Forbidden by Susan Johnson (good books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

their weights. Was he telepathic or was the inquiry so evident in her eyes… or did he recall previous experiences on his campaign chair? How many had preceded her on this chaise in what outland corners of the world, she wondered.

"Don't ask," he said before she did. "And kiss me now."

He kissed her first but she was more than willing; she had, since her abrupt leave-taking of the Duc at Adelaide's ball been consumed with curiosity and desire. And after much internal debate she was here and he was here and the sun was deliciously warm on her skin.

She came up for breath after that first fierce, staggering, intense, immoderate, artistically imaginative kiss that seeped downward like a luscious dream and, half-breathless still, said, "You're very good."

"I should be. But then," he added, smoothly suave and vaguely discontent, "so are you."

"Up against your experience," she breathed, her heavy lashes half lowered against the brilliant sun, "I shouldn't be. But then," she went on, her smile faintly challenging, "perhaps it's not a question of quantity."

"Why do I have this constant and overwhelming urge to beat you?" he growled, resting on his elbows, gazing down at her with his re-occurring scowl.

"Because you've been spoiled by too many simpering females who agree with your masculine view of women. What I offer you is mine to give—not yours to take. And yet, whenever I trespass on your prerogatives, you scowl. Now I hope what I'm about to say won't bring on a beating"—she was tempting him with a relentlessly provocative tilt of her chin and lifted brow�"but if you don't make love to me very soon, I'm going to beat you."

He reacted as she knew he would because he was degage by nature and practiced by circumstance, but she also saw the tiniest hesitation, that minute pause when he considered leaving her.

"Offered such a charming choice," he softly said instead, "I accept."

"Which?" she asked coquettishly and heatedly.

"Both," he pleasantly said.

He made love to her gently at first, kissing and caressing her, stroking each warm sun-washed portion of her anatomy until she wondered if all the extravagant stories recently revealed to her at Adelaide's were really true and he could indeed make unremitting love for days.

But she didn't want to wait to find out just this moment so she stopped the path of his hands with hers and said, "Please, Etienne…"

"And all the rest… darling?"

Her eyes were heated with desire, her small hands hot on his, the slow rhythm of her hips beneath him imploring. "It's been so long… could we postpone all… the rest for later?" she murmured, the exquisite need inside her flame-hot.

He only smiled, thinking she wasn't perhaps as venturesome as she'd implied. Since his youth he'd never experienced a long period of sexual abstinence. He chastised himself a moment later for being so unworldly that it pleased him she was not promiscuous.

He obliged her then, entering her slowly until he rested deep inside her, and the sigh drifting up to his ear was one of bliss. He began moving cautiously, not sure any longer of the degree of her proficiency—her words and actions so opposite�carefully monitoring the extent of her need and involvement.

Her hands almost immediately closed on his shoulders and seconds later slid down his back to draw him nearer. She felt like heated velvet and he too emitted a deep low sound of pleasure, their bodies fitting together as perfectly as he'd envisioned in the ardent fantasies enlivening his thoughts since their meeting. She was slender but not fragile, tall but not too tall, voluptuous in a healthy fresh way, distinct from the florid showy abundance of his usual lovers.

"You're too perfect," he whispered, sliding in again as if to test perfection, pleasure pouring through his senses like a cavalry charge over-running a retreat.

The rebuff was plain in his voice, however soft, and it charmed her to hear his artless protest. It charmed her more to know her own intense feelings were reciprocated. Although no unenlightened virgin, her experience was not vast, perhaps because until this moment she'd never felt this glowing tempestuous passion. Had she, she would have been inclined to seek it out again and again.

He dwarfed her although she wasn't a small woman; he was, under the stroking palms of her hands, strong and muscled and he felt in the heated interior of her body as though he were giving her ravishment and delight and fragrant palatable glimpses into unalloyed sensation. When he began to glide in each time, she found herself holding her breath so the concentration of dizzying feeling wouldn't be diminished, and each time when peaking splendor seemed milliseconds away, he withdrew and kissed her while she rubbed against him and ate at his mouth and pleaded with him to give her more.

He always did but with a discretion he understood to perfection until the intensity of her desire was wild and unbridled and profligate. And when her resplendent climax overcame her at last, she collapsed in his arms, melted around him, whispered unintelligible pleasure sounds which brought a satisfied smile to his lips.

Her lashes lifted after a time and he whispered, "Hello."

"Hmmm," she murmured, stretching and content, her gaze taking in the smiling perfection of his face. "Hello back, and thank you."

"You're entirely welcome, although I should be thanking you. You're delightful company on a warm spring day."

"I think I owe you…" Her eyes were still heavy-lidded with sensuousness.

"Not for long," he softly said, moving away from her, then, lifting her into his arms, slid upward on the chaise. Half reclining against the cushioned back, he turned her so she faced him and very slowly slid her down his rigid arousal.

Her eyes shut. For a rapturous moment it seemed as though only two people existed in the world, as though they had together found the enchanted land and if she breathed in only tiny little breaths, she wouldn't shatter to bits.

This can't be happening, he thought, this ripe, perfumed, impossible ecstasy. He