Heloise’s skin was on fire.
Each of Raven’s kisses was like a tiny flame, their cumulative effect increasing her desperation, each touch curling through her blood and heating it to a slow boil.
He kissed his way down her body and she let out a shocked gasp as he ran his tongue around her navel then went lower. She put her hands down to cover herself then squirmed in embarrassment as he bent her knees up and moved down so his shoulders were between her thighs. For a few seconds he just stared at her, his breath teasing her sensitized flesh. And then he turned and kissed the inside of her knee.
Heloise fell back and drew her hands into fists on the bedcovers. He moved higher, between her legs. “Oh, good Lord!”
It became a battle of wills. She tried to fight his mastery, but it was no use. He was a magician, teasing with his lips, his tongue. She arched her hips to encourage him to increase the pressure, but he just drew back and blew softly on her. Her skin pebbled and she wanted to scream at him to keep going, to stop playing and have mercy. She didn’t, of course. She had her pride. She could endure. And then he started all over again and she dug her heels into the bed, staring blindly at the infinite stars painted on the ceiling above.
He slipped his tongue inside her, then his fingers, and she clenched around him, trying to keep him inside. Close, so close, so—
He withdrew again and his knowing laugh made her want to hit him. “Not yet. Not without me.”
He rose up, wiping his mouth on his palm, and kissed her. She tasted herself on his tongue, musky and strange, and her stomach clenched in anticipation. Raven rolled over onto his back, shucked out of his breeches, and returned.
It was too dark to see much of him and Heloise bit back a moan of disappointment. And then he settled between her legs, a luscious, heavy weight that spread her thighs and pressed her into the sheets. His bare chest rubbed hers and the head of his shaft pressed against her, hot marble-smoothness where his mouth had been. She shifted, restless, urging him on. He slid over her slickness and groaned deep in his chest.
“I need to be inside you.”
“Please. Yes, please.”
“Don’t beg,” he said roughly. “You don’t ever have to beg.” He dropped his forehead to hers and exhaled in a despairing sigh. “God, Hellcat. I don’t deserve to be your first. Are you sure this is what you want?” He swallowed with an effort, his arms shaking as he held himself above her. “It’s not too late, we can still stop, I—”
Heloise curved upward and answered him with her mouth, stopping his ridiculous words. Idiot man. Of course it was too late. It had been too late for years and years.
She kissed him with every fiber of her being, with a force beyond decency and civilization, with a need to claim, and mark, and possess. She wrapped her arms around him, marveling at the contrast of soft skin and solid muscle on his back, embracing him with a kind of loving despair. This man stole her heart and soul, and she waved them both away, helpless to resist. She pressed her face into the curve of his shoulder and inhaled, taking him deep into her lungs.
He reached down and positioned himself at the entrance to her body. “You want me?” His voice was taut with urgency.
“Yes.”
“Inside you?”
“Yes.”
He changed the angle of his hips, and suddenly he wasn’t sliding against her, he was sliding into her, a sensation of heat and a brief unaccustomed stretch; not pain, exactly, but not quite pleasant, either.
He drew back and she gripped his sides in panic, thinking he was leaving her. He supported himself on his elbows, forearms cradling her head, and brushed her hair back from her flushed face. He pressed forward again, entering her a little more. “Good?”
She nodded.
“Liar,” he chuckled. “But it will be.”
The look he gave her was so full of wicked promise that it made her pulse rocket even more. She could detect a certain arrogance alongside the concern, as if he knew some brilliant joke and hadn’t yet told her the punch line.
She was finding it hard to think, let alone converse. He was over her, around her, inside her. As close as two people could be. She bit her lip and watched in satisfaction as his eyes followed the movement. She licked it, just to tease him, and raised her brows. “Is that it?” She tried to sound unimpressed, but her voice held a betraying quiver. “I have to say, I’d expected something…different.”
He raised his own brows. “Different how?”
“Well, something”—words failed her—“more.”
His lips curled upward. “More, as in, like this?” He rocked his hips and slid inside her fully.
Heloise gasped as her chin tipped up. “Umm…well, yes…” she managed. “That’s…ah—”
He withdrew and did it again, a slow, voluptuous slide that pulled him out and then eased back in. Each time was easier than the last. A ripple of delight shimmered through her as the fire he’d built with his mouth returned. Heloise closed her eyes. Oh, the beast, he knew full well the torture he was inflicting. But it was hard to complain when it was so insanely pleasurable.
He pressed again and she arched instinctively as he increased the pace.
“Oh God.” He bent his head and kissed her, openmouthed, his tongue mimicking the movement of his body in hers in a wicked, insidious rhythm. They were both gasping when he pulled back. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he panted.
“I don’t want you to hold back,” she countered fiercely. “No half measures, Ravenwood, I’m warning you. I want everything.”
Whatever restraint he’d still had vanished with her words. With a groan he pressed feverish kisses onto her face and then dropped his forehead to her neck and abandoned all pretense of control. His hand gripped her hip as he pulled her up to meet him, the other threaded through her hair to cradle the back of her head.
Heloise gloried in his tender violence. His body was twice the size of hers; he pushed her down into the mattress with breath-stealing force, but she felt only a thrill at his possession, his dominance. All this strength was hers. She defeated him, owned him. Loved him. She’d wanted this forever, wanted him to be a part of her. Even if he left her eventually, she’d have this—this thing they could never undo. Never take back.
He filled her whole world. All she could see was the outline of his shoulder, the strong curve of his neck. His breathy encouragement rasped in her ear, praise and beseeching and nonsense.
Heloise almost laughed aloud. Before, at the palacio, it had only been about her pleasure, with him firmly in control, but now he lost himself, too. His big body trembled as he took her, thrusting with urgency instead of control. He drove her upward until she was clutching at his shoulders, sobbing for breath. Closer and closer, as if she were running, but couldn’t run fast enough, as in dreams.
And then he put his hand between them, teasing with his fingers, and Heloise forgot to breathe.
“Now, Heloise.”
His husky command tipped her over the edge. Blinding sweetness pierced her; beat after beat of pleasure, of blackness and falling and total annihilation. Raven threw his head back as shudders racked his body and Heloise pressed her face into his shoulder, tasting the salt on his skin, feeling the frantic beat of his heart beneath her lips.
He relaxed heavily on top of her and she held him, loving the weight of him as the world swam back into focus. Every nerve ending in her body tingled with repletion.
Raven pulled back, still within her, and met her eyes. He looked as shaken, as shattered, as she felt. A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead and she reached up and stroked it back lovingly. He closed his eyes and rolled off her and she felt a twinge of discomfort as he withdrew.
Well, she was no longer a virgin. Now what? She had no idea what sophisticated women did in circumstances like this. What was the etiquette? Was he going to leave? Should they talk? Have a drink? Go to sleep?
She held her breath as Raven turned on his side and wrapped his arms around her. She opened her mouth to speak but he let out an exhausted chuckle and pulled the blankets over them both.
“Don’t you dare say anything,” he murmured into her nape. “You’ll only ruin it. Just be quiet and go to sleep.”
Heloise scowled at his high-handed attitude but she was too exhausted to take him to task. She struggled to muster up even an ounce of regret, and failed. According to the strict rules of the ton, she was ruined, but she could find nothing but joy in it.
Her scattered thoughts went back to what he’d said outside. When he’d kissed her scar it had been the most amazing, heart-stopping moment, a healing and a benediction all in one. Not even her mother had ever done that. Heloise had always seen her injury as a failure, a flaw, but he saw her as unbowed. Not a ruined beauty, but a survivor. No wonder she was in love with him.
He was delusional, of course. Someone like him was bound to have warped ideas of beauty. But she wanted to believe him with every fiber of her being.
Heloise closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into his embrace, amazed at how natural it felt to be held against his naked body. Her limbs were suffused with a wonderful languor, a feeling of peace and contentment unlike any she’d ever known.
When she awoke it was daylight, and she was alone. She hadn’t expected otherwise.
As tempting as it was to hide in the cocoon of the caravan forever, she wasn’t a coward. She could be mature about this. Sophisticated. There was no need to make Raven feel uncomfortable. She’d asked him to stay. And then practically begged him to make love to her.
She refused to wonder how she compared to all his other women. It crushed her to think of him doing with other women what he had just done with her. She was nothing like the voluptuous Lady Brooke.
She’d worried that he’d find her inexperience boring and gauche, but he’d seemed to enjoy himself well enough. Heloise flushed, recalling the unaccustomed stickiness between her legs when she’d washed. Her mother, ever practical, had told her what to expect. There had been no blood that she could see. She had nothing, in fact, to show for her experience except a few aches in rarely used muscles and a wistful pang in her heart.
Raven wasn’t in the camp when she went to the fire, and from a series of mimes and gestures she discovered he and Alejandro had gone ahead to scout out the trail. She helped the women and children pack up, and before long they all set out on a lumbering procession, guarded on all sides by Alejandro’s men, their rifles slung over their shoulders.
They traveled all day, through winding passes and verdant valleys. She caught sight of Raven a few times, up ahead, but he didn’t approach her. When he didn’t reappear that evening, she ate some rice-filled soup, tried to teach Rafael how to write his own name, and excused herself as soon as it got dark.
So, the bloody man had decided to ignore her, had he? Fine. Two could play at that game.