A Wallflower Christmas (Wallflowers #5)(37)

He kissed her again, a burning velvet caress that caused her knees to give out entirely. But the slow collapse didn’t seem to matter, he was holding her securely and lowering her to the carpeted floor. She found herself sprawled half across him while he knelt amid the abundant rumples of her dress. Her garments had fallen in perplexing disarray, buttons undone and skirts riding up. She made a dazed attempt to restore something, cover something, but the way he kissed her made it impossible to think. He gently arranged her beneath him, his arm a hard support beneath her neck. She relaxed helplessly as his wicked mouth took hers over and over, feasting on the taste of her.

“The sweetest skin …” he whispered, kissing her throat, easing her bodice open. “Let me see you, Hannah love …” He pulled at the top of her chemise, exposing a pale breast that had been pushed full and high by her underbust corset. It was then that Hannah comprehended that she was on the floor with him, and he was uncovering parts of her that no man had ever seen.

“WaitI shouldn’tyou shouldn’t” But her protest was silenced as he bent over the plush curve, his lips closing over a cold stiffening nipple. Her throat hummed with a low whimper as his tongue swept over her in raw-velvet strokes.

“Rafe,” she moaned, the first time she had ever said his name, and he let out a shaking breath and cupped both her br**sts.

His voice was deep and rough. “I wanted this the first time I met you. I watched you sitting there with that little teacup in your hand, and I couldn’t stop wondering what you tasted like here…and here …” He suckled each breast in turn, his hands coasting over her writhing body.

“Rafe,” she gasped. “Please, I can’t”

“No one’s here,” he whispered against her prickling flesh. “No one will know. Hannah, sweet love…let me touch you. Let me show you how it feels to want someone as much as I want you …”

And he waited for her answer, breathing against her quivering skin, a warm hand covering her breast. She couldn’t seem to keep entirely still, her knees flexing, her hips rising in answer to a deep, demanding pulse. She was saturated with sweetness and shame and need. She would never have him, she knew that. His life was set on a far different path from hers. He was forbidden. Perhaps that was the reason for this reckless attraction.

Before she quite knew it, she had reached up and guided his head to hers. He responded immediately, taking her mouth in a ravishing, hard-plundering kiss. His hands slipped beneath her clothes, finding tender pale skin, caressing in ways that made her shiver. A muffled cry escaped her as she felt him pulling at the tapes of her drawers. He touched her taut stomach, a fingertip circling her navel. His hand slid over soft curls, cupped her sex, and gently parted her thighs. She felt herself being stroked, petted, lightly spread, his touch careful and clever as if he were drawing a pattern on a frosted window. Except that the surface beneath his fingertips was not icy glass but soft living skin, flushed and burning with desperate sensation.

She had one blurry glimpse of his dark face above hers, his expression intent with lust. He toyed with her, seeming to savor her writhing agitation, his own color high and fevered. She clutched at him, hips arching, lips parted in a wordless plea. One of his fingers pushed inside her, just past the entrance of her body, and she jerked in shock.

His touch withdrew, the wet fingertip making sly, lingering circles around the aching peak of her sex. He pushed her legs apart wider, and kissed the tips of her br**sts. His whisper burned against her skin. “If I wanted to take you now, Hannah, you would let me, wouldn’t you? You’d let me enter you, fill you…If I asked you to let me come inside you, and ease you…what would you say, sweet darling?” He began a light, torturous massage. “Say it,” he murmured. “Say it”

“Yes.” She clutched at him blindly, her breath coming in sobs. “Yes.”

Rafe smiled, his gaze smoldering. “Then here’s your forfeit, sweetheart.”

He stroked her in a quick, skillful rhythm, covering her mouth with his to absorb her cries. He knew exactly what he was doing, his fingers wicked and sure. It seemed she might die of the annihilating release. She held and stiffened against it even as the pleasure began to rush, and rush, gaining power and force until she was helpless and consumed and shattered.

Slowly he brought her down, kissing and caressing her twitching body. His finger slid inside her once more, this time slipping easily into the wetness. The feel of the intimate muscles grasping him so firmly seemed to cause him pain. She lifted instinctively to take him, and he groaned and withdrew his finger, leaving her swollen flesh to clench on the emptiness.

Rafe’s face was hard and sweat-misted as he took his hands from her. He stared down at her with unconcealed hunger, his eyes narrowed, his chest heaving. His hands trembled as he reached for the top hooks of her corset busk, the buttons of her dress, the disheveled undergarments. But as one of his knuckles brushed against her warm skin, he snatched his hands back abruptly and rose to his feet. “Can’t,” he said hoarsely.

“Can’t what?” she whispered.

“Can’t help with your clothes.” An unsteady breath. “If I touch you again…I won’t stop until you’re naked.”

Staring up at him dizzily, Hannah comprehended that the release, and relief, had been rather one-sided. He was dangerously aroused, to the limit of his self-control. She pulled the chemise higher over her naked br**sts.