And Then She Fell(54)

For a long moment, she stared at his face, then said, “I can see your reasoning. More, I don’t dispute it—I agree.” She paused, then drew breath and said, “Yet I ask again: Why?”

Looking into her eyes, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Instead, very conscious of her fingers beneath his, in the simplest, most direct words he could find, he gave her the truth. “Because you’re mine.”

She held his gaze for a heartbeat, then nodded decisively. “Yes, I am.”

Then she swiveled on the chair’s arm, leaned over him, framed his face, and tipped it to hers—paused to look into his eyes as if to confirm that he was following her reasoning—then she bent her head, set her lips to his, and kissed him.

From that first touch of her lips, there was never any doubt what she intended or where this would end; the kiss went from definite, to scorching, to incendiary in mere seconds. Hardly surprising then, she being her and he being him, that thereafter matters rapidly spiraled out of control.

Or, more correctly, were with ruthless determination and unwavering will driven forcefully toward one paramount goal.

Mutually ravenous, mutually greedy, the kiss ignited a conflagration that spread flames beneath their skins, that incited, razed and burned. Heat surged in a wave of molten hunger, of fiery yearning.

On a muted gasp, she shifted, and then her hands were everywhere, racing over him, tugging at his coat, urging him up out of the chair so she could strip the restricting garment away.

Engaged himself, absorbed and caught, distracted and enthralled, his tongue dueling with hers, his lips rapaciously devouring hers while his hands shaped and weighed her sumptuous breasts, he had to haul sufficient awareness from those all-consuming, senses-stealing tasks to oblige—to bodily lift her to her feet and rise to his, and release her long enough to shrug his coat and waistcoat off—and once he had, nothing could hold her.

Nothing he did seemed capable of reining her in, of reining her back—of reestablishing any degree of supremacy in a world fired by unexpectedly rampant need, and flooded with burgeoning passions, with violently surging desires that only had to rise to be given full expression, only to be offered—in the next heartbeat—immediate gratification.

He felt giddy—as reckless and unrestrained as she as they wrestled each other free of their clothes, as silk whispered over flushed and dewed skin, as palms and fingers flagrantly explored, sculpted, traced. As the cool caress of the night air was banished by the first touch of heated skin to heated skin, naked and burning, and sensation, sharp and potent, rocked them.

Jolted them into a new level of fiery flames, into a new level of consuming awareness.

Of utterly consuming passion.

He closed his arms about her and locked her tight against him, evocatively molding her body to his. And still she didn’t pause, not for thought or modesty; she wriggled and urged him on, seemingly hell-bent on plunging into the act—one she’d never indulged in before—with a reckless enthusiasm that left him reeling.

His problem was that her wishes were his; everything she wanted—to do, to feel, to explore—precisely coincided with his own ravenous hungers.

As she desired, so, too, did he; everything she demanded with such flagrant abandon, he was eager and aching to give her.

To lavish on her, to pleasure and delight her.

The only disagreement they might have had, had he been able to summon his wits from the whirling maelstrom she’d engineered, lay in the tempo, the timing; he would have gone slowly, easing her through each step, but she wanted to race, and rush, and fling herself through each stage.

And straight into the next.

Henrietta had never felt so free, so powerfully sure of herself and her destiny. Realization of the faceless threat and her brush with near death had forged a honed edge to her desire. To her consuming need to step forward and seize and reach for all she could be, to stake her claim to the role she now knew to her soul was her birthright.

She wanted him. Yes, she was his, but, to her mind, that translated to he being hers. Hers to engage with as she wished, to the swirling depths of passion and the giddy heights of desire.

And she’d never been one to do anything by halves.

So she let herself free, free to be as she wished to be, to do as she wanted, to desire and explore and demand as she would, to yearn and seek satisfaction.

To take all she would, to give all she could, and find the holy grail she was sure was there for the finding.

Yet despite the compulsion, beneath her driven purpose she was fascinated, intrigued, and enthralled. By him. With him. With the physical reality and the ephemeral connection, with how he, his body, felt, to her, against her, about her, and the emotions she sensed ran like a raging river beneath his smooth surface.