His hand swept up between them, unable to resist cupping her breast for another heartbeat. He felt the callused hardness of his palm abrading that petal-soft skin, the crown of her nipple pressing against the base of his thumb. But the sound that tore from Juliet's throat was one of pleasure, not of discomfort.
She arched her head back, her eyes sliding shut, her cheeks scarlet, breath erratic, and Adam kissed her throat, her collarbone, then sank to one knee so that his mouth could ghost a kiss across the point of that tempting nipple.
If he doubted her responsiveness to him, she obliterated his fears in that instant. "Feels like... fire, flowing all through me, Adam. I didn't know... anyone could feel this way."
"Let me show you. It can be even better." Adam swept her into his arms, laid her down amid the mound of cushions. His last vision of her was her wide wondering eyes as he rooted for her nipple, suckled it deep into his mouth.
A low cry echoed through the tiny room as he drew on her sweetness, drank of her trust. His fingers stroked the faint ridges of her ribs, skimmed the velvety column of her thighs, and a tremor rocked him to his core as he found the soft down of her feminine secrets.
She was warm and dewy with wanting, but she squeezed her legs together for an instant of maidenly hesitation before she surrendered to his touch, letting her thighs open to his questing hand.
"You're so beautiful, lady. An angel after all this time. Scares the living hell out of me to... have these feelings raging inside me."
"Oh, Adam." She arched up to kiss his naked chest, her tongue making a kittenish sweep along his breastbone. "It felt so—so good when you put your mouth on my breast. I want to make you feel... that way, too."
"I feel the same sensations of pleasure as you, angel. The same need to be touched, kissed, not just on the mouth, but other places. If you want to." Adam threaded his hand in her fine hair and drew her mouth toward his chest.
A groan rumbled in his depths as she explored him with delicious experimentation, nuzzling and nipping, kissing and tasting, burrowing her soft cheeks against the hard sheath of muscle until he was gasping with the need to bury himself inside her.
As she worked her shy magic on him, Adam skimmed his palm over the taut curve of her buttocks. She mimicked him with delightful eagerness, but when she encountered the tight fabric of his breeches, he could hear a muffled sound of frustration emanate from her.
"Is this the way it's done?" she asked, a trifle petulant, and he could see the fiery heat in her cheeks. "I mean, the gentleman leaving his—his clothes on. I mean, some of his clothes on, while the lady—"
"It can be done this way, just loosening the flap—" Adam felt like he wanted to sink into the floorboards with embarrassment. "It's not as... as enjoyable. But I didn't want to alarm you by..." Letting you see what a great hulking beast I am, making you afraid once you saw the size of me and realized what I was going to do to you...
Blast, what was the matter with him? He'd made love to women of all shapes and sizes, some nearly as small as Juliet. Yet none of them had been virgins whose maidenhead must be breached.
"Juliet, you're so—so delicate, and I'm... bloody hell, look at me." Unable to bring himself to the far more carnal comparison that was giving him such qualms, Adam flattened her palm against his own large hand, the callused fingers all but engulfing hers, seeming like thick tree trunks contrasted against the fronds of a willow. "I will hurt you when first we... mate. And as God is my witness, I'd rather open every scar on my body than cause you any pain."
"I trust you, Adam. I want to be as close to you as I can be. When you were touching me... down there, it felt like liquid sunshine, bursting in every part of my body, felt like I was flying. But I wanted more. So much more. Don't be afraid to show me everything, give me every part of you."
From the first moment he'd met her, she'd surprised him. Tonight was no different. She offered him a shy smile, then her fingertips quested for the buttons straining against the flap that imprisoned him.
The exquisite pleasure Adam felt in her efforts to release his shaft were tempered with a very real fear that she would be repulsed. She was an innocent. A virgin. And he'd given seasoned courtesans momentary cause for indecision. He closed his eyes, unable to face her as he felt the last button give way. She gasped, and Adam winced, but then he felt the warmth of her hand cupping him, stroking him with a delicious sense of discovery.
He tried to fight back the surge of arousal, but it was as if her touch filled him to bursting, until it seemed the sensitive skin was drawn so tight it might split.
He stroked her hair, kissed her lips, her breasts, trying desperately to master the primal beast inside him, trying to remember to be gentle.
Gentleness—what was it? He'd been born of warrior blood, conceived by his father in outright rebellion. He'd spent a lifetime hardening his muscles with war-play, his only dalliances with women as earthy and honest in seizing their pleasures as he was.
He'd learned to take, and delighted as his partners took from him. But Juliet was different. She gave of herself with such generosity, offered the most vulnerable parts of her heart with such courage, trusted him with such a valiant spirit. Never had he wanted to be the ardent lover a woman dreamed of more than he did at this moment. But he was soldier enough to know when defeat was inevitable. He would fail Juliet, no matter how he tried to be gentle tonight.
For there was no way a man of his size could possess a virgin as delicately as she deserved, as tenderly as he wanted to. The best Adam could do for her was to make certain that she was deep in her own pleasure before he took her.
But there would be other nights with Juliet in his arms, he promised himself. A lifetime of them if he had the courage. Nights in which she could school him in tenderness one melting caress at a time, tame the wild places inside him.
His fingers found her damp center, stroked there, teased there, until she was restless and gasping. Juliet writhed against the cushion, sobs rising in her chest, yet she yielded everything to him, entrusted him with every curve and hollow and hidden place that tempted him.
"Adam... oh, sweet heaven..." she whimpered, as sensation spiraled outward from his fingertips, tightening her womb, cinching in exquisite bliss about the nipples he had cherished with his mouth, his tongue.
She was drowning in him, wanton with need, yet it seemed not sin, but rather, redemption to immerse herself in his arms. She arched against his hand as one finger slipped inside her, his thumb still stirring the ember hidden in her secret curls. That first penetration was so strange, yet wildly sensual, wringing from her a desire to draw him deeper. As if he could read the slightest whim in her mind, Adam gratified that wish, exploring her with so much tenderness and passion that it drew wild tremors from her body.
And as the maelstrom of pleasure burst inside her, whirling her to a glittering cascade of sensation, the image of Adam's face was branded into her heart—savage ecstasy, fierce possession, and yet a vulnerability she knew instinctively no other eyes had ever seen.
A low scream tore from her throat as another crest washed over her, more intense than the last—born of his touch? Or rather, something far more devastatingly sensual—the expression on his rugged beloved face? She never knew for certain.
His hands curved beneath her knees, spreading her thighs wider, opening her completely so he could position himself between them.
His eyes, those fierce warrior's eyes, darkened to Stygian black with emotion as that part of him that made him a man first brushed the portal to her body.
"I'm going to become a part of you now," he rasped. "As if we're sword and scabbard." Just the description made her dizzy with need. Was it possible to feel this way and survive?
"Are you afraid?" he asked, gruff.
She reached up fingers that trembled. "If I had been, I never would have come to find you in the garden."
His splayed hands bracketed her hips, and she felt his powerful body flex, a pinching, stretching s
ensation disrupting the waves of pleasure still resonating through her body.
She tensed. "It won't... won't fit. I..."
He muffled a low curse against her breast as he hesitated, some unwelcome barrier blocking the entry to her body, and she squirmed against him, hating the discomfort, loving the feel of him, reaching for something she didn't fully understand.
"Sh, angel. It's all right," he murmured, starting to draw away. Oddly, losing his touch was far more painful.
But he'd warned her of pain, promised her pleasure, and she would have suffered far worse to give this wounded warrior, this wary vulnerable man a measure of the joy he'd offered her.
She looped her arms tight around him, pressed herself up until she felt the feverish heat of him again, telling him what she was too shy to say.
His hips thrust down, swift, sure, pain cleaving through her as the tender membrane of her innocence tore. She bit her lip until it bled, not wanting him to know how badly he'd hurt her, for despite the pain, the feel of him, so heavy, so hot, embedded in her body filled her with wonder, a sense of completion that seemed to reach into her very soul.
"Are you... all right?" Adam asked, kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, his voice rough with tenderness and regret.
She nodded, opened her eyes to look into his. As if he were afraid she would shatter, he moved his hips carefully, withdrawing just a little, then pressing into her again with shallow strokes that barely probed past the torn barrier.
Sweat trickled down the rigid muscles of his face, his countenance fierce with concentration, and she could sense how hard he was fighting to hold himself back, feel what it was costing him to do so—the largest measure of his own pleasure.
Much as his efforts touched her, she'd had a lifetime of being treated like a treasured bit of porcelain. She wanted Adam—all of Adam, wanted him to take all the joy he could in her woman's body.
Her fingers skimmed down to his granite-hard buttocks, and she rose up to meet his thrust, nudging him a little deeper into her sheath. His arms shook, a tortured groan grinding from his lips.
"Ah, Juliet. Have to be... careful... can't be... selfish son of a bitch—"
"Selfish how?"
"Want you to take... all of me... bury myself to the hilt. But refuse to... hurt you."
"Try, Adam. Just try. I want everything, all of you. Please."
A tremor worked through his massive frame, and Juliet wondered at her power over this man, that she could make him tremble and moan and bring such savage longing into his eyes.
His hands tightened around her hips, and he drove a little deeper, thrust a little harder, his gaze never leaving her face, as if searching for the slightest hint of more pain. Juliet arched against him, teasing him, taunting him, pleading for him.
Driven by instinct alone, she reached up to catch his flat nipple gently in her teeth. A raw cry filled the tiny chamber, a surrender, a savage sound of triumph, and Adam buried himself deep.
She had wanted to feel the full power of Adam Slade's loving, the full potency of his warrior's body. He gave it to her, yet offered her the key to more secrets in her own. He suckled and nipped, nuzzled and kissed, devoured her with the power of his passion. His hand slipped between their bodies as he thrust into her, finding the pearl of sensation, drawing it to the agonizing blade's edge of pleasure once again.
She sobbed and pleaded, took what Adam offered and gave all of herself in return, reaching greedily for a pleasure beyond even the abundance he'd given her earlier.
And as Adam drove into her fiercely once more, twice, a cataclysm of sensation ripped through her, opening a hundred fissures of pure ecstasy in every part of her, pouring all of her being into this man's keeping.
She gloried in his primal roar of triumph as he buried himself to the mouth of her womb, tremors racking him as he spilled his seed inside her.
Silence—it fell between them, broken only by the harsh rasp of their breath, the pounding of their own hearts in their ears.
With the greatest of care, Adam rolled to one side, drawing her close in arms that still trembled. Now was the time for all those witty sensual quips he'd perfected over the years. Something to make them both laugh, to tease and jest, something to fill this yawning chasm of silence that churned with emotions as swift and wild as a storm-swelled river, and three times as dangerous.
But the legendary wit Sabrehawk kept honed sharper than his blade had vanished, and he felt like a bumbling idiot, naked to the soul, vulnerable. For the first time in his life, Adam Slade didn't know what to say. It was a hell of a time to realize that, while the notorious Prince of Sin knew a hundred kinds of merry banter to follow a lusty bout of bed games, he had no idea what to say after he'd made love.
Juliet had left him so raw, so new, he felt as if he'd become a stranger to himself.
The sensation was far more terrifying than an entire rival army howling down on him in ambush. Bloody hell, it was an ambush. He'd just never expected it to come from his own wretched heart.
"Adam?" Her voice, silky warm against his bare chest. He looked up and winced at the sight of her—cheeks flushed, hair tumbled in a gold aura about her face, her eyes glistening and expectant. "Thank you. That was... I mean, your touching me was... beautiful."
Hell, he should be the one spinning out pretty words. But he lay there like a green lad, feeling as if his tongue were nailed to the roof of his mouth.
He'd tormented Gavin mercilessly for reveling in tales of legendary loves, passions so deep they were captured in the stars forever. Adam had put aside such romantic nonsense at the same time he stopped believing there were monsters underneath his bed.
But here, now, with Juliet cradled in his arms, Adam would have traded his finest sword for a handful of the poetical phrases Gavin uttered so easily. Juliet deserved perfect words spoken by her first lover, words she could hold in her heart whenever she remembered this night that had transformed her from an innocent into a woman.
He could tell she was waiting for him to say something, hoping, her head stuffed full of fairytale dreams. Yet, he couldn't even think with her draped over him in naked splendor.
"Are you all right?" The words sounded rough even to his own tongue. "I didn't break anything, did I?" He ran one hand down the slender column of her arm. "I mean, you're so damned tiny."
She drew away, crossing her arms over breasts still blushed from his kisses. "I'm stronger than I look."
Lord, could he have bungled it any worse? He saw the glow in her eyes flicker, uncertainty stinging her cheeks. He remembered her pained confession of how sheltered she'd been at the vicarage, kept like a figurine of china lace locked up in a glass case.
"I just mean that I didn't intend to be quite so... uh, enthusiastic," he tried to amend.
"I suppose it's hard to be... enthusiastic when you're so accustomed to trysts like this." She was trying to hide her hurt, but it scalded Adam deep where no one could see.
"Hell no, I'm not accustomed to what happened here. Despite the tales you read in those blasted French novels, not all soldiers run about despoiling virgins." Perfect, Slade. Doubtless her vicar papa had kept a library of them tucked up on the shelf with his religious tracts. "What I mean is, you're my first virgin. I don't intend to make a habit of it."
He could have bitten off his own tongue when he saw the expression on her face. "Was it so terrible, then?"
"Blast, no! You were..." He swallowed hard. There weren't words enough to express how perfect she'd been. "What I mean is, it scared the hell out of me. Mating with a man means so much more to a woman like you that I—"
She was wilting like a new blossom too close to the sun, those huge angel-blue eyes looking up at him with no secrets, only stark emotion.
Silhouetted against the glass of the windowpanes, she was soft, vulnerable, wounded, every emotion naked as her slender body. "I told you from the first that I don't expect anything from you, Adam. Just because we—we made love."
"Lo
ve. That's the crux of the problem." But how the devil could he begin to explain. He jammed his fingers back through his hair. "Juliet, you have to listen—"
Bloody hell! All his words died as Adam gaped at the window, aghast, something fluttering past it in the darkness. A night bird? Or some creature searching for seeds or tender shoots to nibble on. God alone knew. The only thing that was certain was that Juliet was reflected back to him by the candleshine, every curve and hollow doubtless visible from the garden, and, possibly from the house itself, should anyone chance to gaze out at the night.
The knowledge that he'd carelessly left her so vulnerable cinched a vise of guilt and regret about his chest. "Here, angel, put this on." He retrieved her nightshift, thrusting it toward her.
She took it, pressing it to her breasts, and Adam wondered if he'd ever seen anything so beautiful. So beautiful that it hurt, way down deep in his chest. He grabbed up his breeches, dragging them on, then made quick work of his shirt, half hoping his actions could conceal the riotous uncertainty rending him.
He glimpsed Juliet pulling her own nightgown over her head, covering her full breasts, tiny waist, the fabric ending in a thin puddle of linen about her slender legs.
"Adam?" She peered up at him as he yanked on his boots. "Did I do something wrong? The way you're looking at me...
"Everything's wrong. I'm babbling like a candidate for Bedlam. You're looking so damned bruised." His boot heels thudded on the floor as he levered himself to his feet and sucked in a steadying breath. "Juliet, listen to me. I want you to know that I..."
"You didn't break anything. You didn't mean to be so enthusiastic—probably bored with the bunglings of a virgin to dispose of. And you'll never try despoiling one again, isn't that what you said?" Her gaze was fixed on her slippers as she put them on, her face half hidden by a veil of golden curls, but he could feel the hurt she was trying to hide as if it were lodged in his own chest.