Читать книгу Bride Of His Choice - Emma Darcy, Emma Darcy - Страница 10

LEIGH held her breath at the first brush of his mouth on hers, the contact so tantalisingly gentle, it took all her concentration to absorb each shift of pleasurable sensation. It wasn’t a taking kiss. She would have fought it if he’d tried to blitz her with dominant strength. The relief of this controlled exploration allowed her to relax and let the urge to know flow freely.

She had blocked him out all these years, coupling him with Lawrence Durant, yet today she had been forcefully reminded that her hatred of Richard had been fed from the fierce wish for him to act differently. To her teenage mind he’d had the strength to fight her father, to stand up for her, to be her champion, and he hadn’t done it. Not how she’d wanted it done, not enough to satisfy the bitter churning of needs inside her.

Could he give her satisfaction now?

Would he?

The feathery caresses teased her into responding, and no sooner had her lips softened and parted than the light pressures changed to a deeper searching, and she felt moving through her a great swell of yearning for the promise of everything…everything she’d ever wanted and could ever want.

Had the normal flow of such feelings been somehow locked up around Richard Seymour? Was this strange shifting inside herself the release of barriers that had been subconciously focused on needs he should have fulfilled?

Her mind and body were in such a whirl of inner chaos, she wasn’t aware of lifting her arms. The instinct to press closer, to hold on to this moment of reckoning, to see it through as far as it went, swept her hands around his neck. His embrace instantly tightened, moulding her body to the hard length of his, and his mouth engaged hers in a far more passionate intimacy, stirring a sensual storm that spread like wildfire.

The heat of it banished the cold emptiness of being unloved and unwanted and ignited a hunger that craved everything she had missed out on. She revelled in the hungry ravishing of her mouth, exulted in every bit of the physical contact, the squashing of her breasts across the muscular breadth of his chest, the exciting pressure of his arousal, the straining of rock-hard thighs against hers. He did want her. It felt as though he was reaching out to her with every fibre of his being and the thrill of it was too enthralling to stop.

It was he who broke off the all-consuming flow of desire, suddenly throwing his head back, dragging in air, breathing so hard his chest heaved, bringing a rush of sensitivity to her breasts and stirring an intense frustration at the abrupt halt to what he’d started. She stared at him in confusion, seeing the tension on his face, not understanding anything except he’d stopped kissing her.

He moved the hand he’d curled around her head, touching her sensitised lips, tracing them with his fingers. Her daze cleared enough for her to see the glitter of triumphant satisfaction in his eyes as he spoke.

“It feels right, doesn’t it, Leigh? The time has come for us.”

Control, she thought. He wants to control this to suit him. Just as Lawrence Durant would. Never again would she submit to that. Never! The sweet, warm chaos he’d wrought inside her welded into a savage bolt of rebellion.

He’d run everything his way, following her out here, feeding her information, capitalizing on the chemistry between them. Well, she wouldn’t let him control this. He wasn’t going to mastermind when and how she got to satisfy herself about him.

All these years of spying on her, knowing where she was but not coming to her, waiting for her to come to him, thinking he could manipulate what he wanted of her, pressing buttons he had the power to press…oh, no! It was her turn to press the button!

“If it feels so right to you, Richard, what’s wrong with now?” she challenged.

“You want now?”

The flare of raw desire in his eyes shot a turbulent mix of fear and elation through Leigh. What was she inviting, goading from him? The challenge had been a vengeful impulse. She hadn’t stopped to think of the ultimate end of what she was laying on him, and he didn’t wait for a reply.

He scooped her with him as he stepped to the door of the summer-house, opened it, and whirled her inside. By the time Leigh’s feet steadied on the floor, the door was closed and she was pressed against it, and his mouth was delivering another rush of warm pleasure that felt very right, so right she held his head to hers, wanting his kissing to continue, kissing him back in a fierce need to fill herself with the warmth he generated, to keep the cold out.

Tautly muscled thighs lent supportive strength to hers as his hands roamed over her body, their touch hot and excitingly lustful as they felt her curves, reaching around the width of her hips to stroke the round slopes of her bottom, clutching them to press her closer to the source of his heat, the hard thrust of it liquefying her stomach, and he kissed her with all the raw intent of what he wanted, promising it would be all she wanted.

But would it? This had never happened to her before. She didn’t know the end, had no experience of it. Maybe it was wrong, but she was caught in a force of her own making and she didn’t want to break out of it.

Let him show her. Let him be the one. And if the promise wasn’t fulfilled, she’d know then, wouldn’t she? So she kissed him back with all the fire he’d lit in taking her this far.

Hands sliding to her waist, spanning it possessively, moving to unbutton her suit coat, parting it, and she was glad she hadn’t worn a bra, only the silk teddy softly cupping her breasts, allowing firm palms and fingers to cup them so much more satisfyingly, making them feel lush and incredibly sensual and deliciously desirable.

Fingers sliding under the silk, kneading, caressing, exciting, lifting…then his mouth tore from hers, head swooping down, and she felt the bare peak of her breast hotly enveloped and this was a different kissing, hard suction pumping the most piercing pleasure through her, and her own fingers buried themselves in his hair, tugging and pressing, driving the action on, wanting the exquisite arc of sensation to keep vibrating through her.

She’d never felt anything like this before. Was it him? Was it the raw vulnerability of the day making it more than it would normally be? Was it her…giving up the fight she’d been fighting all her life, letting sheer recklessness take over? She didn’t know and didn’t care…savagely didn’t care.

She was barely aware of her skirt being pushed up, but she felt his hand moving between her legs, making a space, moving past where her stockings ended to the bare skin above, to the hot moist apex of her thighs, his thumb hooking apart the studs that held her teddy in place.

Then the barrier of silk was gone and his touch made the arc complete, a touch that echoed the same pulsing rhythm of his mouth, so that everything inside her quivered with the need for more and more of this unbelievable feeling.

She was melting. She threw her head back against the door in a blind seeking for something solid. It knocked her into opening her eyes, a last snatch at some outside reality. It was dark in the summer-house, the shutters closed against the winter wind, making it a secret, private place. No one could see what was happening to her. She didn’t want to see herself, only to feel.

She shut her eyes tight, welcoming the darkness, giving free rein to the darkness inside her, a wild, whirling chaos that revelled in the sheer wantonness of savouring all that Richard was doing to her. Time for us, he’d said, but it was really time for her…the first…and maybe the only time.

And she wanted it. Her whole body was screaming for absolute fulfilment. A wild, guttural protest burst from her throat when his mouth released her breast, but then his lips were covering hers again and his tongue promised the invasion she craved, and suddenly it wasn’t his hand between her thighs. Something else was sliding down the intimate folds of her flesh, something hard and strong and purposeful, and every nerve end zinged with a sharp, intense awareness of it.

An arm around her waist, lifting her, swinging her. She clutched his back. Then soft cushioning underneath her and the hot spearing of his flesh, stretching a place that had never been stretched, her hands raking his back, urging him on, a hesitation from him and a hoarse command from her, “Do it!” She didn’t want control from him. No control. This was her doing, not his. Her decision, not his.

And he did as she demanded, the brief pain of a barrier broken swallowed up by the fullness of a plunge that reached to the epicentre of need and pinned her to a new explosion of sensation, shock waves of it unfurling, overwhelming all that had gone before, then tide after tide of sweet pleasure with the rush of him filling her, withdrawing, and coming again and again, an ebb and flow that engaged her whole body in the rhythm of a different life where she was not alone, not empty, not set at a distance from everyone else, because he was with her, inside her, and she could feel the melding with him in every cell of her body.

And finally, he spilled his strength into her and he could do no more. There was a brief sense of ecstatic harmony before he lifted himself away from her, slowly, carefully, and for some reason she didn’t mind the parting, still entranced with the feelings swimming through her, more languorously now, yet warm and lovely and infinitely comforting, because this could never be taken away from her. She had it in her keeping no matter what the future brought.

Her first time…amazingly with a man she’d never believed she’d be intimate with…yet it had felt right…with his knowing and understanding so much, the sharing of a past that coloured everything. Richard… Richard Seymour…showing her how it was. Or how it could be between them.

She lifted her lashes enough to see what he was doing. While she still lay in listless abandonment on one of the cane sofas, he’d fixed up his clothes, all very much together again as though nothing untoward had taken place. He opened the camphor chest that served as a table surface beside one of the armchairs, picked out a packet of paper serviettes, broke them open and came back to her, gently padding the tissues and cleaning up the aftermath of her torn virginity.

“Are you hurting, Leigh?” he asked softly.

“No,” she answered, struggling to control her inner recoil from what he was doing…so matter-of-fact, almost clinical…bringing her down to earth with a shocking thump. The wild emotional chaos that had led her to this…this messiness…had also robbed her of dignity.

Best to let him get it over with, she argued to herself, fiercely wishing she had lost her virginity in other circumstances. But to whom? Only Richard had made her feel as though it was right. Except now, he was in control again, more in control than ever because she had given him these liberties with her. Somehow she had to stop him from taking a whole lot more because it might not be right at all.

His mouth curved into a self-mocking little smile. “Not quite the way I would have taken my bride, had I known you were a true bride.”

“Bride?” Her heart catapulted around her chest. Letting him be the first didn’t mean she had to join her whole life to his. “I haven’t said I’ll marry you, Richard,” she quickly reminded him, instinctively fighting any sense of commitment that would give him power over her.

He threw her a dark, intense look. “You will.”

She wasn’t sure if that was certainty or resolution. He was distracting her, stroking her thighs, making them quiver again. He leaned over and kissed her stomach, a long warm lingering kiss, reminding her of the deep, inner connection that had been forged. But it wasn’t the answer to everything, Leigh thought frantically. Not everything.