Heartbreaker (The Warriors) (12 page)

His innate sensuality and her own fragile emotions conspired against her. She reached up and grazed his cheek with her fingertips in a gentle caress. She sighed, then moaned as he lowered his head and found her lips again.

"Micah… " she whispered.

He trailed his fingers over her silk–covered nipples. She shuddered, falling silent and arching into his touch. He muttered an indistinct phrase before he kissed her once more. Bliss savored his taste as she would have the finest vintage wine. His tongue delved deeply into her mouth as he pushed aside the thin straps of her nightgown.

She felt the scarlet confection slide down her body and catch at her waist. Micah cupped her swollen breasts with such gentleness, she moaned. She held her breath until her lungs burned in protest. She willingly deepened their kiss, tangling her tongue with his in a sensual duel as he fondled her sensitive flesh.

Feeling feverish with needs too long denied, and emotions too raw and too intense to contain or even curtail, she clutched at Micah’s shoulders, the tempered strength of his body finally hers to experience, the heat of his skin hers to explore and taste at her leisure. The gloriously possessive feel of his hands curved over her breasts devastated what remained of her flagging resistance.

Awash in a tumult of sensation, Bliss whimpered softly. Micah took the sound into his mouth as he hugged her against his chest. She felt the tremors of need that ravaged his large frame and made his hands shake.

"Why me?" she asked when she could speak a few minutes later.

"Because I care about you, and I need you, and I think I’m fall—"

Panic flared inside her. "No, don’t say anything else." She didn’t want to hear him speak words he would surely regret later. She preferred the simplicity of honest need, shared need, and she half–convinced herself that such candor now would make their eventual parting easier for her.

Micah clasped her head between his hands, his long fingers tunneling into the thick black curls that capped her head and framed her face. "I’d give anything to be able to see you. I need to know what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling, and I’m certain your eyes would tell me if I could just look at you for a moment."

"This isn’t about being able to see, Micah."

"I almost believe you."

"If you trust me, and I think you do, then you can believe me."

He freed her and got to his feet, but he didn’t urge her to stand. He simply waited, one hand extended.

Bliss knew she could walk away. She realized that Micah’s sense of personal honor demanded that he give her the option, but she knew it was useless to question the wisdom of her actions. Right or wrong, and despite how she would feel once he left Rowland House, she intended to love Micah.

Bliss stood. Her nightgown slid past her hips and down her legs to pool at her feet. She slipped her hand into Micah’s, the strength of his grip as his fingers closed tightly over hers all the reassurance she needed at the moment.

"My bedroom?"

"Yes," she whispered.

Once they stood beside the bed in his dark bedroom, Micah drew her into his arms and held her. She felt him shudder when he came into contact with her bare skin.

"Tell me what you want from me, Bliss."

She circled his narrow waist with her arms, pressed her cheek to his chest, and listened to his hammering heart. The final barrier tumbled away, leaving her more emotionally exposed than she’d ever been in her life. "I just want you."

Leaning down, he trailed his lips along the fragrant curve that joined her neck and shoulder. Bliss felt a flare of desire burst inside her. A second detonation came on the heels of the first one, and then a third one rocked her. She trembled, her fingers pressing into the muscled flesh at the base of his spine as she stood in the circle of his arms. Stripped of all emotional barriers, she knew in that moment that nothing would ever be the same between them again.

Micah wanted to take her slowly and linger over her.

He wanted to handle her with finesse.

He wanted to be gentle and more thoughtful than he’d ever been with a woman in his entire life, but he knew in those first few seconds of holding Bliss in his arms that his need of her was too great.

He felt almost clumsy as he covered her breasts with his hands, even though she moaned beneath his encompassing touch. The richly seductive sound fueled his desire for her even more, and he sensed within himself a level of sensual volatility that threatened his control as a lover.

His sex surged against her belly, as if to mock him and all of the illusions he’d ever had about control. He kneaded her satiny breasts. Her puckering nipples nudged delicately against the centers of his palms. Micah shuddered, but he clamped down on his desire, determined to exercise restraint, to be the lover that she needed him to be.

He intended to arouse her until she was on the verge of coming apart in his arms, if only to prove to her that he deserved her passion and trust. She sabotaged his efforts almost instantly.

Pressing feverish kisses to his chest and throat, Bliss slowly trailed her fingertips over his narrow hips and then brought her hands forward. He tensed as she stroked his muscular, hair–roughened thighs with a touch that was erotic and fingernails that tantalized. Micah muttered her name, his voice husky and sensual, his body seething with sensations too diverse to name.

Bliss paused and lifted her face. He felt and heard the shaky gust of air that escaped her. It washed warmly against his throat just seconds before she laved the leading edge of his collarbone with provocative, catlike strokes of her tongue. Reaction ripped through him, splintering his nerves and coiling the muscles in his large body.

He drew her up and into his arms, mindful of his lack of vision as he carefully took the final step to his bed. Once he bumped against it, he lowered Bliss onto the center of the mattress. He heard her whisper his name as he shed his pajama bottoms and followed her down onto the bed.

As he straddled her hips, he felt her place her hands atop his thighs, but he caught them and lifted them away from his body before she touched him. He felt like a rocket about to explode, and he knew the slightest contact would set him off.

Leaning forward, he used a single fingertip to draw an invisible line from her navel to the valley between her breasts. He traced the line a second time, but with his parted lips this time, his breath hot and moist as he nipped at her fragrant skin. He felt her shivery response as he circled the undersides of each plump breast with the tip of his tongue.

Bliss murmured his name, making it sound ever so precious as it spilled past her lips. As he crouched over her, she curved her hands over his shoulders. Micah cupped her breasts, his hands possessive as he claimed her as his own. She trembled before she went absolutely still. Despite his lack of sight, Micah recognized the tension–filled expectation that prompts a woman to hold her breath when she makes love with a man for the first time because she isn’t completely certain of his intentions.

He stroked her with tenderness, determined to alleviate her anxiousness despite the desire that raged within him and made his fingers shake. Capturing one taut nipple between his teeth, Micah flicked his tongue back and forth across it, while simultaneously kneading her other breast. He tasted her, and he gloried in the salty–sweet flavor of her skin. Drawing her deeply into his mouth, he tortured and seduced her with his erotic suckling until she cried out her pleasure and bucked restlessly beneath him.

He taunted himself with vivid images of what it would be like once he buried his aching flesh inside of her, just as he taunted her with sensation after sensation until her skin turned hot and damp. And as she murmured indecipherable words of encouragement, he managed to forget for a brief time the fact that he couldn’t see her.

Micah’s confidence soared as he savored her sounds of pleasure and the press of her fingers as she clutched at his shoulders. Shifting to her other breast, he began anew. Bliss responded as though she’d been struck by lightning. Her body quivered beneath his hands and mouth, and her back arched as she eagerly offered herself to him.

Her reaction, which seemed to embody an almost innocent sense of discovery and delight, fanned the flames of Micah’s desire. Holding her made him feel as though he’d embraced an inferno. He worshipped her body, expressing physically the complex emotions cascading through him.

She chanted his name over and over again, until it sounded like a mantra. He felt his body repeatedly tighten into itself as one violent rush of desire after another pummeled his senses. His inner tension mounted, threatening to overcome him, and his blood felt like a river of flame as it recklessly surged through his veins.

Micah finally paused. His breathing sounded labored as he dragged air into his lungs and then forced it out again. Fighting for control, he lowered his forehead to her breasts. A heartbeat later, he felt the sweep of Bliss’s fingertips as she stroked his nape.

Cupping his face between her hands, she urged him to lift his head with the slightest pressure of her palms. "You’re fighting yourself, Micah. I can feel it. Trust what’s happening between us. You don’t have to be cautious with me."

He stopped breathing for a moment. His body stiffened, and his expression filled with wariness. He wondered if Bliss sensed his shock.

If she did, she ignored it. "The room is dark. You wouldn’t be able to see me even if your eyes weren’t bandaged. I meant what I said before. This isn’t about seeing. It’s about feeling, and you make me feel… " Her breath caught. She swallowed convulsively. "My God, you make me feel so much more than I’ve ever felt before."

"Do you have any idea what you do to me when I touch you?" Micah asked, his voice vulnerable, raw, and riddled with desire.

Instead of answering his question, she slipped her hands between their bodies and moved them slowly down the muscular length of his washboard–flat abdomen. She hesitated briefly when she reached his groin, and then she sank her fingers into the thatch of dense golden hair that surrounded his jutting sex.

Micah tensed, anticipating her next move. Her touch gentle but very deliberate, Bliss closed her hands around the thick, pulsing strength of his arousal. A tremor of shock rocked him body and soul, enflaming him to a wildly primitive sense of urgency.

She whispered, "I can feel exactly what I do to you."

He groaned. The sound that escaped him was part humor at her unexpected boldness and part regret that he’d allowed his uncertainty to taint their intimacy. "I didn’t want to rush you."

She laughed softly, shakily. "You couldn’t. I’ve wanted this from the beginning, even though I wasn’t about to admit it. Your ego doesn’t need any nourishment."

Bliss stroked him intimately, as if to emphasize her sincerity. Micah surged within her hands, and then he groaned with disbelief. She was such a unique combination of seduction, innocence, and honesty, she stole away his breath and his wits each time she touched him.

"See me with your heart, Micah. No man should ever look at a woman in any other way when he makes love to her."

Voice hoarse, he confessed, "Whenever I think you’ve run out of surprises, you manage to come up with another one."

"I may be a little nervous and less experienced than the other women you’ve known, but I’m not less eager."

He tenderly cupped her face and sampled the flavors and textures of her mouth as he moved over her, his heart nearly bursting with the emotions she evoked. He tasted and felt something even more profound as she returned his passion.

She was, he’d already concluded, a complex woman who trusted her instincts even as she allowed her heart to guide her through uncharted emotional terrain. By making herself vulnerable to intimacy and allowing herself to respond to his needs, she was also, he sensed, making a statement about the feelings she harbored for him. Humbled by her emotional candor, he realized, not for the first time, that she was a woman who deserved to be cherished.

Lifting her arms, Bliss drew him even closer. Micah’s thoughts scattered. His confidence flourished even as his body thrummed with heightened desire. He kept their hungry mouths fused as he leaned over her, using his arms to brace the weight of his upper torso as he aligned their bodies.

Bliss parted her thighs, her responsiveness nearly as shattering in its simplicity as her breathlessly whispered, "Yes, Micah."

As he settled atop her, Micah’s lean, hard body rippled with escalating tension. He felt stretched to the limit of his endurance as he absorbed the lush beauty of her taut–nippled breasts, the sleek contours of her firm belly, the cradling welcome of her upper thighs, and the silken smoothness of her skin as she circled his hips with her slender legs. She moved against him, the subtle uptilt of her pelvis devastating and utterly seductive.

"Come inside of me," she invited as she alternated between nuzzling his neck and bestowing biting little kisses to his flesh. After skimming her fingertips up and down his muscular back, Bliss curved her hands over his narrow hips and urged him even nearer. "Feel for yourself what you’ve done to me, Micah. Feel
me
, and forget everything else."

He inhaled sharply, her invitation more arousing than any seduction he’d ever experienced. He shifted his hips, his straining sex poised at the entrance of her sultry body. Lowering his head, he reclaimed her mouth. He kissed her, a hard, hot, and thoroughly intrusive kiss that matched the thrusting force of his hard, thick length as he surged into the heat and heart of her passion.

Bliss cried out, the sound replete with relief and pleasure and shock as he buried his throbbing sex to the hilt. One shudder after another racked Micah’s frame. Every instinct he possessed urged him to immediately drive them both into the arms of sensual oblivion. But his size and the extent of his arousal prompted him to still his movements.

He knew Bliss needed time to adjust to the depth of his penetration. Slick, hot, and tighter than any woman he’d ever known, she felt almost like a virgin. He thanked God that she wasn’t, because he doubted that he had the patience to treat her as one.