Firefly (49 page)

"You aren't afraid to look?" he asked.

"I'm more afraid that when I open my eyes you'll be gone, and this will all be some dream I'm waking from."  His hand slid lower, from her breast to the wavelets of her ribs and on to the flat stomach.  "I want to see and to remember everything."

"Then I must give you plenty to remember."

It wasn't enough that his hand moved lower still, his fingers combing into the curls of richly golden hair shrouding her femininity.  That alone sent such a ripple of shock through her that her back arched up from the mattress and a slow wail fluttered tremulously from her throat.  But that combined with the wet warmth of his tongue on a swollen breast drove her almost to tears.  The wail became a series of cries as frayed and soft as an old satin ribbon.  He suckled one tumescent peak, drawing his teeth gently along its length, while his finger found another, warmer, wetter, more secret.

Words, singly and in short, incoherent phrases, mingled with the moans.  Julie's fingers threaded themselves of their own volition into the dark curls on Morgan's head, but she could not tell if she wanted to pull him up so that she could kiss him or if she wanted to hold him to her breast where his mouth was doing such incredible things to her body.  Nothing seemed real, nothing seemed controllable, though part of her remained fully and clearly conscious.  The man she loved was loving her, driving her insane with passion she had never known and did not understand.

She sensed, rather than knew, that she was ready for him.  She felt the ease with which he slid one finger inside her willing body.  The sensation did not startle her, nor did she shy from his careful, gentle probing.  When had her legs parted to allow him such entrance? She did not know.  But she did know that when he settled his long length between her limbs, she felt somehow secure.

He kissed her other breast, pulling on the nipple that could tighten no tighter.

"Del, please," she begged, her body seeking his instinctively.  At the very threshold he waited.  "I can't bear it any longer."

Why did he hesitate? She could feel the hard length of him throbbing against her.  Afraid that he might leave, she wrapped her legs around his, curling her toes under his ankles to hold him fast.

"Are you sure?  Once it's done, it's done."

"I'm sure.  Oh, God, I was never more sure of anything in my life!  Love me, please, Del, love me."

At first here was just the fullness of his flesh entering hers, easily, warmly.  When he withdrew slightly, she rose with him to keep him within her.  The next thrust slid deeper, opening her wider, but still filling her gently.  Julie lifted herself to him, seeking the ultimate joining, and it was then that she felt the first twinge.

"No, Julie, don't hurry it," Morgan's voice steadied her.  "Slowly, slowly, love, so it doesn't hurt.  I don't want to hurt you, love.  Not even a little.  Never, never, not even a tiny bit."

The rhythm of his words matched the easy persistence of his body.  He would not hurt her, not if he could help it.  Though he had not really expected to find her intact and regretted the necessity of pain to mar this night, he felt a new surge of emotion at the discovery.  Slowly, with each increasingly forceful thrust, he felt the membrane begin to give.  And he knew not all the tension of her inner body came from the pain.  If somehow he could bring her to her pleasure before his own demanded the satisfaction of full penetration, he might save her the worst.

"Relax, love...relax...it's all right.  I won't hurt you."

She was crying, sobbing at the pressure building inside that screamed for release she could not find because she did not know it existed. 

"Easy, love, easy.  Let me show you, let me love you."

With a tortured scream, she grabbed for the elusive ecstasy.  Arms, fingers, legs, and womb clutched at him seeking it.  Unable to wait any longer, Del plunged through the last resistance and let the rapture take them both together.

Chapter Twenty-seven

"Ah, Firefly," Morgan sighed.

He breathed deeply but easily.  It had taken no great physical exertion to achieve this most marvelously satisfying pleasure, and now he lay peacefully content.  Holding most of his weight on his elbows to avoid crushing the woman beneath him, he watched while she surrendered to replete exhaustion.

"Can you breathe?" he asked after bestowing a kiss on her sweat-dampened temple.

"Yes.  Oh, Del, don't move."  She flung a limp arm across his shoulders and clasped him tightly with her legs still wrapped around his.  "Don't leave me.  Not yet."

He chuckled.

"I can't stay there forever."

She acknowledged that truth only reluctantly.  Using muscles she never knew existed until just moments ago, she clung to his relaxing organ even while she wished she could draw a full, deep breath.  She wanted to cry, to spill out all the suppressed emotions, and yet she had never in her life experienced such utter contentment.  And though she gloried in the passion she had seen satisfied in his green eyes, she worried about the price her own wanton desire must cost.

"If you could, would you?"

"Would I what?"

"Stay there?  Forever?"

He laughed, and that did it.  Though Julie strained her hips upward, she lost him and cried out at his leaving.

"Yes, I would."  He kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear.  "Forever and ever." She shivered when his lips moved lower, to her shoulder and then her collarbone.  "Marry me, Julie, and I'll prove it."  His teeth grazed the bone beneath the pale skin, and his breath warmed her throat.

"Marry you?" she whispered.

Could he feel her heart leap, then stop, then jump again with a surge of new life?  He must have, for he had slid his entire body down the length of hers so that his mouth now rested just between her breasts.  As he cupped the satiny mounds closer to his face, Julie felt his lashes flutter on her skin.

"Marry me," he repeated.  Now his tongue flicked sideways, up towards a nipple that had gone as soft as his penis.

"When?  How?  Oh, Del, stop that, please."

He trailed the tip of his tongue to the other side, again reaching no more than halfway to the peak.  He riffled the tips of his fingers over the little nubbins softly, drawing a moan but no answer from her.  He slid further down her length until his chin rested in her navel.  He looked up at her, saw her watching him between the firm globes of her breasts.

"Well?  Will you marry me?  Tomorrow?  We can get Wintergarden, I suppose.  I confess I don't know a damn thing about the legal aspects of getting married in the Arizona Territory, but I'm sure the preacher can handle the details."

While she watched, he dipped his tongue into the shallow depression of her navel.

"Yes, yes, I'll marry you," she whispered.  "Now, this minute, if you want."

But when she extended her arms to draw him to her, she found him sliding further out of her reach.  She gasped and tried to squirm away, but his weight held her fast.

"What are you doing?"

"Making love to you," he added quietly, calmly.  His hands still curved comfortably around the outer swells of her breasts, but his lips were level with the upper edge of the golden curls between her thighs.  "I hurt you a little while ago.  Now I want to kiss it and make it feel better."

Again she tried to pull away from him.

"No, Del, don't.  It isn't--"

"What isn't it?  Right?  Decent?  Normal?  It's beautiful, Julie.  It's a way of showing love, and that's what I want to do for you, show you how much I love you."

So he did, despite her efforts to wriggle free.  He plundered her body as he had her mouth, seeking the most sensitive places with his tongue and lips and teeth.  He trailed his hands down her sides and around her hips to her buttocks to still her struggles.

He found the source of her passion and touched it, feeling the shudder of sheer pleasure ripple outward from that core to the ends of every nerve in her body.  She no longer fought to escape him but to achieve that soul-splitting ecstasy she had so recently discovered.

"No, Del," she gasped.  "Not like this." She raised her back and shoulders from mattress and reached hungry hands to him.  Her fingers twined in his hair and tugged the soft dark curls.  "Like before...inside me.  Please, Del, please..."

He knew when he poised his body over hers that he had brought her close to the precipice.  If he took her too soon, she would plunge over the edge almost instantly, and he didn't want that.  He wanted to draw the pleasure out, extend it to its fullest and then savor the culmination at length.

He licked a nipple, hard now as an unopened rosebud.

"Slowly, love.  We have all night."

He raked his teeth over the other peak.

"All night and all of forever."

Then her hands, sliding frantically between close pressed bodies, found him and tightened around him.  The groan that embrace dragged from him died only when his lips found hers.  He devoured her.  His tongue slithered to the far corners of her mouth, stroking along the inner surfaces in anticipation of another invasion.  Julie met and engaged him in this frenzied duel.

He sheathed himself in her warmth to the hilt with a single thrust.  No maidenhead barred him, no pain hindered her, as they joined again.  He drove home, and she held him there.

The frenzy, but not the desire, waned.  Julie sighed a kind of lazy fulfillment.  With his tumescence securely ensconced, Morgan raised his head and opened his eyes.

"You're beautiful," he told her.  "Inside and out."  When she reddened and tried to turn away from his slightly lascivious smile, he laughed and kissed her nose.  "I didn't mean it that way.  Well, yes, I guess I did.  You
are
beautiful inside, like warm satin all wrapped around me.  But I also mean the Julie inside the body.  Here." He pressed his lips to the sun-gilded line along which her hair parted.  "And here."  Now they came to rest just above the shadowed valley between her breasts.

Holding him, she could not hold back the tears.  As though the love he offered her refused to dwell in a heart filled with pain and sadness, she let it all spew forth.

"Don't ever let me go," she wept.  "I love you so much, so very much."

It seemed to take hours to climb that torturous mountain again, yet they treasured every step.  Sometimes Julie moved with him, raising her hips when he would have come close to complete withdrawal.  Other times she let him pull away and then met his return with her own.  Like ballet dancers, they moved in perfect harmony, not always matching steps identically, but preserving the synchronicity.  Parting, meeting, circling, pausing, they built toward the swirl of the crescendo.

He plunged deeper because she drove him to it and gave back to him every ounce of wild pleasure.  He knew she was closer to this climax than he.  He would have let her slake her sexual thirst fully, undisturbed, but he could not, for by the time he felt the tightening that precedes release, he was too near his own to hold back.

The sudden convulsions wracked her whole body, not just the fevered center of her.  She cried out with the wondrous delight that seemed unending, as each of Morgan's final thrusts multiplied the ecstasy.  Just when it seemed she could bear no more, he reached the summit.  She felt then what she had not felt that first time, the explosion of his body within hers, the pumping of his seed into her womb.