Vanessa realized belatedly that one measly lover could never have prepared her for a man like Johnathan de Lohr.
She swallowed hard.
He groaned low.
And then his hands were upon her, circling her ankles and prying her legs open so he could fit between them. Rough palms rasped up the smooth swell of her calves, lifting the hem of her skirts, tracing those otherworldly sparkles of sensation in their wake.
He bent to kiss her in strange places she’d never imagined so seductive. The delicate skin on the inside of her knee, for example, as his questing fingers inched up her thigh.
Aroused and overwhelmed, she reached for him, tugging at his shoulders, needing the safety of his weight again. Craving the comfort of his kiss.
He obliged with a silent look of tender understanding, his lips returning to hers, one arm bracing his weight as his other hand resumed its wicked discovery of her.
She clung to him, greedy for more of the sensation sweeping like wildfire from his lips. From his fingertips as they glided over the thin skin of her inner thigh.
How could she have thought she’d known desire before? Never had it been like this with William. He’d been all charm and coaxing, evoking a maidenly curiosity from her born of innocence and not a little insecurity. This encounter was nothing like the weightless little butterflies he’d set free with his artless caresses and quick fumbles in the dark.
This. This was a tempest as powerful and encompassing as the one raging outside. Her belly quivered, her limbs trembled, and her breath caught on little gasps of need that he took into his own lungs as if to lock parts of her inside of him.
His kiss was ferocious where his fingers were not. He dominated her mouth once more, his tongue flexing and exploring in decadent strokes reminiscent of the act itself.
Gentle fingers petted through the intimate hair at the apex of her parted thighs, finding abundant moisture there.
They gasped against each other’s mouths when he split the silken center of her with one lithe stroke.
Reflexively, her thighs clamped together, imprisoning his hand there.
William had struggled with her pleasure, had become frustrated with how complicated sensation had been to evoke from her body. He’d written about it. Told the world she was impossible to please.
That the fault had been hers.
And she’d believed him.
She understood now it was because she never wanted him like this. She never felt anything close to this unleashed frenzy of mindless, animalian need.
Sparks already threatened to take her over the edge as she realized that whatever miracle of magic and energy that made John corporeal also produced that strange, indescribable vibration wherever his skin connected with hers.
Against the sensitized flesh of her sex, it was an ultimately unparalleled sensation.
His finger slid easily between the slick ruffles, testing the damp folds and swirling her liquid desire around the little bud that throbbed with such fervency it bordered on pain.
“John,” she implored against his lips.
“So wet,” he groaned, his eyes unfocused as if he didn’t mark her plea.
“John, I’m already going to—”
“Yes,” he agreed fiercely. “Yes, you are.”
With a couple expert flicks of his finger, he blew her entire world apart.
Vanessa felt as if the storm outside now originated from somewhere within her. The climax whipped her this way and then that, pushing and pulling her in powerful gusts of pure extasy.
Hoarse cries were ripped away from her throat as she threw her head back into the mattress, whipping it from side to side as if to escape the overwhelming intensity of the pleasure.
He seemed to instinctively understand when it became too much, and he slowed his lithe ministrations, bringing her back to herself in slow increments.
She lay sprawled out for a moment as his hands remained beneath her skirts, soothing and petting her. Cupping her as he crooned soft encouragements into her ear, nuzzling her neck and exploring it in little nips before soothing them with a glide of his tongue.
Vanessa wasn’t certain what she expected from him, then. Perhaps that he would rip her clothing from her, spread her wide and sink inside of her for a few barbaric thrusts. Lord knew he’d earned it.
But no. He reclined away from her, covering her with her skirts.
His eyes glittered with masculine mischief as that cruel mouth spread into a dangerous Cheshire grin.
“What?” she queried with an anxious little gasp.
He gave her one dark command that both startled and stymied her.
“Kneel.”
It occurred to her to explain to him that she wasn’t one to be ordered about…as she obediently scrambled to her knees.
Yes. Just as soon as they finished, she’d certainly tell him so.
Curious anticipation dispelled whatever languor had stolen into her blood after her initial release, and she found that excitement began to build at this new and unique encounter.
In a moment he was behind her, fiddling with her skirts.
She had the idea that she knew where this was going, and the thought rather disappointed her. Not that she minded being taken from behind, especially not by him. She just didn’t think that their first time would be in such a position.
“Would you like—that is—should I bend down?” she ventured.
“Stay as you are until I move you.”
She did. Kneeling straight like a penitent at prayer as he rustled and disturbed the bed a bit.
And then his hands were on the insides of her thighs, prying her knees wider to make room for…
His shoulders?
Her eyes peeled wide as he maneuvered himself on his back beneath her skirts, his hands splaying her thighs wider, charting her bare backside as his breath grazed the intimate flesh splayed open over his face.
Her knees nearly lost their starch.
Thoroughly scandalized, Vanessa leaned to one side, meaning to wriggle away, when his long, unyielding arms clamped around her thighs.
Oh dear God. She blindly grabbed for anything, her fingers grasping the headboard.
“I—I don’t think we—”
“Don’t think for once, Vanessa,” is what she thought he muttered, though the words were a bit muffled by her skirts.
Clearly, he didn’t know her well. Which meant they should not be doing something so astoundingly intimate and immoral. “I just—”
He stole her words with one wicked kiss. One wicked, carnal, wet, and languorous kiss to lips that had never before known the mouth of a man.
Suddenly the entire world was very far away. Anything and anyone she’d ever known might never have existed. She was not herself. He was not a dead Earl. They were not in Scotland on a snowy winter night trapped by a gale and perhaps by fate.
There was only what his mouth did to her sex.
First, he supped and sampled in teasing little tucks and twirls, using only his lips, causing her body to respond with little flinching twitches as the pleasure ebbed and flowed beginning at her core and sparkling through her entire body. She’d have not been able to support herself in such a position if it weren’t for his arms winched around her thighs, taking the crux of her weight.
His tongue joined the fray before too long, eliciting a sharp gasp of delight from her as her knuckles tightened on the headboard. His mouth was relentlessly skilled as he slipped and slid around and through the petals of her flesh with inquisitive delight.