Page 180 of A Perilous Passion

Jealous? That sounded promising. Maybe she was a cut above her predecessors, after all.

She suddenly noticed he was unbuttoning the front flap of his breeches. Was he going to undress completely? Heavens! This, she needed to see.

Taking her hand, he brought it to rest between their stomachs. “Don’t be shy,” he urged. “You need to know what you’ve done to me.”

He guided her hand lower, until it brushed against his engorged member, sending shivers of amazement flooding through her. As he withdrew his hand to stroke her breasts again, she touched his erection, stunned at the sheer hardness of the shaft, thrilled by the softness of the taut skin and the heat that pulsed through him.

She stroked him, and a bone-deep shudder shook his sturdy frame. “Yes,” he hissed. “Yes!”

So, she had found her power. Sooner than she might have imagined.

Fascinated, she stroked the unbelievably silky flesh of him, the creases and throbbing veins. She grasped him and gave an experimental squeeze.

He made a choking noise and pulled her hand away. “No more, my love, I beg you. You’re too good at touching me. You push me almost beyond bearing. Give me a moment to recover, and I’ll gift you payment in kind.”

Enthralled, she waited, her whole body thrumming with excitement and desire.

He reached down and thrust two fingers deep inside her, and she almost fainted with shock.

“No, wait,” he murmured in her ear as she tried to wriggle free of him. “Don’t be embarrassed. Trust me.”

His fingers had slid so easily into the mysterious core of her femininity, she knew she must be wet down there. But how?

His thumb connected with a secret nub beneath the folds of her flesh, and he rubbed it gently. Her heart ceased to beat.

All her senses focused on the exquisite sensation he was creating, his thumb gently massaging and teasing that special spot while his fingers moved in and out of the slick well of her femininity. Such an intense feeling, she could hardly cope with it. The fires began to spread from her core all over her body, consuming her, drenching her with desire, making her lift her hips and push at his hand, hungry for more pressure, hungry for more delight.

She bucked and writhed uncontrollably as a climax of sensation swamped over her. She cried out, jabbing her hands into Rafe’s hair. He’d taken her to a place so close to paradise she could barely comprehend what was happening. In a blast of pure, unadulterated ecstasy, her body exploded and she flew, suspended in a torrent of bliss.

At last, she fell back, panting, onto the rumpled sheets.

Rafe pulled her into his arms and held her until the shuddering stopped, whispering words of comfort and love into her ear. As her senses gradually returned, he said, “You should probably go, before you are missed.”

“No.” She mewed her disappointment. She felt too deliciously lazy and satisfied to worry about such mundane things. Her body felt as if it had been through a rite of purification—free, cleansed, more aware of itself than it had ever been before. Now her body knew how to wield its power, and how to accept its pleasure.

She would never feel the same again. This rite of passage had taken her to a level beyond womanhood.

And…it had also brought her to total ruin.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Rafe woke to a dim light filtering through the shutters and discovered he had a headache. His next discovery was that he wasn’t alone. Charlotte’s familiar lavender scent, combined with the smell of warm, feminine skin, teased and tempted his nostrils. Beyond the shutters, he could hear the rapid burbling of a bird, and hoped, like Juliet in Shakespeare’s play, it was the nightingale and not the lark. Alas, it was the dim gray light of morning, not dusk, and the pair of them had been left to fall asleep undisturbed.

Which meant Charlotte faced social ruin.

Well, there was no alternative. He’d have to make her his wife, and the sooner, the better.

If she’d have him.

His headache was forgotten as he looked at her. They were tucked up together like spoons in a drawer, his body hooked around the curve of her back, one hand tucked presumptuously beneath her naked breast. Not daring to move lest he wake her, his mind revisited the events of the previous day.

Well, he was still alive, but no thanks to his own survival instincts. The angel who slumbered in his arms had saved him from a horrible fate. Even if his attackers stopped him from suffocating, torture was all he could have expected at the end of their journey. How much would he have been able to endure? More than most, he hoped. He was tough and used to pain.

Where would they have taken him? Why hadn’t they disarmed him before putting him on that horse?

Amateurs.

Charlotte sighed in her sleep and wriggled backward into his embrace, making him groan softly as desire flickered to life between his loins. She fitted into him so perfectly, one might almost imagine a benevolent God had designed it thus. He edged away from her to spare himself the torment—the cruel instruments of his enemies would have been preferable to such a torture of temptation, and it was taking all his willpower to ensure her honor remained intact—in fact, if not in the eyes of Society.