Face to Face (The Deverell Series Book 2) (12 page)

His body filling her made her anxious for more. Her hands and her answering kisses became bolder and she began to move with more demanding frenzy against him, even as his hands tried to gentle her.

“Slowly, Merry, slowly. Don’t touch me right now, Little One. Just let me love you,” he whispered against her lips, easing that part of him with sensual slowness within her. “You are new to passion, and we must go very gently or I will hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, Little One, and if you touch me, I won’t be able to go about this as gently as I need to.”

Flailing into submission the ruthless demand of his body and groaning into her mouth in the effort of his restraint, Varian held her hips in steadying fingers, knowing Merry didn’t understand the effort of maintaining this tightly controlled exchange. He kissed her cheeks with gentling touch, moving back and forth within her with care, fighting the demands of his own flesh in an effort not to hurt her. Even as cautious as each thrust was, it was exaltation to glide into her.

He had never felt such a fierce blending of passion and tenderness all at once. She was so dewy moist, so tight around him, this beautiful girl with soft hands that caressed with artless love, who kissed with soft lips that drank and fed. He was desperate to savor each measure of the rapturous gratification he was finding in her young, untried flesh.

She had brought to his bed something she could only give to a man once, her innocence, and he wanted to savor it in the perfection it was. But he wanted her to savor it as well, so she would never regret having shared herself with him.

He was kissing her again, and she met the play of his lips and his tongue. His thrusts grew deeper within her, more powerful, harder with expert stirring. She met each glorious move, some unknown need pulsing inside of her, making her greedy to accept him and to drive the pace even more furiously.

She was on fire. Whatever was in her, was running through her blood madly. Mingled with her soft pants and cries were whispered pleas that brought instant reaction in him, an expertly building tempo that intensified her desire. She traced the ridge of his muscles, offering her lips and her flesh, wanting to give more and wanting more from him.

She had stopped thinking, not by choice, but because the explosion of her senses made anything other than physical awareness impossible. Arching her back, pushing into him, the eruption that spread through her limbs carried her into a brilliant surrender.

Still arched against him, Merry tightly squeezed her eyes closed. She knew he felt what happened to her, felt each shimmer as it occurred. His body seemed to tense and heighten in its fury with the upward swirl of her senses. She could feel the touch of his lips against her face as he continued in the glorious pulsing moves of their bodies.

She realized wherever he’d taken her, he hadn’t gone there with her. His flesh had not tightened and softened as hers had. He was still fully aroused and searching. Her flesh thrilled in his heated possession, as she moved with him without restraint in this dizzying cadence.

Hot tears swam in her lashes, her love for him expanding her heart into painfulness. The pleasure received and the pleasure she was giving was unlike anything she had known. She could feel the tang of her tears, as they dribbled down her cheeks and nose, and a wayward trickle or two brushed her lips. His kisses came to her mouth, absorbing the moisture, taking in the warm breath that escaped her parted lips with the frantic rhythm of her heart.

He held her face, kissing her cheeks and lips, smoothing the damp, fine black curls from her face, his fingertips a tingling flutter against her skin. He was wild and on fire and she reveled in it, each deep and thorough thrust, and each one more shuddering waves to her body.

His mouth covering hers, he stroked her satiny under cheeks as he molded her lush curves into a tight clutch against him. Each of his thrusts within her was met with an exalted press of herself up into him. Held in the wrap of her beautiful legs, his own need surged upward. His mouth glided over the moist surface of her face and lips.

It took him a moment to realize the salty wash that touched his kisses were tears. In his passion dulled mind rose the damning awareness he’d been raging within her dainty flesh. He tempered the demands of his body at once, catching her writhing hips in a gentle grip.

“Why are you crying, Merry?” His voice was a ragged whisper, more breath than sound, as he anxiously searched her face. “Am I hurting you? If I am hurting you, you must tell me. I want for you to know only pleasure in this.”

It took a moment to come together in her dazed mind, what he had said. As she tried to rally voice through her unsteady breathing, she wondered how he could even imagine he was hurting her. She shook her head, pressing her body into him as she slipped her arms tightly around him urging him onward with feverish kisses.

The matching glides of their bodies resumed, but his possession of her came carefully again, so gently that it gave her a vague awareness he was holding back in himself out of concern for her. It made her eyes flutter wide and round beneath him.

Whispering, Merry said, “You are not hurting me. Not for a flicker has there been pain. I am not made of glass. I don’t know what you did to my body, but my tears are from the beauty of what you are doing, not from pain. I want to know the joy of giving that to you. I want to know when you feel as you made me feel. Will I know? Does it feel the same for you? Do you find the same pleasure with my body? I want to give you the same pleasure with my body.”

Varian’s gaze found hers and he was lost in the expression in her eyes. The fierce need of his body unleashed within her. There was no thought after that. It was blinding passion and fiery need and want of fulfillment. He had meant to hold back, she was new to this, but there was no way after those preciously urging words, her eagerly offered legs and arms wrapped around him. She left him no way to hold back. The aching demand to consume what she offered stripped restraint from his flesh. She answered him wildly as they moved higher and higher toward his release, until he could contain himself no longer.

Somehow, as desperately as he ached to finish in her, he was still able to remind himself of how young she was, of the caution she hadn’t thought to ask for from him. In a thrust that told him he could not endure another, he pulled from her body, keeping his flesh buried in the soft bed of her thighs as exploded with an intensity of climax richly complete in spite of where he had done it.

Collecting her body, he turned them so she was a luscious drape across him. An act of love shared in love. Varian had forgotten the completeness of that, though he had never known it with the richness he was feeling now with Merry. All his senses floated in bliss, fully fed, at one with her, hungering of nothing and at peace.

Merry’s passion-lax limbs tingled as Varian’s tanned finger glided up the pale skin of her back. He was always gentle in his touch of her. It made her feel fragile and cherished and delicate like glass, the deliciously tender glides across her. At times the warmth it flooded her with made her want to weep. Then laughing, she realized when he did not touch her like glass it made her fiery with passion and to want to weep as well. However he touched her, it was as though they were one being when he did it.

She sank her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth to hers.
One, but both of us incomplete.
She understood what he had meant now. Through her kisses floated her airy little laughs of happy wonder.

His mouth widened with the spreading of hers, and his arms tightened as he absorbed whatever spirit was whispering through him from her kiss. Then her back pressed up against the tangle of his arms, and he eased his hold as she lifted her face.

The smile Merry gave him he would remember for a lifetime. The glorious patchwork of love, cheerful surprise, contentment of her own pleasure, satisfied comprehension of having pleased him. Somehow she managed all that on two delicately formed lips to be dazzlingly unveiled before him. It was humbling.

Breathless, Merry settled her cheek against his warm chest, luxuriating in the rise and fall of his body beneath her. On a soft voice, she asked, “Why did she not simply tell me it was wonderful? She described in such dreadful sounding terms all the basics of the act, and finished it with the pronouncement that it was painful, my duty, and I must submit with dignity. They all make it sound dreadful so you never want to do it. Why do they do that? You weren’t dreadful at all, you insufferable man.”

Varian laughed, enchanted, burying his lips in the sweet gossamer cloud of hair. “I am relieved I wasn’t dreadful. With such high expectations, I can’t imagine why you ever climbed into my bed. Who is she, Little One? Who are they?”

She blushed as her eyes darted to him, then she hid her face in a charming tuck against his chest. The vibrations of her laughter against his skin stirred his senses.

A minute passed. Then, her voice came to him, a singing melody, as she explained, “All the married women who explain this to unmarried girls, you insufferable man. They whisper at you little bits of this and that and make it sound dreadful so you never want to do it, which was why I was afraid when you started. I was not afraid of you.” Those doe eyes peeked up at him then, sparkling and impish. “My Grandmamma was very grim in her effort of explaining this to me and my cousin. I must speak with Kate when I go home.”

She was shamefaced by her confession and she immediately lowered her face back into him. Her laughter made her soft breasts a frantic massage on the high shallow of his rib cage, as she surrendered to the delirium fit that claimed her.

Folding her into the warmth of his body, Varian felt the thrill of her pass through him. She was in all ways a charming surprise. In this moment when he’d troubled that her no longer passion-claimed senses would prompt her to withdraw from him, Merry wrapped herself around him to continue the delightful sharing of herself.

Varian’s husky laughter was muffled by the need for his lips to touch all through her hair. He had laid with a virgin only once before because he had been careful to stay away from them and their complications. And as wonderful as his wife had been that night, he was overpowered by what he was feeling for Merry. Perhaps he was just old enough to appreciate what she’d given him as the treasure it was.

She had climbed into his bed, untried and unknowing, and had wrapped their joining in fulfillment of both heart and body. She breathed through their coupling innocent wonder, fresh awakenings, old awakenings, unbound in all, so that even humor whispered through it. All of it she eagerly shared without a hint of restraint to detract from the completeness she made it. All of herself virtuously, generously offered so no part of him could ever manage to stay sealed from her.

Merry moved in total possession of him in the unconsciously made claiming of him with the beauty of her heart. He could not reclaim from her any part of him if he tried to. Varian had not been prepared for this. This complete rebirth she was creating in him, first with her heart, then with her flesh. This greedy bliss as he became aware this part of her belonged to no one but him and never would, and he would never belong to anyone but her again. It was in all ways a surrender to Merry.

Guiding her head with fingers in her hair, he tilted up her face, running his thumbs along the laughter-flushed slopes of her kitten soft cheeks as he whispered, “Everything I feel for you, I didn’t dream possible before you, Merry.”

She pressed her lips against his chest. “Everything I feel for you, Varian, I did not want to feel before you.”

He brushed her mouth with his, his fingertips light within the play. He had intended it to be only a gentle touch, but it deepened on its own as shivers cursed down them both.

Merry felt the change in him, shocked by her understanding of it and the eagerness of her own flesh.

His words whispered against her cheeks. “I may never let you out of my arms again. I lie here fully sated and in a breath you make me desperate in hunger for you. Give me your mouth, Little One.”

Merry lips were claimed in a flash and she was suddenly lost in the fury of being loved by Varian.

~~~

Merry came awake to a cabin bright with midmorning sunlight, her body in a warm cocoon of male flesh and her limbs still sweetly holding the flavors of Varian’s passion. She had fallen asleep, still tangled around him, sometime after…
their third coupling?
Exhaustion had pulled her into slumber, not want of rest.

Her desire for Varian, uncapped, was an unexpectedly whimsical force that returned in flashes with surprising quickness. Refused and unsated for too long, it was as if every nerve in her body demanded to soar wildly with him. Somehow she had kept this from her flesh for twenty years, and now that Varian had stirred it awake, it flowed madly, dragging her with it.

Easing out of Varian’s arms, she turned in bed to study him. They had shared a cabin six months, yet somehow she had only seen his unclothed chest twice. Nothing more. Last night, she had been too shy, too nervous to look with any thoroughness at the rest of him.

She watched the play of his tanned muscles and lightly furred chest, rising slowly as he breathed. In her movement from him, she had pushed the blankets down, exposing every inch of that magnificent body. A hot blush stained her cheeks as she looked at that part of him she’d been too timid to look at last night—the part she had come to know very well without having seen it. Wickedly, she studied him, the flat belly, the narrow hips, and that most intimate part of their difference. Staring in awe at the long lines of muscle and bone, his face attractively softened by sleep, she was positive it was not possible that another man could be so perfectly made.

A dull ache spread through her limbs, new and now with knowing presence, and burst into a medley within her.

Biting her lower lip, Merry gently traced the firm line of his jaw and smiled, noticing he did not stir. Feeling bubbles of soft laughter, she thought,
he is older than I am, perhaps he needs more sleep.
Her cheeks burned, shamefaced by her thoughts.