Gabriel's Rapture by Reynard, Sylvain (reading comprehension books .TXT) 📕

the living room, he saw a dark head resting on the arm of an overstuffed chair next to the fireplace. In sleep, Julianne looked younger and very peaceful. Her skin was pale, but her cheeks and lips had a rosy hue. Gabriel would have loved to compose a poem about her mouth and resolved to do so. In fact, her appearance reminded him of Frederick Leighton’s Flaming June. She was clad only in an elegant ivory silk nightgown. One of the thin straps had fallen off her right shoulder, leaving the beautiful curve bare.

Gabriel couldn’t help himself as the pale, smooth skin called out to him. He kissed her shoulder and crouched near her head, floating a hand over her hair and petting her softly.

She stirred and opened her eyes, blinking twice before smiling at him.

Her slow, sweet smile set his heart aflame. He actually felt his breathing speed. He’d never felt this way about anyone before, and the depth of feeling she drew from him consistently surprised him.

“Hi,” he whispered, smoothing her hair away from her face. “Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

“I was worried when I reached for you and you weren’t there.”

“I came down to get a snack.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows knit together, and he rested his hand lightly on the top of her head. “Are you still hungry?”

“Not for food.”

“I haven’t seen this before.” He traced a finger across the neckline of her nightgown, skimming the tops of her breasts.

“I bought it for our first night together.”

“It’s beautiful. Why haven’t you worn it?”

“I’ve been wearing all those things you bought me in Florence. What did the clerk call them? Basques and body suits? Your taste in women’s lingerie is surprisingly old-fashioned, Professor Emerson. Next you’ll be buying me a corset.”

He chuckled and kissed her. “I’ll remember to look for one. You’re right, I tend to favor items that leave more to the imagination. It makes the unwrapping so much more enjoyable. But you’re equally lovely in everything and nothing.”

Julia reached over to touch his face and pulled him close for a deeper kiss. She dragged her lips across his jaw line until she was whispering in his ear. “Come to bed.”

She took his hand and led him past the kitchen table, exchanging a saucy smirk with him before walking upstairs. She moved him to sit on the edge of the canopied bed while she stood before him, pausing.

She pushed the straps of her nightgown over her shoulders. It pooled at her ankles, leaving her naked.

In the semi-darkness of the room, he drank in her tempting curves. “You are an argument for God’s existence,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Your face, your breasts, your beautiful back. St. Thomas Aquinas would have had to add you as his Sixth Way if he’d ever been blessed enough to see you. You must have been designed and not merely made.”

Julia lowered her eyes and blushed.

He smiled at her pink cheeks. “Am I making you shy?”

As if in answer, she took a step closer and pulled one of his hands so it cupped her breast.

He squeezed her softly. “Lie beside me and I’ll hold you.”

“I want you to love me.”

He divested himself of his boxer shorts and moved so she could join him. Still cupping her breast, he began to kiss her, gently tangling his tongue with hers.

“I breathe you,” he whispered. “You’re everything. You’re the air.” He teased her breasts with his fingers and planted gentle kisses down her neck, feathering up and down while she urged him on with confident fingers.

Julia pushed him to recline on his back and straddled his hips. He kissed between her breasts and took one of her nipples in his mouth as his hand glided across the surface of her skin, moving down to test her.

He released her breast in order to shake his head. “You aren’t ready.”

“But I want you.”

“I want you too. But I want to set your body on fire, first.”

Julia’s desire was countered by Gabriel’s commitment to see that each of their sexual encounters was pleasurable for both of them. He’d rather delay entrance and satisfaction until she was mad with want, rather than speed along before her body was sufficiently aroused.

When they finally came together, she looked down into open blue eyes, their noses only a whisper apart. She moved atop him painstakingly slowly, her eyes closing as she focused on the pleasurable sensation, before opening again. It was an intense connection. Dark blue, heavy with emotion, gazed up unblinkingly into wide chestnut. Every movement, every yearning was reflected between the couple’s eyes.

“I love you.” He nuzzled her with his nose as she gradually increased her pace.

“I love you too—” Her last word was interrupted by a low moan.

She reached down to catch his mouth as her movements sped. Their tongues explored one another, groans and confessions interrupting their connection. He touched her ribs and smoothed over her waist. He slipped his hands under the curve of her bottom so he could lift her slightly, increasing his leverage.

She’d become addicted to this, to him. She adored the way he looked at her in these intimate moments and the way in which the world fell out of focus around them. She longed to feel him loving her, moving inside her, for he always made her feel beautiful. She would have said that any orgasm was an extra gift in addition to the way she felt when they were conjoined.

Making love, like music or breathing or the tempo of one’s heartbeat, was based on a primordial rhythm. Gabriel had come to read her body and to know the pace that matched it, like a glove that fits a lady’s hand. It was the sort of knowledge that was at once personal and primary, the kind of knowledge King James’s translators had been referring to when they wrote of Adam knowing his wife. The mysterious sacred knowledge that a lover had for his beloved—knowledge that was perverted and maligned in less holier couplings. Knowledge that deserved a marriage in