He threw the sheet back and got out of bed. He was wearing boxers, and my heartbeat quickened when I saw the outline of his arousal through the thin material. I swallowed again, his beauty affecting me twice as much this time as it had the first time I saw him half-naked. This time … oh, this time, I was going to touch him and so much more.
If we see each other naked again, it won’t be a job, or an accident. It will be because we both want it, and because it means something.
Yes.
Oh yes.
He pressed me gently against the door with his hips and brought his hands to my face, kissing me as I melted into him, my body softening everywhere to mold to his hardness.
“We fit so perfectly, don’t we?” he murmured, and a rush of arousal raced through my blood at his words.
He kissed down my neck, feathering his lips over my skin, and I felt something in him that I hadn’t felt before: He was holding nothing back this time. There was no reservation in his touch, no doubt in his kiss. I had offered myself to him, and he meant to give all of himself as well.
He led me to the bed and came over me as I lay back. “You might have to show me how to do this. I’ve never done it before,” he whispered, a small smile on his lips and a hint of vulnerability in his eyes.
I brought a hand to his cheek. “I don’t think I’ve done this before, either. Not like this. Let’s just figure it out as we go.”
He gazed at me so seriously before he kissed me again.
We undressed each other slowly in the soft glow of the reading lamp. I didn’t feel a second of shame as his gaze moved over my naked body, and for a moment the lack of discomfort confused me. But then realization dawned: this was what it should feel like to be a woman. I’d never had any idea at all.
We touched and kissed with loving hands and open hearts, and I’d been right to think I’d never experienced anything like this before. It was tender and generous, and it was everything. Everything I’d never known.
I wanted to touch every part of him, to know his body the way I’d come to know his heart. To willingly explore a man for the first time, to keep my eyes wide open and my mind focused on the moment because there was nowhere else I’d rather be. I wanted to actually feel pleasure, to know the thrill of giving over complete trust to the person I was with.
I started at his feet, and he laughed softly as I ran my hands over his toes and up his calves. I smiled, too, not just because he had, but because I’d never known laughter and joy could be part of sex. Everything was new and wondrous, and I felt a wild sort of reverence in the discovery of my own passion. I could feel this, too. I’d never known. Oh, I’d never known.
Gabriel’s laughter turned into a moan as I continued up his thighs, kneading the muscles there, watching his face so I knew he was okay with my every touch, seeing him swell and harden and feeling the answering rush of wetness between my thighs.
I moved upward, running my hands over the warm hardness of his chest, across his broad shoulders, tracing a finger over the ridges of his stomach until he sucked in a breath and brought his lips to mine.
Gabriel turned me over and moved his hands over my skin as if I were a treasure he had just discovered—those beautiful artist’s hands that held within them the power to bring forth beauty from within. And that’s what I felt: beautiful, adored, loved.
He kissed and touched every part of me, and I had the faraway sense that he was mending me and I was mending him. We explored for what felt like hours, until I was slick and desperate, and the half-pained look on his face told me he felt the same.
When he pushed into my body, we both gasped, our eyes meeting in the dim light of the room, that same connection I’d first been so frightened of still there but now intensified a thousandfold.
I tried to focus only on his face, on the beautiful concentration in his expression, the way his eyes fell shut and his eyelashes formed dark crescents on his cheeks, the way his lips parted in pleasure. I tried to watch him as he rocked slowly at first, finding a rhythm and then increasing the pace, but my own swelling pleasure was so powerful, I was lost as it washed over me and through me, causing me to cry out Gabriel’s name again and again. I fisted the sheets and pressed my head back into the pillow.
“Yes, Eloise,” I heard him say. “Yes.” Right before he groaned and then shuddered, collapsing on top of me, his breath shallow against my neck, a gentle throbbing where we were still connected.
Lying there afterward in his arms, his fingers running lazily down my arm, I wanted to laugh with joy. I’d been right: Every part of his body held a place that felt as if it had been made just for mine.
Later as I stared at the ceiling, listening to Gabriel’s breathing grow deep and slow, I realized he had given me just what he said he would. His breath against my neck was a calming wind, his smile the sunshine, his touch was a thousand rainbows dancing on my skin, and I loved him so much I thought my heart would burst.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I will be a blanket of love warming you.
Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields
GABRIEL
I opened my eyes slowly, stretching my body as the night before came back to me in a sudden wave of sleepy elation; the way Ellie had come to me, the way my heart had soared to see her standing at my door, the words she’d spoken, the words I’d been waiting to hear. I want you.
Ellie was sitting on the side of the bed, staring at the light of dawn just peeking beneath the blinds. My eyes roamed the feminine lines of her smooth back, the way her waist dipped inward and flared out to the roundness of her hips, and I felt a soft throbbing again, despite having spent most of the night making love.
“Don’t go,” I said, my voice thick with sleep.
She turned, her eyes tender and vulnerable, her lips swollen with all the ways we’d used our mouths the night before. She looked soft; God, she looked so soft. And I’d been right—she was most beautiful in the first light of morning, and especially so after a night of being loved.
“The sun’s starting to rise,” she said quietly, bringing her hair back over her shoulder. “I don’t want you to miss it just because I’m here.”
I smiled. “Open the blinds. We can watch it from this bed as well as we can watch it from the patio.”
She glanced at the window and back at me and then stood, opening the shades to the view of the sunrise just peeking above the forest behind my house. The room was washed in a pale golden glow, and her naked skin seemed iridescent. She returned to me and slipped under the sheets and smiled as she opened her thighs beneath me, creating a perfect cradle for my hips. And she accepted me into her body again as the sunrise welcomed us to a brand-new day.
And I finally knew what it was like to love a woman: body, heart, and soul.
* * *
That weekend was spent exploring each other’s bodies and learning everything that brought pleasure to the other. I felt insatiable for her, both satisfied and yet constantly hungry. On Saturday, we didn’t leave the bed much except to eat and bathe, but on Sunday, we took a walk so Ellie could exercise her leg and feel the freedom and pleasure of walking without crutches slowing her down. She had a slight limp, but the doctor had said that would lessen in time.
We held hands as we strolled under a different covered bridge than the one we’d gone to the weekend before, and I pulled her to me where I leaned against the ancient rough wood and kissed her. She laughed and kissed me back, and it felt as if the whole world had stopped and it was only us within it.