Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(52)

“Did you feel . . . nervous your first time?” He chuckled huskily at her question, his voice catching as he replied, “No. No, never until now.”

Rand whispered something unintelligible, his mouth touching hers in the most tempting of kisses. Her arms curved eagerly around his neck to pull his head closer, but still he resisted the deeper joining of their lips, preferring instead to tease and torment until she thought he was trying to drive her mad. Her fingers sank into the thickness of his hair as his head moved lower, down her neck, along the frail ridge of her collarbone. Suddenly she arched upward as his mouth possessed the sensitive peak of her breast, a sweet cry escaping her throat. Straining toward him, Rosalie held his dark head to her breast with shaking hands, searching for a way to reciprocate and yet unable to do anything but cling to him and feel what he was doing to her. After several long, lazy moments he moved to her other breast and courted it with the same attention, his hand stroking the curve of her waist as if to calm the shocked trembles that racked her.

“Rand . . . oh, that feels so . . .” she said unsteadily, trying to find words to describe the incredible rapture. Slowly he moved back upward, seeking her mouth. Heat flowed and swirled over her body like a timeless river, and Rosalie subsided beneath him with drugged satisfaction, her lips moving under his, searching for even sweeter and more thorough pleasure. Her nerves ceased their alarmed jangling and ached instead with a steady, surging rhythm. Rand’s voice floated to her ears in smoky whispers, in snatches of praise, of desire, of guidance. She obeyed him without question, moving instinctively in any way he desired, anxious to fulfill his every whim, just so long as he would not withhold this seductive rapture.

She had never known him before now, not this tender, urgent man who was a partner, a lover. He was a dream to her, a golden vision, an erotic apparition that would disappear with the first cruel light of morning. He answered her curious whispers with halfsmiles and lingering kisses, creating a world that was made of nothing but blind sensation. As she clung to him tightly, his hand stroked over her stomach and down to the softness between her legs. His head lowered to hers to catch her trembling sighs in his mouth, his fingers gently searching, moving, finding out which caresses pleased her the most.

Leisurely he sought for and discovered the wellhidden entrance to her body, and Rosalie’s eyes flew open in stunned wonder as his fingers slid inside her. She stared directly into the intentness of his green-gold gaze, her body helplessly clamping in response to the unfamiliar invasion. Then his artful and sensitive touch altered slightly. He flexed his fingers in a way that caused her entire body to gather in unbearable tension.

“I’m going to faint,” she gasped, and still he would not stop, the intimate plundering becoming more intense. Shaking, Rand lowered his mouth to the warm fragrance of her neck and tested the smoothness of her skin with the feathery brush of his tongue. Finally, light-headed with the agony of extreme arousal, Rosalie sobbed that she could stand no more. Rand’s face was taut and damp with torment as he looked down at her. Spreading apart her paralyzed limbs, he settled between her legs and pressed slowly into her.

Rosalie cried out, and immediately he stopped, full and heavy inside her.

“Hurt?” he asked against her lips, and her arms locked around his solid torso.

“No,” she breathed, lifting her h*ps against his as she experienced the wonder of knowing that he was a part of her. “No . . .”

Rand felt all coherence, all consciousness fade away as he eased deeper within her. He, as well as Rosalie, was a stranger to this kind of passion, for it was different from, it was more than anything he had ever experienced. They had become one body, one being that could not endure separation. Caught in the storm of passion, Rand forgot to take her slowly, and his gentleness disappeared as he thrust into her with rough desperation. A low, keening sound vibrated in Rosalie’s throat, and she moved unconsciously to make his possession more complete, instinct taking the place of what experience would have taught her. Greedily she welcomed him back to her again and again, her h*ps rising in answer to his, her arms wrapping around the powerful, flexing surface of his back. She wanted to touch him everywhere, wanted to stroke and explore, yet the slight fear of doing something forbidden caused her hands to be still. She would not risk displeasing him, for if he stopped, it would be impossible for her to bear.

Suddenly Rosalie was suspended in a hot, nebulous cloud, unable to move at all as violent contractions of pleasure shook her body. She caught her breath and surrendered helplessly to the tide, the undertow, the bright and smooth eddies of a sensation she had never imagined. Clinging to Rand’s hard, bare shoulders, she was only vaguely aware of the light tracing of his hands along the trim curves of her hips. Rand pushed deeper inside her, prolonging the sweet agony until the last shudders left her, and only then did he allow the powerful convulsions of fire to blot out everything else. They drifted back to sanity with the greatest reluctance, their limbs still fitted together in startling harmony. Exhausted and replete, Rand lifted his heavy lashes and stared gravely at Rosalie. For once, he was left stunned and wordless by something that had once been commonplace to him. For a man of his experience, a woman’s body was an easily accessible commodity, the act of love merely a form of entertainment, the heart unaffected by a simple physical joining. What trick, what magic did she possess to make it all so different? Was it because he had waited so long for her? Was it because of her innocence? Was it a coincidence of time and place?