“Yes,” she whispered, her breath a bare murmur of sound.
She saw his expression soften into a thousand readable and unreadable emotions. Releasing her wrist, he reached up to touch her face. His fingertips skirted the high plains of her cheekbones, gently tracing the softness of her skin, defining the curve of her lips.
“Lance…what…do you want me to do?”
Her mouth shaped the words against his fingers, but he quieted her immediately. “Hush, let me do everything.”
He saw to her hair first. He unfastened the rawhide ties of her braids and then the braids themselves, smoothing out the waving tresses that gleamed like rich coffee. Summer had closed her eyes, as if willing to let him have his way uncontested.
She was surrendering to him for a purpose, Lance knew. She was letting him make love to her as payment for saving her sister—and he was claiming his victory. But he could pretend otherwise. He could make believe she truly cared for him, that she was his wife in more than name only, that she wanted him nearly as much as he wanted her.
Need shuddered through his body as he undid the buttons of Summer’s shirt and pushed aside the lapels to bare her breasts. The sight of those swelling white mounds, their nipples so rosy and taut, made him stiff with wanting. He was already iron-hard and throbbing, and yet he clamped down on his impatience, instead forcing himself to savor the delay, the anticipation of burying himself in her sweet warmth. He reached out to stroke her bare nipple, tauntingly, with the slightest of pressures.
Summer gasped and shivered. Her eyes remained closed, and yet she was vitally aware of Lance’s nearness, his barely clad body, the sudden eagerness in her own body. The feeling was so primitive, so…needy. She suddenly wanted to be closer to Lance. She wanted to absorb his heat and sweat and man-smell and to have him absorb her.
She heard a soft rustle and then a long silence. When she forced herself to open her eyes, she saw that he had removed his breechclout and was lying nude, powerfully lithe, on the bed of buffalo robes.
Abruptly her attention was drawn to the masculine flesh jutting long and thick from a nest of wiry hair at his groin. Shyly Summer raised her gaze and found it colliding with Lance’s. Those black fathomless eyes were unreadable, and yet smoldered with a flame so hot, she could almost feel it. Without quite knowing what she was doing, she reached out to touch him.
Her knuckles brushed the surging, hard, silky flesh, and Lance groaned as if in pain. He wouldn’t let her continue, either, but shifted his hips to pull away.
“Summer…come here,” he commanded, his voice dipping into hoarseness.
He drew her down on top of him with total disregard for his bandaged ribs. Summer tried to spare him her weight, but he was having none of her hesitation. His arms came around her to hold her tightly against him.
“Lance, I’ll hurt you....”
“Hush, princess…”
He started to kiss her, and her mouth went warm and yielding against his. Suddenly, though, he broke off the kiss. ?
?You’re right…Not this way.”
“What way, then…?”
He showed her what he wanted. Easing her onto her back, he loosened the bone button of her skirt and drew the bunched deerskin down over her hips, till she lay naked before him except for her open shirt.
His heart seemed to swell at the sight. She was so beautiful, his chest ached. So lovely, he thought he might die if he didn’t have her right then. He wanted to thrust hard into her, to claim her, to whisper, “You’re mine, you’ve always been mine,” but he controlled the fierce urge. Instead, he moved over her, resting his weight gently between her parted thighs. This wouldn’t be a brutal taking like the last time. This would be a new beginning, a new start for their marriage.
Lowering his head, he buried his face against her breasts.
Summer couldn’t prevent a soft whimper. His whiskered cheek was warm, abrasive, making her sensitive nipples prickle and tingle. He kissed her then, his lips nibbling at the tips of her breasts, his tongue tracing burning kisses around her fullness.
She tried to clutch at his hair, but he shook off her clinging hands and rose up on his knees. Looking along the naked length of her body, he slowly smoothed his hands up the insides of her bare, silken thighs, till his thumbs nestled in the dark curls that covered her femininity.
“Lance…no…” Summer protested breathlessly, and yet her entire body clenched with nervous anticipation.
His lips curved in a way that was not quite a smile, but rather an expression of triumph. They both knew he could compel her surrender; they both knew he would.
“Last time was way too rough,” he whispered. “Let me make it better for you.”
Those were the only words he spoke for a long while. Purposefully he lowered his mouth to her and began the sweet torment, brushing his lips over her, kissing her most intimate, dewy places, savoring, arousing her in the most primitive way possible. For a while it was all she could do to keep from moaning, and then the hot stroke of his tongue found her and she didn’t care who heard her cries.
He caressed her till she thought she might scream with the pleasure of it. His fevered lips made her writhe, his tongue drove her to the point of madness. When her climax came suddenly, the surge was so explosive, she shook with the power of it.
She lay quivering beneath him, vaguely wondering if her shattered pieces would ever mend.
Then she felt him move over her. Her eyes were almost blind with passion, but when she looked up, she could see light and darkness moving in his.