Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(88)

“It is increasingly difficult for me to be subtle around you,” Rand replied softly, his gold-tipped lashes lowering as his gaze narrowed.

“And for me,” she whispered.

He smiled lazily and moved his head just the fraction of an inch necessary to bring their lips together, and Rosalie felt the laughter dissolve like sugar in water, spreading in cool sweetness through her veins until she was filled with a shining crystal awareness of him. Her emptiness, her separateness, slipped away like a heavy shroud. Blindly she slid a hand around his neck, trying to capture the sensations that fell over her in a gossamer cascade. His tongue dipped leisurely inside her mouth, tasting, brushing over thinly shielded nerves until she leaned against him helplessly, her body trembling.

Wrapped in a finely meshed spell, Rand felt his senses, his thoughts and awareness angle sharply toward her until she was the focus of his very existence. His hands traveled over her slender form with a new sense of discovery, each touch wondering, intimate, loving. He searched for the secrets of her body, learning things she had never known about herself, his fingertips memorizing the ways to draw out her pleasure and passion. She responded to him with a warmth that caused him to shiver in surprise. Her shy touch, the stroke of her tongue against his, and the seeking eagerness of her hands aroused Rand to a state of hotblooded mindlessness like nothing he had ever known before.

Rosalie gasped as his hand plunged hungrily into her bodice, her heart pounding not from fear but from need. Panting, she allowed her head to fall against his shoulder as he levered her onto his lap, and then gently the round weight of her breast was lifted out of her gown. A thin moan caught in her throat as Rand bent his head to take the soft peak in his mouth. Her entire body tightened, arching at the velvet rasp and the artful circling of his tongue. Slowly Rosalie’s hand fluttered to his shoulder. It was engulfed immediately in his grip, his fingers laced between hers as he tasted the sensitively molded flesh of her nipple. She discovered in breathless confusion that his lovemaking was different from what she had expected, different from what she had remembered. Rand had been her lover for only two nights in Paris. During the first evening he had kept himself under tight control, aware of her innocence and making concessions to it. The second he had been driven to claim her and he had been possessive, domineering. Now there was nothing to prove, nothing to be mindful of. . . there were only the two of them and the desire that shimmered palpably between them.

Suddenly he raised his head at a quick rush of wind through the leaves, his eyes flickering around the garden in immediate assessment. Rosalie was reminded of their scene in the stable, when they had been interrupted in the middle of a similarly intimate embrace. She knew that she couldn’t bear it if he left her now. Rand looked down at her and smiled slightly, easing the gown up over her exposed breast. His eyes had deepened in color to glittering green, the skin drawn tightly over his cheekbones to show them in high relief, his wide mouth gentle, the lower lip fuller than usual. Afraid that he would deny her, Rosalie curled her fingers into the smoothness of his shirt.

“Don’t pull away this time,” she whispered. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes at the thought of him leaving her empty and frustrated once more. “Not when I need you like this . . . please, I’ve never needed you like this.”

“Love,” Rand breathed, his voice low and curiously shaken, “whatever you want of me is yours. Didn’t you know that?”

They remained transfixed, frozen in that dazzling moment until Rand broke the stillness by standing up and lifting her effortlessly in his arms. At first Rosalie had no awareness of where he was taking her, her sapphire gaze locked on his face as she saw only him. Then their path became twisted and intricate. She realized that he was carrying her into the maze, a design of hedges that reached to his shoulder, a labyrinth in which it would be impossible for other eyes to see or discover them.

He set her down lightly, and as Rosalie stood there her heart pattered erratically at the sight of him unfastening the cuffs of his sleeves, his hazel eyes fastened unwaveringly onto hers. She was confronted with the hard, bare wall of his torso as he let the white shirt drop to the ground. Her mouth went dry. He was beautiful. Surely no man outside the realm of fantasy could be so perfectly made . . . but he was real, and for this moment he was hers. Slowly Rosalie lifted her hands to his chest, jumping slightly at the heat of his body. Her fingertips and the delicate rasp of her nails wandered through the light, silky-rough furring of his chest, savoring the solid musculature underneath. She traced the firm, symmetrical ridges of his collarbone, then splayed her hands over leanly fleshed ribs. Rand’s desire raged as he suffered under her cool, drifting touches, his arms stealing around her possessively. Then she stood on her toes, pressing her mouth to the base of his throat, and her tongue stroked over the pulse that beat so heavily underneath his skin.

“Rose,” he breathed tautly as her arms wound around his back, her hands barely meedng at his broad, square shoulders. Their loins brushed together, his hard and aching, hers tender and yielding. “Ah . . . God, Rosalie . . .” He pressed her down to the ground onto his discarded shirt. She turned her face into the soft material, inhaling the fresh masculine scent that lingered there. Then his body descended onto hers, and she quivered in excitement as she felt the hard, demanding fullness of his manhood pressing urgently against her stomach. Rand’s lips moved over the fragile surface of her neck with sensual artistry, discovering the tiny hollows behind her earlobes, the vulnerable tissues along the side of her throat. One of his hands was engaged in the task of pulling up her gown, and Rosalie crooked her legs slightly as she felt the brush of tender grass behind her knees. He moved off her partly, sliding the skirt up over her thighs and past her hips.