A Sinful Regency Christmas. Ann Lethbridge
happen.
How could she keep him from escaping again?
But any thoughts fled before the feeling of his mouth on hers, his tongue twining with hers. He made her feel dizzy, giddy.
She twisted her fingers even deeper into his hair as his hands slipped down to grasp her hips and tilt her body tighter against his, until she spread her legs and wrapped them around his waist. Kissing him like this, as if they were starved for each other, her body so close to him, she knew she had never felt so very intimate with anyone before in her life.
Desperate to hold on to that connection, she kissed him back even harder and slid her hips over his, making him groan when his erection brushed her trembling inner thigh.
“Cassie,” he whispered. He kissed the soft curve of her shoulder, licked lightly at the hollow of her throat. His lips traced the soft valley between her breasts, the curve of her waist and the flare of her hip. “Cassie.”
She closed her eyes tightly as he kissed the top of her thigh, the crease below her hip. Cassandra gasped, and she felt his smile against her skin before his lips trailed over the back of her leg and he kissed the vulnerable spot at the underside of her knee. She hooked her other knee over his shoulder and when he groaned with the harshness of tightly leashed need, she felt truly beautiful for the first time in her life.
It was Ian who knelt so intimately between her legs. Ian who wanted her.
And then she felt his tongue touch her there, teasing that tiny, sensitive spot. Then his tongue plunged deep, rough and delicate at the same time. It was the most intimate thing she had ever dared to imagine. She cried out incoherently at the rush of pleasure. She couldn’t make any words, think any thoughts but of him.
Afraid she could take no more, she tugged hard at his hair. His mouth eased away from her to press a soft kiss to the inside of her thigh. He rose up above her body until his lips claimed hers in a hard, possessive kiss as he lowered his hips against hers.
Cassandra wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on tightly as he slid inside of her, all hot, damp friction. She pushed up to meet him and he thrust forward until he was joined to her completely.
Ian drew back and thrust forward again, faster, harder, his arms braced to the bed. He caught her moans with another kiss, and deep inside she could feel a pressure grow—hot, sparkling, sizzling, something just beyond her desperate reach. But she reached for it anyway, reached for it harder and harder….
One of his hands reached between their joined bodies and he rubbed his fingertip over that one most sensitive spot, and it felt as if she leaped free into the sky. The knot of hot pleasure exploded into a thousand fiery shards.
“Cassie!” Ian shouted against her shoulder as he thrust into her. His head fell back and his whole body tightened as his hips went still against hers.
Then he collapsed onto the bed beside her. She tried to draw air deep into her lungs, to breathe again. She held onto Ian tightly. She didn’t want to let him go yet, she didn’t want the cold world outside to encroach on this dream. It frightened her how much she had forgotten everything else here in his arms.
She felt him bury his face in her shoulder and press his lips on her damp, trembling skin. His arm looped over her waist, almost as if he didn’t want to let her go either.
Cassandra sighed and glanced at the window. It was still night-dark outside, but the falling snow cast an other-worldly silver glow. She stroked the sweat-damp strands of his hair and felt the softness of his breath on her bare skin. She closed her eyes, wanting to cling to him and flee all at the same time. What had she done?
“I should go back to my chamber,” she murmured.
Ian’s arm tightened around her. “Stay. Just for a little while longer. Please, Cassie.”
Just a little while longer. She wanted to stay forever just like this, wrapped in his arms. But he had left her before, after just a kiss.
Now that she knew the full force of his passion, and her fiery response to it, how could she lose him again?
Chapter Four
The light from the window pierced through Ian’s dreams, pulling him up out of the darkest, most peaceful sleep he could ever remember having. He groaned and rolled onto his back, throwing his forearm over his eyes to block that icy-white light.
The rumpled sheet slid low on his naked hips and he caught a hint of lilac perfume from the soft linen folds. Cassie. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been wonderfully real, Cassandra under his body as he slid over her, inside of her, as she came apart with pleasure around him.
“Cassie,” he called as he pushed himself up. But the bedchamber was empty and cold.
Ian rubbed his hand over his bristled jaw. Maybe it was a dream, born of the lust he had tried to suppress for her for so long? Yet his body felt relaxed with the perfect satisfaction that only came from sex, and there was that perfume. No dream could be that vivid.
He had to find Cassie.
Ian swung his legs off the bed and stretched. Pillows and blankets were tossed on the floor in a haphazard pile. Under the edge of one cushion he glimpsed a crumpled pale blue dressing gown.
He picked it up and ran the soft fabric through his hands, remembering the way Cassandra’s skin felt under his caress, her hair sliding over him. Her soft sighs and cries as he brought her pleasure. The faint scent of her perfume rose from the silk folds and made him grow hard all over again.
Ian cursed and tossed the gown onto the bed, turning away to stride to the window. He braced his hands on the polished ledge and stared out at the cold, white scene below. Snowdrifts covered the gardens like a soft, pale blanket, and the trees were coated with ice that sparkled like diamonds in the gray-bright sunlight. It looked like a different world outside—a new, clean, bright fairyland where anything could happen. Even the impossible—like him winning Cassandra.
He closed his eyes and saw again the first time he glimpsed her. Ian was a man who liked women, who enjoyed their company, and they enjoyed his, as well. Yet he had never been in love. He couldn’t even imagine what love could feel like. There were too many lovely, fascinating women out there in the world for him to think of settling on one. He was simply enjoying his life far too much.
Then he was invited to his friend Charles’s wedding. Charles had always been the most serious of Ian’s friends, so it was no surprise he chose to marry so young, and to one of an impoverished country earl’s four daughters, too. Ian waited with the rest of the congregation in that country church on a hot summer day, the scent of roses heavy in the air, the mother of the bride crying happy tears in her pew as Charles smiled nervously at the altar. Ian had shifted in his seat, wondering if he could possibly make it to a party that night to meet with the luscious red-haired widow he’d had his eye on.
The church doors opened, and a young lady appeared there on her father’s arm. She wore yellow muslin and white lace, like a ray of summer sunshine brought into the stuffy church. Her dark hair was loose on her shoulders, crowned with a wreath of yellow flowers, and she smiled shyly as she studied the gathering.
That was the moment Ian knew love was possible in the world. When he looked at the woman who was about to marry his friend, and everything else went still.
He didn’t go find his widow after all. He spent that night getting quietly drunk.
In the years that followed, he pushed down and ignored his feelings, convinced himself they didn’t exist. He befriended Cassie, learned of her sweetness and intelligence, which only made her more beautiful. And he searched for solace in other beds, other pursuits. He almost convinced himself he didn’t care for Cassie in that way.
Until he kissed her in the rain, and all those feelings came roaring free. After making love to her, tasting her passion—passion that equaled his own—he couldn’t let her go. Even though he knew