Make Her Wish Come True Collection. Ann Lethbridge
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slow. The arousal he’d kindled in the tub and while combing her hair blazed out of control. Its heat scorched along her veins and settled deep in her vitals. Her core ached with need for him.
When his hand skimmed over the curls at the apex to her thighs, her hips rose in invitation. He cupped her and pressed down with the heel of his hand, shooting lightning bolts of heat to the very tips of her fingers. He eased first one finger, then another inside her, sending those same impossible, indescribable sensations rippling through her body. Wave after wave of pleasure. He rose over her, looking down into her face, nudging her thighs apart with one knee, then the other.
She wrapped her legs around his flanks and tilted her hips in overt welcome, pleased when his expression softened with a smile of gladness. Slowly, carefully, his gaze intent, watching her reaction, he penetrated her by gentle increments, pressing forwards and retreating until she could no longer focus on anything but the place where their bodies came together. Tension built to unimaginable proportions.
And yet he seemed to hold back some part of himself. Maintaining his control while she became a mindless creature of sensation and instinct. Something told her this was not how it was meant to be. She raised herself up and captured his mouth with hers, tasting and nibbling at his lips, exploring his mouth with her tongue, holding him close to her, until he sank down onto her with a groan that to her ears sounded like surrender, his weight pressing her deep into the mattress.
His thrusts became harder, stronger, faster, his breathing ragged gasps for air. She moved in unison, meeting each surge with arching hips until there was no separation of body or mind or spirit. A welling sense of wonder followed swiftly by deep affection brought tears to her eyes.
Why after all these years did she have to meet this particular man and fall in love? For there was no doubt in her mind that something deeper than pleasure had lodged in her heart.
The sensuality of the woman beneath him stole what was left of his brain and his control. Only instinct remained. A feral need to ensure she reached her climax before he let the urges gripping muscle, bone and sinew tear loose. The magnitude of his desire ached in every particle of his body.
‘Come for me.’ A hoarse whisper of desperation.
Unfocused, her gaze found his.
His heart stopped beating when he saw the glint of moisture at the corners of her eyes. Guilt tore a swathe through his chest.
‘Sweetheart,’ he croaked, barely reining in the need to move. ‘What is wrong?’ He rose up on one hand, determined to withdraw.
She looked bewildered. ‘What?’
‘You are crying.’
‘Happy. Thrilled.’ Her fingernails dug into his back. ‘Don’t you dare stop now.’
Relief rolled through him and pride that he’d brought her tears for such a reason. He buried himself to the hilt and reached the peak he had abandoned only seconds before. Her body tightened around him, sheathing him perfectly. And hot darkness beckoned. Beneath him she undulated, drawing him deeper. ‘Adam?’ Her eyes widened as a paroxysm shuddered through her body. He followed into the abyss of her lovely warmth.
‘Cassie,’ he groaned when he could breathe around the pounding of his heart. He collapsed to one side so as not to crush her, stroked her back and felt her snuggle against his shoulder. ‘Everlasting saints, you have done for me.’
‘And you for me,’ she gasped, her body lax against him. ‘I had no idea I could be so thoroughly undone. Shattered.’
Half dead as he was, he mustered a surge of anger against a husband who had never shown her pleasure. Anger tempered by satisfaction that he was her first real lover.
A comfortable silence existed between them. A satisfyingly comfortable silence. He kissed the point of her shoulder in gratitude for this cosy respite full of companionship and a tenderness deeper than anything he had known.
What he’d had with Marion had been larger than life. A grand passion, his mother had called it, looking troubled. A flame that had sparked instantly to life and, if he was brutally honest, had just as quickly burned itself out. What he felt for Cassie was an altogether different kind of affection, a banked fire that might well endure for aeons with enough care and attention.
If he was adequate to the task. He certainly had failed Marion in that regard.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘For the kiss?’
‘For everything. Your kindness. To the girls.’ She patted his chest. ‘Most especially your kindness to me,’ she whispered shyly.
This was his congé, he realised with dismay.
‘You deem this a kindness?’ On his part it had been anything but kindness. Selfish lust was the best he could name it. Shame chilled him. ‘Your husband neglected you.’
‘My husband was an elderly gentleman when we married and his health was not good. And while he hoped for another son, he married me more as a caretaker of his daughters and his house than anything.’
‘An unpaid caretaker, I assume.’
She stiffened slightly, subtly drew back.
He pulled her close again. ‘I beg your pardon. Continue.’
The relief when she relaxed against him was wholly ridiculous, yet there it was.
‘My hopes of marriage had dwindled after my first Season. Men do not like females built on gargantuan proportions, especially when they have no claim to beauty or fortune.’
‘More fool them.’ He kissed the top of her head while admiring the lush bounty barely hidden beneath the sheets. His body hardened. ‘And if by beauty you mean the sort of insipidness women call pretty, that fades by the age of thirty, you should be glad. To me you are perfectly lovely.’
Her smile was a delight to behold, before she hid her face against his shoulder.
He waited for her to master her blushes and to continue her story, but he could not help smiling at her obvious pleasure.
Finally she glanced up at him. ‘The offer from Clifford was my last hope of having a family of my own, but unfortunately I did not live up to expectations.’
‘Expectations?’
‘Things he hoped to gain from our union. More sons. Social connections for his heir. My family stuck to the letter of the settlements, barely, but…’ she gave a small shrug ‘…vulgar is vulgar, and no one is required to welcome an outsider with open arms. When my husband died, I was not comfortable living with my stepson, so I took the girls and left.’
Something about her story stirred an understanding in his as yet soggy brain. ‘Who is your family?’
She stilled as if realising she had given away something she preferred to keep secret. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
It mattered. A widow she might be, but, and the parts came together swiftly, she was also a woman from the nobility. ‘What year did you come out?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper. ‘It is all in the past. I married down. I am persona non grata.’
She spoke calmly, but there was bewilderment there, too, and hurt. ‘Why not go back to your family when your husband died?’
‘My parents are gone. My brother might have taken me in, I suppose, but not the girls. I could not bear to leave them with Herbert and his wife. Their mother was a housemaid. Herbert’s wife would have turned them into servants.’
Her loyalty to her stepdaughters deepened his admiration. ‘The girls are fortunate to have you.’
‘You don’t have children, do you?’
To his endless sorrow.
‘Adam? Do you have a child?’