Page 32 of Twice Upon a Midnight

He strummed his thumb over her bare nipple, and a streak of pleasure shot from her breast straight down between her legs. It landed with a jolting thud, then began to throb in time with her heartbeat. Suddenly, she felt warm and achy—goodness, he’d only barely touched her! How much might she feel if he made love to her? Anticipation swelled inside her, yet the swirling storms in her belly now calmed from certainty.

Tonight, he would be hers.

“‘That I might drink and leave the world unseen,’” he recited to her in a husky rasp as his hand folded over her breast and cupped her against his palm, “‘and with thee fade away into the forest dim.’”

He lowered his head and took her nipple between his lips.

She gasped. Her body tensed at the new sensation of having his mouth on her, and her fingers dug into the hard muscles of his shoulders. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.

Then a wonderful warmth blossomed inside her, and she relaxed beneath his lips’ tender kisses with an aching sigh— No. He wasn’t kissing her. He wasworshippingher. She felt it with every soft pull of his lips, with every swirl of the tip of his tongue around her nipple. She arched against the ground to bring her breast deeper into his mouth, and he rewarded her trust in him with an affectionate caress of his hand along the side of her body.

But his hand didn’t return to her breast to fondle her as he’d done before. Instead, he stroked his palm along her outer thigh, and beneath her cotton night rail, goose bumps sprang up in the wake of his touch. She wiggled slightly in a silent plea for him to keep his hand on her leg, and when he moved it away, a frustrated cry rose from her throat.

“Shh,” he murmured against her lips to soothe her. “I know….”

Then his hand returned to her leg, and her kiss-fogged brain realized why he’d lifted it away—so that he could it slip beneath her hem and caress his fingers against her bare calf. She shivered from the heat his touch sparked against her flesh and the way the aching throb at her core increased as his palm slid up her leg, past her knee to her thigh. With it, he brought the hem of her night rail.

Even the cool night air against her bare legs couldn’t tamp down the rising heat that flushed her cheeks and spread into her breasts. When he slipped his hand along the outer curve of her hips to her waist, she also couldn’t stop a pang of disappointment that he’d avoided the aching place between her legs that longed to be touched, now inexplicably both hot and damp.

He slowly drew wide circles across her bare belly. Each caress only left her yearning for more.

“If you don’t touch me…there,” she whispered, knowing he would understand what she craved, “I think I’m going to explode.”

He bit her earlobe. “If I do touch you there,” he countered, the hot breath of his words tickling the sensitive skin behind her ear, “that’s exactly what you’ll do.”

Confusion spun through her. He must have felt the change in her, because he pulled back only far enough to gaze down at her as she lay so scandalously spread out on the blanket, half-dressed, beneath him.

“You, my darling, are a love poem,” he murmured. “With your challenging wit positing the conceit.” He softly caressed her temple, then trailed his fingers down her cheek to her lips. “Your words as lilting as any sublime rhyme and rhythm ever created by the greatest of poets.” His hand swept lower to tease once more at her breasts. “Your form…incomparable.” He caressed down her front and slipped his hand once more beneath her night rail. “The delights of your verse just waiting to be discovered.”

He combed his fingers through the dark curls at the apex of her thighs, and every soft caress flamed the aching heat lying only inches from his fingertips. She wanted his touch there—no, sheneededhim there, not knowing how she could keep breathing without him. So she writhed her hips in a silent plea for more.

He placed his lips against her forehead and whispered, “Your deepest secrets…pure enchantment.”

Then he touched her between her legs.

She gasped at the caress, which was somehow both strangely exhilarating yet calming, somehow both stoking and appeasing the fire threatening to consume her.

As he caressed her with long, slow strokes of his hand along the seam between her legs, her surprise faded into pleasure. What he was doing was wicked and wanton….and so very,verydelicious. She shifted her hips to spread her legs wider and grant him even more access to this secret part of her.

“I want to show you how special you are, how precious to me,” he whispered. “Will you let me?”

“Yes.” Her arms tightened around him to keep him close.

But he slipped out of her arms and slid himself down the length of her body, until he reached her thighs. He lifted her night rail higher, then lowered his head to bring his lips against her…rightthere.

This time, it wasn’t a gasp of surprise that tore from her but a sigh of delight as he kissed her intimately. His lips were a blissful contradiction as they moved against her, so very strong yet impossibly tender, and she closed her eyes to absorb the wonderful sensation, to imprint it on her mind forever.

The tip of his tongue licked her—

“Spenser!” she cried out, her body arching and her hands going to his head.

“I want to taste you, my love,” he whispered against her, his warm breath tickling her wet folds. “I want to discover if you’re as sweet and delicious as you seem.” When she didn’t relax, he reassured her, “I won’t hurt you, I promise. I only want to please you.”

With a ragged exhalation, she gave a jerking nod in consent and tried to relax. But when he continued to caress her with his lips and give her those wonderfully wanton kisses, her nervousness was unfounded—oh, what he was doing was simply divine! The tension melted from her, and her fingers curled into his silky hair in silent encouragement.

This time when his tongue took a gentle lick, the pleasure sparked through her, standing on end the little hairs on her nape. Then another and another…each teasing its way deeper into her folds, and with each one, soft mewlings of need fell from her lips. She never would have believed a man’s mouth could feel this good, or that the wet sounds of his lips could be so erotic.

She’d wanted him to quench the fire he’d put between her legs, but he was stoking it instead. Soon, flames licked at her toes, and the ache at her core began to throb in time to the sinful thrusts of his tongue, now plunging deeply inside her. She arched her hips against him and pulled his head down tighter against her, her body longing to have him even deeper inside her.