down, beneath her. So that she could taste his skin, straddle him, feel him between her thighs.
She wanted him desperately.
Greedily.
But he was having none of it. Instead he turned her, pressed her down so that he covered her with his body, covered her left nipple with his wet mouth.
The strength of his muscled body against hers thrilled her. He was forceful and demanding, a stark contrast to the tenderness of moments earlier, and she reveled in the change.
She wrapped her legs around him, lifting her hips toward the hard length of his erection.
He growled and she took fierce pleasure in that deep sound. Even more pleasure in his hand running over her stocking-clad thigh. His touch though the woolen fabric made her entire body tingle and then she gasped again, bucking against him, when his fingers passed over the border of her garter to bare skin.
His progress slowed, teasing, and even though his tongue, his lips, laved at her nipples, her focus centered on his fingersâ achingly deliberate advance.
Then his fingers were gone, his body gone, and cool air swept in where he had been.
âYour dress,â he said, in that low, gravelly voice of desire. She resisted the urge to undress quickly. Instead, she locked her gaze with his and slowly, as slowly as his hand had been on her thigh, peeled off layer after layer, until she knelt before him naked.
He reached for her but she pushed his hand aside.
âYour turn.â
He grinned and the flash of his teeth startled her with a glimpse of the boy that coexisted with the man.
He pulled off his boots, and then his stockings and trousers, until he, too, sat naked. If she had ever needed proof of his desire, of his ability to act upon desire, it was there in front of her.
Beautiful.
Their nakedness seemed right in the soaring space of the great hall. Stripped of all its earthly trappings, the luxurious and glittering material goods for which sheâd strived the last five years.
She moved into his arms with a sigh, trembling at the feel of skin against skin, at knowing John this way.
Reverence.
The word struck her with such power that she clung to him, drew on his heat and strength as she finally understood that look in his eyes. He held her, one hand stroking down her hair, down her back, over and over.
The scent of his skin, his hair, slowly permeated her awareness. His touch sensitized her skin till she was awake everywhere. She pressed her mouth to the curve of his shoulder, tasted him. She was her lips and her tongue, hungry and desirous, needing to know him everywhere, to feel the textures of his body, the hair of his chest, his arms, the hard buds of his nipples, the softer, silkier skin under his arm, at his side, even as her thigh rubbed against the velvet hardness of his arousal.
She moved lower, to the flat plains of his stomach, his hips, where the scent of his desire, his musk, inspired her to descend faster.
His hands on her shoulders were again strong, making her weightless, making the room turn around her until she was on her back, looking up at his face looming over her.
That scarred face, which had been so tight and closed, now open with hunger, with incredible sweetness.
She opened to him, too, her thighs parting to cradle him, her arms outstretched in an embrace.
Then she was open to him in the most primal of ways, his body joining with hers, hard and smooth. She expanded for him everywhere, from the center where their bodies meshed to the tips of her fingersâto her mind, which soared with colors and undulating images, half-grasped words and phrases.
One sentence formed completeâperhaps he had seduced her âand then she was back to mindlessness, pure sensation, arching to meet his slow thrusts, to pull him deeper.
She wrapped herself around him with a soft cry.
The sound of her pleasure was so sweet and he answered it with his own guttural exhalation. She was wet and burning hot, enveloping him in every possible
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