Bride of the Beast (37 page)

"Will I kiss you where?" he prodded, crossing the chamber with swift strides. Needing, wanting to hear her speak the words.

"Where do you want to be kissed?" He grazed his lips across her temple. "Here? Or somewhere else?"

A great tremor tore through her—he could feel it ripple down her back and flow through her thighs. "Between my legs," she blurted, two spots of bright pink appearing on her cheeks. "I want you to kiss and lick me between my legs ... as you said you would."

A shudder of his own tore through Marmaduke at her plain speech, his shaft swelling, lengthening, to a painful degree. "Lady," he said, his voice husky with need, "I shall lave you, and till the breaking of dawn if it pleases you."

Flinging back the heavy bed curtains with one hand, he eased her onto the edge of the great four-poster.

A bed already occupied by a four-legged contender for her affections.

"Be gone with you, little man, for your lady is mine this night," he said, then snapped his brows together in his most intimidating scowl when his words had no effect. The scowl worked. With a little grunt of displeasure, Leo hopped from the bed and toddled off to seek his own.

Some kind soul had stoked the fire and it threw off a fine reddish glow that, together with the wall torches flooded the room with so much light and warmth his lady would be able to lie fully unclothed before him and not shiver.

He cleared his throat. "Caterine, I mean to love you thoroughly this night." He locked his gaze on hers. "I wish to absorb your very essence, and give you all of mine."

A union of our bodies to meld your soul
—
your heart
—
irrevocably to my own.

"But first I must tell you something." He placed his hands on her shoulders, kneading them.

She nodded, her eyes earnest, accepting.

He touched the coiled plaits at her ears. "Shall I unravel your hair as we speak?" he asked, and she inclined her head again.

"When a man kisses a woman intimately," he began, slipping the pins from her hair, "when he touches his tongue to her, or opens his mouth over her as I shall do to you, he becomes so enflamed, he may no longer be able to withhold himself."

Her eyes widened, but she held his gaze. Keen interest, not revulsion, on her face, and for that, Marmaduke knew true relief.

"Are you asking if I am ready to take you fully?"

Marmaduke nodded. "Until now I have only pleasured you with my hands and my lips," he said, placing a handful of hairpins on the table beside the bed. "Once I've kissed you as I intend to this night, I shall want you in every way."

He lifted her chin. "I want you to know that before we proceed."

"I will welcome you," she said, and the heat simmering in her eyes assured him she would. "I imagine I shall be more than willing if you truly mean to put your mouth—"

"Oh, I shall, my sweet. Do not doubt it."

He pulled the remaining pins from her hair, allowing it to spill free in silken waves clear to her hips. Its beauty stole his breath. Fully enchanted, he twined his hand in the golden mass, let its silk stream through his fingers.

Thoroughly besotting him.

He lifted brimming handfuls to his face, nuzzled his cheek against the cool, satiny skeins. "A man could lose his soul in your hair, but, this night, you have other charms I

would explore."

And a heart I mean to capture.

How do you mean to do that, you fool?
One of his demons taunted from somewhere in the shadows.

By
loving her,
a softer voice gave back... beautiful and precious, but barely there. A mere whisper on the wind racing through the cold night beyond the shuttered windows.
He is very good at loving.
..
at winning and holding a
woman's heart.

Better yet at giving his own.

Marmaduke wheeled toward the row of night-battened windows, his nape prickling. He strained his ears, listening hard, but heard naught save the muffled wash of the sea and the wind's keening echo.

And then the wind sped on to harry some other comer of the night... taking its echo and, as
she'd
meant to do, some of Marmaduke's doubts along with it.

A chill swept down his back, but he shook it off... and with surprising ease, for, of a sudden, a wondrous warmth spilled through him and he simply knew he could win his new lady's heart.

Knew he could make her love him.

And for far more than his renowned skill at diddling.

He slanted that barb into the dark shadows of a particularly menacing corner ... one that seemed needy of a firmly spoken reprimand.

Then, before his doubts could mass force against him again, he dropped to one knee and began removing his new life's slippers. "Are you ready to be loved, Caterine?" he asked, meaning anything but the physical act he was about to perform on her.

"I am ready to be ...
kissed,
aye," came the wrong reply. Refusing to face defeat, Marmaduke tossed aside her plain leather brogans. "And how would you like to be kissed? Shall I draw deep and fully on you?"

And how shall I win your love?
his heart echoed.
Shall I batter down your defenses with a passion so fierce every resistance will be futile?

Lifting her skirts, he began untying the garters at her knees. "Or would you prefer barely there little licks across your sweetness? Feather-light kisses to drive you wild with bliss until you can stand no more?"

Or shall I win you with a tender wooing? Ply your heart with the lightest of touches until it melts into my waiting hands?

"What would you prefer?" she asked, her heart tripping at the odd way he looked at her.

As if he meant so very much more than the mere words.

And as if the unspoken ones already worked some strange and heady magic on her.

"I prefer a little of both," he said, his only falsehood being that he preferred a great deal of both.

His course thus laid, his determination unflagging, he lifted her hips and slid her under-hose to her ankles.

Holding her gaze, he drew her to her feet. "Take off the rest of your clothes, Caterine," he said. "I would see all of you."

Ripples of exquisite anticipation eddying through her, she untied the lacings of her bodice, eased her arms out of the sleeves, then let the gown shimmy to the floor where it pooled around her feet.

Her camise quickly followed.

At ease with her nakedness, she stood proud before him, her arms at her sides. "And now?"

He reached out and trailed his fingers over her breasts.

"Much as I'd like to, I shall not toy much with your breasts this night," he said, his heated gaze making the place between her thighs throb with a heavy, warm pulsing.

Sliding his hands beneath her breasts, he cupped them, lifting and weighing them. He rubbed slow circles around her nipples... his thumbs circling round and round the puckered flesh of her areolas, taking great care not to touch the hardened, distended peaks.

"Prolonging one's release can heighten sensual pleasure and, much as your breasts enthrall me, I want to kiss you,
lave
you elsewhere tonight," he said, his words, his touch, sending hot streaks of tingling pleasure rippling across her tender parts. "I burn to lick you senseless."

Grasping the swollen peaks of her nipples at last, he rubbed them, pulling on them a bit, before he eased her onto

the edge of the bed.

"You have very large nipples," he said, smoothing one hand down her side, across her belly, and into the nest of her intimate hair... tugging gently on the curls.

"Your areolas are especially large and I find that maddeningly rousing. But it is the hidden flesh
here"
—he slid one finger deep between her legs, traced its tip along her cleft—"that stirs me this moment."

Caterine wet her lips, scarce able to breathe for the pounding need consuming her. A hot, tight spinning deep inside her that would surely burst any moment.

Caterine wet her lips, scarce able to breathe for the pounding need consuming her. A hot, tight spinning deep inside her that would surely burst any moment.

"Open for me, Caterine. Show me your sweetness again as you did on the windowseat. Let me gaze upon you."

Biting back the ragged gasp of pure, unbridled passion rising in her throat, Caterine bit hard into her lower lip and spread her knees.

 
Fully, unashamedly, and as wide as she could open them.

"Lick me."
A half-choked voice rasped the plea. "I— cannot—stand—it…" She squirmed on the bedsheets, the mind-numbing, base glory of sitting so fully open, so
ex-posed,
pushing her beyond all modesty.

Hold what you are feeling." His deep voice came as if from a great distance, and she glanced up to find him staring at her, his face dark with passion.

Keeping her gaze, he knelt between her thighs. "I shall touch my mouth to you—
lick you
—very soon, my sweet. Just keep your legs spread like this."

He began caressing her. Toying at her with his fingers, light, almost playful touches ... soft
pluckings,
gentle tugs on her feminine hair and quick, barely-touching-her strokes

along her center.

"Do you enjoy having me touch you thus?" he asked, probing her hidden flesh, massaging each pulsing fold. "Having me play with you? There, between your legs? Does what I am doing make you feel good, Caterine?"

She nodded, unable to speak for the torturously sweet pleasure winding so hotly through her.

"I am going to tell you what I'll be doing to you before I do it, Caterine, so listen carefully, for speaking such things aloud is stirring, too."

He glanced at her, smoothed her hair behind her ear. "You may find you enjoy such love talk as well, so voice anything you wish to. There is no shame between us, only what gives us both pleasure."

Only my love for you and my desire to win yours.
She blinked, almost asking him to repeat what she thought he'd just said, but the headiness of his sensual ministrations weighted her tongue.

Her heart pounded slower, harder, with each new caress, each lasciviously turned phrase. Digging her fingers into the tender flesh of her lower thighs, she held them wide for him. "I am going to rub my face against you now," he was saying, palming her as he spoke the words ... slow, rough cir-clings every bit as bliss-spending as the lighter pluckings and tugs. "Just a moment or two to savor the softness of your intimate hair, and then we shall move on to more ... serious pursuits."

Hollow tension, tight, pulsing, and exquisite, coiled low in her belly as he came ever closer until hardly- a heartbeat stood between his mouth and her heat. His very breath caressed her, warm and soft, the feel of it whispering across her, melting her.

"Your beauty unmans me." He slid his hands along the inside of her thighs. "The scent of your arousal fires my blood."

Leaning closer, he drew several deep breaths, holding them long moments before he exhaled, and only after the second or third time, did she realize he was inhaling her.

Her scent.

"I could sate myself on you," he said, nuzzling his cheek, his face, into the thick tangle of golden curls crowning her woman's mound, the sheer intimacy of the act he performed on her shattering the tight coil of heat spinning inside her. It melted into a slow, trickling warmth, infinitely sweet.

"Do you know you have more hair here than most women?" He grazed his lips back and forth across her softness. "Such a luxurious fleece is worth a king's ransom to many men... especially a golden one such as yours. I could spend hours simply threading my fingers through its lush-ness, but...."

He pushed to his feet, discarding the knight's belt slung low around his hips. "I would lick you now," he said.
"That,
my love, is what I am about to do ... flick my tongue over
  
your sweetness."

"Barely there little licks?"

"So I have said." He yanked his tunic over his head, let it drop to the floor. "Would you enjoy that?"

She nodded, watching him tug off his boots, shed his hose and braies, her breath catching at the size of him, his magnificence.

Confident in his nakedness, he planted his hands on his

hips and looked down at her ... at
that
part of her.

"Do you know how beautiful you are? Lying there with your knees apart... so very wide apart," he said, his voice thick, dark. "I could take my ease just by looking my fill on you."

He knelt before her. "I will show you lascivious now, Caterine," he promised, the heat in bis voice making the heavy pulsing between her legs throb even more. "Lie back, my dear one, and be
licked."

Leaning forward, he traced her cleft with his tongue, licked at her. "Do you like this, Caterine?"

She twisted, bucking beneath him, her moans throaty and primal.

"Easy, sweet," he soothed her. "Just feel. I am going to lap at you now. I shall lave you, with long, leisurely strokes and you will best enjoy them if you are fully relaxed."