Her mind fragmented, senses spinning, then abruptly refocusing as he repeated the act.
Again, and again.
Suddenly nothing else mattered. Nothing beyond the heat racing through her, the flames consuming her. The conflagration built, and built. Although his lips remained on hers, his body shielding hers while he pandered to her needs, while he gave her one element of what she wished, some part of his mind watched, cataloged, and gave her the ability to do the same.
To override the distraction of her panting breaths, her fiery skin, her ever-tightening nerves, and view the exchange critically, and see what they each drew from it.
Pleasure. For her physical and sensual, for him the same but in a different way.
He knew what he was doing; never once did she doubt it. He didn’t rush, but drove her steadily up some peak of sensation, held her there so they could both savor the moment, then coolly, calmly, tipped her over the edge.
Into sensual abandon, a state where her senses disintegrated in rapture, leaving her floating on waves of delight and golden pleasure.
Jack let her slide into the glory of aftermath. He drew back from their kiss, lifted his head to watch. He studied her face—blissfully radiant, more than relaxed—and felt vindicated. They’d both wanted; they’d both got.
Enough, for now.
Momentarily disengaged, his mind wandered. He hadn’t foreseen this when he’d initiated their “celebration.” He’d been pursuing his well-thought-out agenda; he’d forgotten Boadicea would have an agenda of her own. Fortunately, their agendas had been highly compatible. When he’d steered her down to the stream, he hadn’t envisaged anything so explicit, hadn’t imagined that, together, mutually intent, they could by mutual consent dispense with the preliminaries and conjure…heat enough to cinder all sense, to make it near impossible to think.
That heat had risen and engulfed them, igniting desire, sending it searing down their veins, driving them on, demanding more, whipping their senses with a lash of expectation and the promise of estatic delight.
For them both, expectation and promise still beckoned, still waited, not patiently, in the wings.
Her lashes fluttered, rose to reveal eyes dark and lustrous with passion. Her hands, lax on his shoulders, firmed, gripped. She urged him back down to her, lifted her lips as he obliged, and kissed him.
With a wholly feminine confidence. Never had any invitation to intimacy been so explicit; he felt it to his bones, felt its potency slide through him. He fought to resist. Not here, not now.
She didn’t have the same reservations. She drew back just enough to whisper against his lips, “Come to me…now.”
The last word glided over his lips, distilled temptation. He felt himself literally harden, muscles growing rigid with the effort to hold back. He savored her lips, but kept his mental distance, then drew back and murmured, “Not here. Not now.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his, searched them. Then asked, “When then? And where?”
The simple, straightforward, oh-so-direct questions sent lust spiraling through him; no equivocation, no obfuscation, no falsity. She wanted him, and knew he wanted her. He shifted in a vain attempt to ease the ache in his loins. “Soon.” The tension in the word had a smile teasing her lips. He held her gaze for an instant, then suggested, “Tonight?”
She didn’t nod, but her eyes, her expression signaled her wholehearted agreement. “Where?”
That was harder. Concentrating was difficult. The warmth they’d generated wafted the perfume from her skin, from her gorgeous breasts, bared and still swollen, elementally tempting; it combined with the headier scent of the slickness he’d drawn forth, an even more evocative invitation to sink his body into hers. Hardly surprising he could barely focus.
“Hmm…” Reluctantly he withdrew his fingers from the heated haven between her thighs.
“Not the rectory, and not the manor either.” Helpfully she stated the obvious.
He couldn’t bring himself to lift back from her, from the promise she embodied. “The folly on the hill—is it still habitable?”
Her lips curved. “Yes. And yes, that will do very nicely.”
He studied her smile, tempted to ask why “very nicely,” but he’d learn the answer soon enough. “Tonight, at the folly, after dark.”
Her smile deepened. She held his gaze, her own mysterious and yet open and direct. After a moment, her gaze lowered to his lips. “Are you going to let me up?”
Her tone suggested she was in two minds about what answer she wanted.
So he gave her the answer they would both prefer. “Eventually.”
Then he bent his head and again set his lips to hers.
Twilight was fading from the sky, leaving it a deep indigo flecked with brilliant stars, when Clarice slipped out of the rectory. She paused on the porch to draw in a deep breath, to savor the sweet smell of night-blooming flowers, then calmly flicked her shawl about her shoulders and set off down the drive.