. I know.” His head turned ever so slightly. “Do you trust me, Irish?”
She drew a shuddering breath. “Aye,” she said helplessly. “Aye!”
He pulled himself out. The head of his rod glistened.
Maura drew a ragged breath. Her gaze was drawn to his face. His features were taut with rigid strain. The cords on his neck stood out.
Only then did she realize the restraint he exercised. Raw emotion filled her throat. Something inside her caved way.
“Alec!” she cried. “Alec!”
Alec was just as affected as she was. He hissed in a sizzling breath. Sweet Jesus, she was hot. Silky and slick around the head of his cock. He tried to be slow. He tried to hold back. But when she offered up tremulous lips, it was more than he could stand.
With a hoarse sound of need, he plunged forward. He felt the tearing of her virgin flesh. His lips swallowed the tiny littlegasp she made. Something purely primitive, purely possessive, pounded through him. She belonged to him. She was his. His.
Embedded as far as he could go, he kissed her lips. Her cheek. The hollow at the base of her throat. His hands caught hers. Their fingers threaded. Twined.
Their bellies pressed. Sealed. Their mouths clung. Her breath belonged to him—as his belonged to her. With every breath, with every heartbeat, he plunged closer to her womb.
“Maura,” he said raggedly. “Maura.”
His thrusts pierced deeper. And then he was lunging, with tender fierceness. Each plunge bringing him closer to her womb. Closer to the edge. With every breath, with every heartbeat.
She made a tiny sound. Of need. Alec kissed her mouth, the arch of her throat. And then she was burning. There was fever in her veins. A blaze in her heart. And then she felt herself pitched into a void, exploding in a raw, sizzling climax.
And this time she was not alone.
Chapter Seventeen
Sprawled above her, Alec was still gasping for air when reality set in. His suspicions had just been confirmed.
Maura was—had been until this very day—a virgin.
He eased to his side, waiting until his pulse slowed before he rolled to his feet. Without a word, he went to the washstand and filled a small basin. His blood was still boiling hot. But not from passion. Not from desire. In its stead was a furious betrayal.
Wetting a cloth, he returned to the bedside, slipped a hand behind Maura’s left knee and tugged it up.
Her thighs tensed. She made a faint, jerky movement.
Alec’s fingers tightened ever so slightly. Wordlessly he shook his head.
The cloth touched tender woman’s flesh.
The sound she made was half strangled. His gaze immediately swung to her face. “Are you all right?” He brushed aside a tangle of dark hair from her cheek.
“Aye,” she said faintly.
Alec resumed his task, carefully wiping away the inside of her thighs—the traces of their union. His head was down. Intent. His ministrations were a stark contrast between the gentleness of his touch and the iron cast of his jaw. Maura’s face burned. Somehow this seemed far more intimate than the straining pressure of him inside her, hard and deep—as deep as he could go.
At last he rose. As if his nakedness were of absolutely no consequence, he picked up the washbasin and set it on the stand. Without breaking his stride, he continued on into her room. Still puzzling why as she grasped for the sheet, he returned and dropped the night robe draped over the screen in her room into her lap. Maura donned it, while Alec reached for his own from the armoire near the window. He turned, granting her an all-encompassing view, a scant five feet away.
Maura struggled not to look, yet in the end she capitulated. His organ was soft now; a trace of her blood still lingered.
