One Night of Sin (10 page)

She was lost and drowning in the deep blue ocean of his eyes, and it was wonderful. Any threat from Mikhail seemed naught but a bad dream. She had gone to the Blessed Isles with Alec.

She may have begun this night with calculation, but now there was only the honeyed sweetness of his gaze and the fierce primal need he had awakened in her.

This moment might be her last chance to change her mind, but his powers of persuasion were too great for her to withstand.

It was all over when he started kissing her earlobe, whispering to her. “You’re so different, Becky. So beautiful. So soft.” His fingers still flirted with her nipple while his other hand cupped her head, his thumb caressing her jugular.

With his mouth’s warm caress at her ear, she closed her eyes and bent her head, kissing his broad shoulder. His skin was bronzed velveteen beneath her lips. When she tasted him with the tip of her tongue, he quivered. She grew intoxicated by her power to make him respond to her touch in the same way that she responded to his. Aye, whatever mysteries lay in store for her in that other room, she wanted her initiation to be with him.

And she wanted it now.

She slid her palms slowly up his muscled biceps to his shoulders, then wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close. “Make love to me, Alec,” she breathed.

He stood up, lifting her with him. She clung to him, her hands locked behind his neck. He made her feel so feminine, carrying her into his bedchamber as if she weighed no more than a feather. She just stared at him, half besotted; she left her last maidenly doubts by the door. He walked across his chamber toward the magnificent alcove. Becky could feel the invisible draw of the ornate towering bed behind her, like another presence in the room, as if the carved cupids round the gilded dome were watching. The mirrors reflected the three candles that burned there, bathing the velvet-draped alcove in a wash of flickering light.

“Nervous?” he asked softly, nuzzling her nose with his own.

“N-No.”

“Liar,” he whispered. “It’s all right. You won’t regret it.”

“I know.”

He set her down on her feet at the bottom of the mahogany bed-steps. Her heart pounding, Becky turned slowly to study their opulent playground for the night.

Alec touched her chest, slipping the silk dressing gown off her left shoulder. She blushed in lingering modesty, not wanting to part from it quite yet, not that it hid much now, with the cloth belt undone. The robe hung open, but her arms were still threaded through the capacious sleeves; the garment half flowed off her, loosely garlanded through the crooks of her elbows to drape behind her like an elegant India shawl.

This pleased Alec, judging by the lustrous glow in his eyes.

“You are an exquisite woman,” he whispered hoarsely. He lifted her hand from her side and kissed her knuckles, then escorted her slowly up the bed-steps.

Becky hesitated at the top step and turned to gaze at him uncertainly.

His stare was gravely worshipful. No man had ever looked at her that way. She bit her lip and put her resistance aside for once and for all. There would never be another night like this, she knew. The future was dark, but come what may, this honeyed memory would be her secret, her own delicious indiscretion.

Her heart beat faster as she crawled toward the headboard and then sat in the middle of the vast mattress, bracing her hands behind her. It was very cozy under the bed’s sweeping draperies. She glanced up at the underside of the dome and found it whimsically painted with blue sky and puffy white clouds. How very
Alec,
she thought, looking at him again with a lazy smile.

Her position afforded her a breathtaking view as her sun god came walking up the bed-steps with an air of predatory languor. He went down on his knees at the foot of the mattress and stared at her as he approached on all fours.

Anticipation gave her such a tremor that she suddenly was glad he wore those loose linen trousers. She was still quite intimidated by that part of him that she had first encountered full-on in his dressing room.

His knowing half smile soothed her fears.

“Trust me,” he whispered as he moved atop her, his advance coaxing her onto her back. Her heart pounding, she lay back slowly under him, resting against the satin bolsters of the headboard.

Alec reclined on his side, partly atop her. Below the waist, all of him was pressed firmly against her body. Distant piano music and the light beating drum of rain on the window glass infused the charged silence in the alcove. Propping his elbow on the bolster by her head, Alec rested his cheek in his left hand; his right went exploring.

When he touched her, an indecent wave of relief rushed through her. She luxuriated in his caresses. Closing her eyes, she drew in her breath and dropped her head back, reveling in the gentle warmth of his hands and the coolness of the rain-scented air against her bare skin. She could not bear for him to stop.

His hand glided over her body until she was quivering. His mouth followed, first at her throat, her pulse hammering in the artery beneath his lips. He became more aggressive, claiming her neck in a deep, open-mouthed kiss, all but biting her. She surrendered completely to him in climbing ecstasy.

“Take this off.” His order was taut, rugged. He pulled at one sleeve of the dressing gown. She was quick to obey, sliding her arm out of it and letting the luxurious garment whisper down onto the mattress behind her in a pool of blue silk.

Alec’s fiery stare devoured her nakedness. “God, Becky,” he ground out. “You are . . . just what I’ve needed so badly, so long.”

“Am I?” she breathed.

He nodded with a wicked glance, and moved atop her. Becky abandoned herself to kissing him, savoring that gorgeous mouth, but he left her lips after a moment, moving lower. Much lower.

Not an inch of her body did he leave unexplored—the delicate skin in the fold of her elbow, the little notch at the base of her throat, the bend of her knee, the gentle slope of her foot, the soft curves of her inner thighs, and her breasts, which seemed designed for his cupped palm. He studied and learned every curve with an intimate mastery.

Her pulse was pounding, her back arching under his touch; she drew in her breath in delight when he laid his middle fingertip on the hardened jewel of her womanly center. She had not known that this was what she needed until he stroked her.

“So wet for me,” he whispered, sliding his fingers inside her. She moaned in sweet anguish, bringing her hands up to her breasts as he pleasured her. “May I?” he asked huskily. She gasped his name in helpless hunger. Her chest heaved as he lowered his head, her nipples swelling eagerly as his lips approached, but rogue that he was, he played with her a bit, driving her mad. He blew gently on each turgid crest before he gave her the relief of his warm, hungry mouth.

She ran her fingers through his golden hair while he suckled hard, his hand stroking deeply between her thighs.
“Oh, Alec, Alec.”
She gripped his broad shoulders and tipped her head back in delight as he flicked little rings around her nipple with the tip of his tongue.

“You had better not come yet,” he warned in a velvet murmur, denying her his hand as he moved up to kiss her neck.

She wasn’t sure what that signified, but she was happy to let the man do to her whatever he fancied. If this was ruin, she had no use for respectability.

Alec eased down onto her, settling heavily between her thighs. She trembled with yearning as she clung to him, moaning a little at the depth and urgency of his kiss. Her hips rose with a shocking will of their own, caressing his giant hardness through the single layer of his clothing. He groaned with pleasure at that, and so she did it again, and he responded with a wild kiss, gently grasping her nape beneath the soft mass of her hair.

He drove his pelvis hungrily against hers as their tongues mated, their kiss ever deepening. She smoothed his silky forelock, which fell forward in his eyes, all the while intoxicated by the kid-leather softness of his supple, muscular chest against her. The hands with which she touched him, the body she pressed against him, every inch of her exalted with heightened sensitivity.

“Lie back for me, Becky.” Quivering like a lusty stallion, he nuzzled her fevered brow. “I want you now. I need to be inside you.”

She pulled back a small space and looked into his eyes. In the candlelight, they had darkened to the brooding blue of sapphire seas. She knew the time had come.

“You will be gentle with me, Alec?” she whispered, petting his hair.

“Of course I will, sweeting. Of course I will.” He cupped her face in his hand, the pad of his thumb caressing the corner of her mouth, as he offered another kiss of drugging depth and patient solicitude.

As his kiss eased her worries, he laid her back slowly on the bed, staring into her eyes. The blue robe was still unfurled beneath her.

She had one final chance to change her mind when he reached over to fetch something from a trifle-box on the candle stand, but perhaps, at heart, she was as much a gambler as he, for she let the moment come and go without regret.

“What are you doing with that?” she whispered as he fitted a thin, filmy sheath of some sort over his towering erection.

“Making sure we’re both protected, my love,” he said softly, and tied the ribbon at its base with shaking hands.

“Oh,” she murmured, though she did not understand. The man obviously knew what he was doing. In any case, the question fled her mind when he lay slowly between her legs.

She had never been so acutely aware of every inch of her own skin, and certainly was wildly aware of every inch of him. There was only sensation and sweetness and his mesmerizing blue eyes, his gaze that reached deep into her soul. His lashes swept downward; he lowered his head, his soft lips nuzzling her shoulder. She slid her arms around him with a small, impatient sigh.

He took her face between his hands and gave her slow intoxicating kisses. These deepened, his tongue delving into her mouth until she was in rapture, her whole body filled with an eager uncontrollable trembling to have him inside her.

He reached down, his searching fingers assuring her body’s readiness. Becky held her breath, her heart slamming in her chest. He rested his fingertip lightly on her pleasure center as he pressed into her, claiming her, inch by throbbing inch. “Oh, sweeting,” he moaned, though he barely had half of it in yet. “Is that gentle enough?”

Her only answer was a soft, amazed groan. She ran her hands down his velvety sides, enthralled by each flowing ridge of powerful male muscle.

“Are you ready for more?”

“Yes,” she panted.

“Do you want all of me now?”

“Alec,” she wrenched out. His hand glided all the way up her body, up her belly, chest, and throat, until he captured her chin very gently.

“Open deeper for me, sweeting. Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. I need you to take it all. Oh, Becky, I’m dying for you.” She obeyed, relaxing inwardly as best she could, accepting his fevered kisses while he slid closer, penetrating her with a ragged groan. “Becky.” She gasped at a small burst of pain within as they were irrevocably joined. He remained still, buried to the hilt within her.

His fiery lips lingered at her brow. “Take your time, sweet,” he soothed in a hoarse whisper. “We’ve got all night if you want it.” He glanced down at her, propping his elbows on either side of her head. He caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Are you all right?”

She nodded with a hard swallow, her world spinning, her pain dissolving fast. Her reeling senses made the cupids seem to swirl around the dome above his bed; from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Alec’s reflection in the mirrors by the bed, the full length of him atop her, the beautiful sweeping line of his bare back. She closed her eyes while he nuzzled her cheek and stroked her breasts, rousing her anew.

When she sought his lips again, he understood she wanted more. He obliged her smoothly and at once, rising up on muscled arms above her to give himself with slow, deep strokes full of leashed male power and tenderness.

His hips rode urgently between her thighs, every inch of contact blissful as their bodies moved in a full-length caress from the soles of her feet on his muscled calves, to her hands gliding up and down his rib cage, to the heated rhythm of his chest and belly rocking against hers, and the deep, hot moistness of his tongue in her mouth. He possessed her completely in that moment, claimed her.

He groaned against her lips as she raked her nails slowly down his back and grasped his lean buttocks.

“Becky, you’re driving me wild.” He cupped the back of her thigh and raised her body slightly, sighing with pleasure as this brought him deeper into her body.

“Alec, slower,” she begged him, exploring this whole new sensation of deep delight.

“Better?”

“Yes, oh . . .”

“And this?” Several minutes later he arched back, leaving just enough space between their bodies to slip his hand down between them. He touched her center with a feather-light contact, using the pad of his thumb.

If he would have moved, she’d have screamed, on the precipice between mindless pleasure and pain, but Alec was much too splendid a lover for that. His patient stillness allowed her to set her own pace, rising against his delicate touch and sinking again on his big wonderful cock.

“Good?”

“Yes.”
She slid her arms around his neck, pulling him closer.

“I meant it when I said that you could stay with me,” he whispered, lipping her nose and then the curve of her brow. “Come into my keeping.”

Becky went still; he remained inside her.

“I mean it. I’m not as rich as Draxinger, but at least I’m not as rude as Rush.”

She laughed breathlessly at his murmured jest, which in turn roused a sharp gasp of pleasure from him, as laughter made her body clench him more tightly within her.

“Oh, God, Becky,” he said dizzily. “You—do things to me. I can’t explain it.”

“Good things?”

“Very good. Wonderful things,” he answered barely audibly as he lowered his head and kissed her with renewed intent.