Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways #5)(80)

Christopher came to her, stripping off his shirt along the way. The sight of him, all that flexing muscle and sun-glazed skin, was breathtaking. He was a beautiful man, a scarred Apollo, a dream lover. And he was hers.

She reached for him, a breath catching in her throat as her hand flattened on his chest. She let her fingertips trail through the crisp, glinting fur. He bent over her, his eyes heavy lidded, his mouth firming in the way it did when he was aroused.

Overwhelmed by a mingling of love and desire, she said breathlessly, “Christopher—”

He touched her lips with a single finger, stroking the tremulous curves, using the tip of his thumb to part them. He kissed her, fitting his mouth to hers at varying angles. Each kiss delivered a deep, sweet shock to her nerves, spreading fire inside her, making it impossible to think clearly. His hands swept over her with a sensitive lightness that promised rather than satisfied. She was being seduced, quite skillfully.

She felt herself being pressed to her back, one of his legs pushing between hers. His fingers smoothed over her breast, finding the aching point of a nipple veiled in silk. His thumb prodded the bud, swirled lightly, stroked with a softness that made her writhe in agitation. Taking the tip of her breast in his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed gently through the gossamer, sending a bolt of desire through her. She moaned against his lips and broke their kiss as she struggled to draw in more air.

Christopher bent to her chest, the mist of his breath penetrating the shimmering fabric and heating the skin beneath. His tongue touched the taut peak, flickered wetly over the silk, the gauzy stimulation affording both frustration and pleasure. Beatrix reached with shaking hands to push the nightgown out of the way.

“Slowly,” he whispered, trailing his tongue across her skin, not quite reaching the place where she most wanted it.

Her fingers went to his cheeks and jaw, the abrasion of his shaven bristle like raw velvet against her palms. She tried to guide his mouth, and he laughed quietly, resisting. “Slowly,” he repeated, brushing kisses in the soft space between her br**sts.

“Why?” she asked between agitated breaths.

“It’s better for both of us.” He cupped beneath her breast and shaped it in gentle fingers. “Especially you. It makes the pleasure deeper . . . sweeter . . . let me show you, love . . .”

Her head tossed restlessly as his tongue played on her flesh. “Christopher . . .” Her voice was trembling. “I wish . . .”

“Yes?”

It was so terribly selfish, and yet she couldn’t help from blurting out, “I wish there had been no other women before me.”

He looked down at her in a way that made her feel as if she were dissolving in honey. His mouth descended, caressing hers with tender, urgent warmth. “My heart belongs only to you,” he whispered. “It was never lovemaking before. This is a first for me, too.”

She puzzled over that, staring into his bright, lambent eyes. “Then it’s different, when one is in love?”

“Beatrix, dearest love, it’s beyond anything I’ve ever known. Beyond dreams.” His hand glided over her hip, fingers gently tugging the black gossamer aside to reach her skin. Her stomach tightened at the temptation and knowledge in his touch. “You’re the reason I live. If it weren’t for you, I never would have come back.”

“Don’t say that.” It was unbearable, the thought of anything happening to him.

“ ‘It’s all come down to the hope of being with you,’ . . . Do you remember when I wrote that?”

Beatrix nodded and bit her lip as his hand slid farther beneath the transparent silk panels.

“I meant every word,” he murmured. “I would have written much more, but I didn’t want to frighten you.”

“I wanted to write more, too,” she said shakily. “I wanted to share every thought with you, every—” She broke off with a gasp as he found the vulnerable place between her thighs.

“You’re so warm here,” he whispered, stroking her intimately. “So soft. Oh, Beatrix . . . I fell in love with you by words alone . . . but I have to admit . . . I prefer this way of communicating.”

She could barely speak, her mind dazzled by sensation. “It’s still a love letter,” she said, sliding her hand over the golden slope of his shoulder. “Only in bed.”

He smiled. “Then I’ll try to use proper punctuation.”

“And no dangling participles,” she added, making him laugh.

But she lost all reason for amusement as he stroked and cradled and tormented her. Too many sensations, coming from different directions. She twisted in the gathering heat. Christopher tried to ease her as the rapture rose too high, too fast, his hands gentle on her quivering limbs.

“Please,” she said, perspiration gathering on her skin and at the roots of her hair. “I need you now.”

“No, love. Wait just a little longer.” He caressed her thighs, his thumbs stroking up to the humid folds of her sex.

She discovered that the most impossible thing in the world was to hold cl**ax at bay, that the more he told her not to, the more powerfully it surged toward her. And he knew it, the devil, a teasing light in his eyes as he whispered to her . . . “Not yet. It’s too soon.” And all the while, his fingers stroked idly between her thighs, and his mouth grazed over her breast. Every part of her body was filled with desperate craving. “Don’t give in to it,” he said against her twitching skin. “Wait . . .”