Eden Burning (28 page)

After a few minutes of that unexpected, shimmering torture, Chase buried his hands in her long hair and slid down to capture her mouth with his own.

“Come here, Pele,” he said huskily. “Give me that sweet, teasing tongue.”

His words licked through her like fire, telling her that she had pleased him. She opened her lips eagerly, anticipating the hot instant when his tongue would thrust inside.

Aware that she was waiting for him, he held back, wanting her to wait, knowing it would be all the sweeter for the tiny disappointment.

“Chase, why—”

The question became a moan of satisfaction as she felt his tongue stab deeply, claiming her softness. It was a kiss unlike any she had ever known, taking everything, giving everything, calling to the untamed currents of fire swirling deep inside her.

She shivered as her whole body tightened in a wave of sensual response. Her hands clenched in his hair, holding him to her mouth. She kissed him as wildly as he was kissing her, arching up against him, trying to get closer to him and then closer still. She wanted him covering every bit of her.

His palms rubbed over the silk of her blouse, soothing and inciting her with the same long strokes. He circled but never touched her breasts while her breathing quickened, her eyelids fluttered down, and she twisted slowly beneath his touch. He saw her nipples hard against the silk and knew that they ached to be caressed.

His smile was a slash of white as he ran his hands over her face and shoulders and hips, her arms and her thighs and her belly, teasing her relentlessly, watching her body shimmer and twist as she sought the caress that always eluded her.

“Don’t you want to touch me?” she finally asked, her voice as ragged as her breathing.

The answer was a soft, broken laugh and his hands held in a pool of moonlight so that she could see their trembling.

“Then why?” she asked.

She gasped when his fingertips brushed over her silk-sheathed nipples and fire burst through her.

“That’s why,” he said. “And this.”

He captured a pouting nipple between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed not quite gently.

She gave a wild little cry and arched helplessly while pleasure stabbed through her in sharp, hot pulses.

He released her, only to brush his fingers teasingly over the hungry peaks again and again. He was rewarded by the fierce rise of her nipples beneath the black silk.

She made a breathless sound that could have been his name. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

His smile flashed in white contradiction before he caught the hard peak of one breast between his teeth.

The thin silk wasn’t a barrier. It heightened the sudden heat of his mouth on her aching breast and the wet velvet caress of his tongue. She gave up trying to breathe and simply held him to her breast. She needed the sweet, tugging warmth of his mouth more than she had ever needed anything.

When he turned his head away, she cried out in disappointment.

He pulled her mouth to his, drinking deeply, stilling her cry. She held him, twisted against him, and his fingers moved over her ankle-length skirt. Swift tugs, a slither of black silk, and the lavalava unwrapped to reveal the golden warmth of the woman beneath. Without freeing her mouth he undid each of the blouse’s tiny buttons. When he spread his hands apart, silk fell away, leaving her naked in the moonlight.

Her hands came up, shielding her breasts.

In an aching voice Chase said, “I won’t hurt you. Don’t you know that yet?”

“Oh, yes.” Nicole smiled. “I know. Remember?”

When he saw her almost shy, completely sexy smile, relief and a blinding desire swept though him.

“I remember,” he said huskily.

Slowly, gently, he traced the length of her body as he had while she was clothed, teasing her despite the fact that his hands were shaking. She didn’t know what that smile had done to him.

But she would.

“So you like to play,” he said, bending down until he could tease the fingers shielding her breasts.

She felt the warmth of his breath and the damp, resilient tip of his tongue. He outlined each finger as though he was memorizing its shape. He nibbled on her fingertips.

He made no attempt at all to slide his tongue between her fingers and touch the sensitive breast beneath.

When he began the same tender tracing of her other hand, she shivered and gave a soft sigh. His teeth tugged at her little finger in response. He pulled it into his mouth, sucked slowly, then released the sweet flesh with a reluctance that was another kind of caress.

Her hand loosened, offering the taut peak of her breast to his mouth. He made a deep sound of pleasure and accepted the gift. Her response was a shudder and a tiny cry that ripped through him. His mouth changed, less gentle now, more urgent.

“Yes,” she whispered as she twisted slowly against him, wanting more, not even knowing that she was describing aloud the need growing in her. “Harder. Yes, like that.
Yes.”

Her husky words and her nails flexing into the muscles of his back were like fire burning through him. He swept his palms beneath her shoulder blades and arched her body to meet his hungry mouth. With barely controlled force he suckled her, tugging and tasting and tugging again.

She clung to him, knowing nothing but the currents of fire pulsing through her, fire created by the man who held her imprisoned between his hands and his mouth, freeing her from years of sensual doubts.

After a long time his hands slid from her back to her hips. He kneaded her hungrily, deeply. She moved in unconscious response, seeking him. With languid, teasing strokes, he smoothed her full hips and curving thighs. His mouth followed his hands, biting gently down the length of her body until she shivered and called his name.

“Do you like that?” he asked, kissing the silky flesh of her inner thigh.

Her answer was a broken laugh followed by a gasp as his mouth moved higher, finding and caressing her with shocking intimacy. Instinctively her hands moved between their bodies, shielding her softness.

“Mmm, hide-and-seek,” he said, kissing her fingers. “I’m glad you like to play the same games I do, Pele.”

Nicole tried to speak, to explain that it wasn’t a game. The words backed up in her throat at the first caressing touch of his tongue between her fingers. He nuzzled and bit delicately on her fingers, silently proving how very gentle he could be. He kissed and tenderly touched, whispered her own beauty against her skin until shivers of need coursed through her, a helpless trembling that shouted the fires burning inside her, demanding release.

“Come to me, Pele.” Lips and teeth tugged at her fingers, teasing and reassuring. Hungry. “Dance for me.”

Long before her hands gave up the sensual contest, her hips were moving in slow, liquid rhythms. His hands caressed her in the same deep rhythms, urging her to release the hot currents seething inside her. He called to the passion he knew waited within her, seeking the bursting, incandescent moment of release.

Gently he nudged aside the last barrier, leaving her open to him. He heard his name as a trembling sound on her lips and breathed her own name back to her. He touched her with exquisite care, taking her to the edge and holding her there until she was shaking and crying his name with every breath she took. He lifted slowly, memorizing the picture of her totally yielded to him in the moonlight.

Then he bent down to her again, all teasing gone. Now, finally, he would know her. And she would know herself.

The feel of his caressing, searching mouth took the world away from Nicole. She tried to say his name, to ask what was happening to the body she thought she knew so well.

She couldn’t speak.

She couldn’t even breathe.

All the hot, fierce currents that had gathered in her burst free, tearing her body from her control. She burned wildly, deeply, and she burned for him, his name a broken cry on her lips as wave after wave of pleasure shattered her.

Chase gathered her against his body and held her until the sweet burning began to ebb, leaving her dazed and breathless within the strength of his arms. Finally she managed a full breath as her body slowly began to become her own once more. She held his face between her hands and blindly, softly, kissed him again and again, trying to tell him how beautiful it had been.

“I didn’t know—” she began, only to have her voice break on an unexpected aftershock of pleasure.

He smiled and kissed her gently, ignoring his own hunger surging violently against the lavalava he still wore. His skin was as hot as hers, as slick with sweat, and his breathing was as broken, but he didn’t seek his own release. He had promised himself that he would simply pleasure her and then let her go, taking no more from her than the knowledge that he had given her something to balance the agony of that morning at his brother’s house.

He knew that was a way of running, of protecting himself from making the kind of memories that would haunt him to the grave—sliding into her, joining them, completing them.

He didn’t know how he could walk away after that. He didn’t even know how to try.

“I’m glad it was good for you,” Chase said, his voice dark, deep. “Very, very glad.”

He smoothed back the thick, silky mass of her hair and kissed her forehead. Silently, slowly, he stroked her back, gentling her, bringing her wholly back to herself after her wild flight. When he felt the long sigh of her breath against his neck, he brushed his lips across her cheek and simply held her.

She made a rippling sound of contentment and nestled closer, savoring the peace of lying with him as much as she had savored the sweet violence of ecstasy sweeping through her. Both the fire and the peace were wholly unexpected, miraculous. She couldn’t absorb them fully enough.

For a long time they lay quietly in each other’s arms and watched the silver spirals of blossoms drifting down from the moonlit sky. The petals touched her hair, her cheek, the womanly curve of waist and hip. Fragile flowers settled on the tousled midnight of his hair, on the muscular swell of his shoulder, and brushed sweetly over the mat of hair on his chest.

Nicole fell asleep, giving herself to Chase in another, deeper way, trusting him with her sleeping body. He savored that gift to the last bittersweet drop.

It was time to release the velvet woman who had trusted him enough to drink both sweetness and fire from him.

“Wake up, butterfly,” he whispered. “It’s time for you to fly away.”

She slept on, wholly relaxed, utterly at peace.

He picked up her long lavalava and dressed her, wrapping her in black silk, trying to control the fine trembling of his hands as they inevitably brushed her warm flesh. Slowly he smoothed her unbuttoned blouse over her arms. So slowly. Too slowly.

But it was so tempting to hold on to the excuse to stay near her.

He told himself that he could dress her without caressing her. He was still telling himself that when his hand accidentally brushed across one breast. The nipple pouted up at him in instant response. Pulled against his will, he bent over and brushed the nipple just once with the tip of his tongue. Just once.

And then twice. Three times. Then his mouth opened over her, cherishing and tasting and loving her responsive flesh. Smiling, she half opened her eyes and yielded her body to him without hesitation.

Forcing himself to sit up and stop caressing her was the hardest thing Chase had ever done. He had to close his eyes, shutting out the vision of her proud nipple glistening from his mouth. With hands that trembled he began to button her blouse.

Her hands moved behind his, unbuttoning.

“Nicole,” he said, his voice gritty, “this is hard enough as it is.”

One of her hands smoothed up the length of his muscular thigh, sliding beneath the lavalava, finding and testing his hunger.

“Yes, it is hard, isn’t it?” she said. Her smile was as sultry and sweet and intimate as her hand cradling his rigid flesh.

Chase shuddered and made a sound deep in his throat. “Oh, God, butterfly,” he said hoarsely, capturing her hand. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t know that you liked to play keep-away, too.”

Deliberately she moved her fingers beneath his, pressing and rubbing over the hot male flesh.

He knew he should pull away, stand up, run, do anything but what he was doing—sweetly, hotly teaching her how to please him, guiding her hand beneath his until he was shaking and there was nothing left for her to learn.

“You once said we would fit together very well,” she whispered, pulling aside the folds of black silk that wrapped her hips. “You were right. Fit yourself to me, Chase. Slow and hard and deep. Deep most of all.”

The thought of it sent fire raking through him all over again. “You don’t have to, butterfly. It won’t be any better for you that way than it was with my mouth.”

She gave up trying to make him understand with words alone. Threading her fingers deeply into his hair, she tugged his head down toward hers.

In one last instant of self-preservation he pulled back.

Her surprised, hurt look defeated him. With a groan of surrender, he let her take his mouth while he slid his hand between her thighs to take the softness between her legs. His fingers moved slowly, finding and stroking the sultry heart of her desire until she came undone, melting over him.

Only then did he come completely to her, fitting his aching flesh slow and hard and deep inside her. The cry of pleasure she gave when he filled her was more exciting to him than her curious, caressing hand had been.

Suspended in an agony of pleasure, savoring every instant of her trembling beneath him, he held himself utterly still. When he could stand the sweet pain no longer, he began to move fully, deeply. He let her measure him again and again, felt her eager acceptance in her soft cries and in the satin flesh closing slickly around him.

She began to dance in slow counterpart to the man inside her, stroking him with every sinuous motion of her hips. He groaned as the sweet pressure of her around him shifted and changed, tugging at him, caressing every bit of him. He held on to the languid, deeply sensual dance for long, long moments, until the coil and shift of her body stripped away his control.

Then he came to her without reservation, moving powerfully, feeling his own violent tension echoed in her body. When he felt his own strength slamming into her, he tried to hold back, afraid of hurting her—and then it was too late to do anything but thrust into her while ecstasy exploded savagely through him, blinding him, shaking him to his soul.

Feeling his climax sent her over the edge, a long, spinning fall into pure fire. Her nails dug into the clenched muscles of his buttocks as she burned out of control, crying her wild pleasure against the rigid muscles of his neck, as blind and shaken as he was.

“You were wrong,” she managed finally, her voice ragged. “It was better this time. You were inside me.”

He groaned and held her even more tightly, more deeply, letting her heat and sweet, sultry flesh caress him. The feeling was so silky, so exquisite that for a moment he couldn’t even breathe. Never had a woman taken the world away from him. He couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t even think why he should fight it. He could only yield as she had yielded.

Completely.

She felt him change inside her, stretching her, filling her. Her breath caught and fire welled up again, consuming both of them.

The moon was setting before they could bring themselves to undo the sweet tangle of arms and legs and gently caressing hands. It was even longer before they slowly walked up the trail to her cottage. They shared a languid, slippery shower that ended abruptly when she discovered ways not only to please him but to drive him over the edge of his control.