He smiled with the kindness she remembered so poignantly from that day they’d walked together through the snow. That day she’d fallen in love with him.
“My lovely Marianne, you don’t need to do anything.”
“That seems a little unfair.”
“Let me do this. If I frighten you, I’ll stop. I ask only for your trust.”
“Trust is a lot.”
His eyes were serious. “I know.”
Strangely, she believed he did.
Elias placed one elegant hand against her cheek and pressed her head onto his shoulder. For a long while she lay, slipping back into that deep well of unconditional comfort.
She’d expected something more dynamic. More…overtly lustful. This was like being a child, except that her father had never been a man to let his motherless daughter crawl onto his knee.
Gradually uncertainty ebbed, replaced with lazy pleasure. Her blood matched the slow pace of Elias’s. Her breath eased to his deep rhythm. Her eyelids fluttered down. She glided into a radiant space she’d never inhabited before.
When Elias began to massage the back of her neck, at first she barely noticed. He tilted her chin and turned her face to his—with more of that calm sureness—and she realized he’d been caressing her for a long time. The thought of protest or resistance didn’t arise as he feathered a kiss across her lips.
Automatically she arched closer, even as he broke the contact, leaving her lips tingling.
He placed his hand under her chin, one thumb lazily stroking her lower lip. The touch felt like another kiss. “Open for me, sweeting.”
She let him kiss her intimately, the way he had before. What had seemed outlandish now set her heart racing with excitement. Before tonight she’d never known the hot, salty taste of a man. Now she thought she’d starve without Elias’s kisses to feed her.
At her quick response, he caught her head between his hands, tangling his fingers in her hair and holding her still for his mouth. His earlier gentleness had lured her past caution into a fiery new world where passion ruled. In this new world, she welcomed the languid slide of his hand down her throat and lower, until his hand slipped beneath her bodice to her breast.
Marianne made a muffled sound of shock against his lips. His touch burned like a brand through her lawn shift. Painful yearning hardened her nipples. A painful yearning that ignited into stark pleasure when he scraped his nail over one peak.
She snatched a shallow breath. “That’s…strange.”
“Nice strange or awful strange?”
She abandoned reticence. “Nice strange.”
“I’m glad,” he said with another of those incandescent smiles. He kissed her and she closed her eyes, yielding to his mouth and the play of his fingers on her nipple. The onslaught of sensation was so overwhelming, she only realized that he’d unlaced the back of her gown and tugged it down when his hand closed upon her naked breast.
With shaming reluctance, she pulled away. She stared down at the white flesh overflowing her drooping bodice and tried to summon a ladylike horror. What was most horrifying was how natural it seemed to allow Elias the freedom of her body. She’d never felt so alive.
“Please, Marianne, don’t stop me,” he groaned, his arm firming around her back. “You’re so damn beautiful, it breaks my heart.”
She bit her lip, unable to look away from that large brown hand splayed over her skin. She’d never felt beautiful, but something in the wanton abandon of the sight struck her as unutterably lovely. She looked up and met eyes bright with excitement. “You shouldn’t say such things if you don’t mean them.”
“On my life, I mean it,” he grated, lifting and turning her toward him so he could draw a hard rosy nipple into his mouth. His touch had been like lightning. The hot, powerful suction of his lips was…more. Marianne pressed her wrist across her mouth to muffle her cries as every muscle tensed on a shuddering thrill.
By the time he suckled her other breast, she was squirming on his lap. A powerful pulse throbbed between her legs and she whimpered for relief. He kissed and bit at her, each caress making the madness boil and sizzle until she felt ready to explode. She clawed blindly at the black superfine of his coat.
“Elias,” she choked out. Each beat of her blood slammed through her like a cannon. He’d promised pleasure, but the power of her response terrified her.
He raised his head and let her slump back against his legs. Only his arm at her back kept her from dissolving to the floor.
“Shall I stop?” His rough tone told her how grudgingly he posed the question. She read passion in his face, although passion was new to her.
“No,” she said, because when she looked closely, she saw more than passion in his eyes. Elias had vowed that she could trust him and staring into that striking, austere face, she believed it. Odd to feel so safe with a man who held her breast in his hand, his thumb teasing the nipple as if he couldn’t resist pleasuring her.
Regret dulled his beautiful black eyes. His hands fell away from her. “It’s your right to deny me.”