Free The Forced Marriage by Sara Craven

from hers.
    He held her for a long time, murmuring to her in his own language, his long fingers stroking her tumbled hair, her cheek, the line of her throat, his gentleness a reassurance. And a seduction.
    When his lips next touched hers Flora responded like a flower turning to the sun, offering her mouth’s inner sweetness without restraint.
    As they kissed Marco began to caress her, the experienced hands slowly rediscovering the curves and planes of her body, revealing them to her anew through his touch.
    She had never known there could be such excitement in the brush of skin on skin. She was warming deliciously, her body tinglingly alive to the subtle caress of his fingers, so intent on every new sensation he was offering that she hardly knew the moment when he slipped off her final covering and she was naked in his arms at last.
    When his hand parted her thighs, her little gasp was lost under the answering pressure of his lips, as he kissed her deeply and with mounting sensuality. And any sense of shock or shyness was drowned in the flood of sensation which instantly assailed her.
    His fingers stroked and tantalised, demanding her quivering body to yield up its most intimate secrets to him. Turning her slowly and deliberately to liquid fire.
    She began to move in response to his caress, her body arching tautly towards him as his lips returned to her breasts, suckling the rosy peaks with voluptuous delight. At the same time his exploring hand discovered, then focused on another tiny hidden mound, moving gently and rhythmically on its moist, silken pinnacle.
    She was making small helpless sounds in her throat, her head twisting involuntarily on the pillow. She was dissolving in pleasure, her attention absorbed, blindly concentrated on the delicate arousing play of his fingertips with an intensity that bordered on pain. Nothing existed but this man and what he was doing to her, she thought, as her breathing changed and even this last contact with reality slid away.
    Even so, the final dark waves of ecstasy caught her unawares, lifting her to a sphere she had never known existed and holding her there, suspended in some rapturous vacuum, while she called out in a voice she didn’t recognise and her body shattered into the uncontrollable spasms of her first climax.
    She descended slowly, every inch of her body throbbing with a new languor yet feeling alive as never before.
    She lifted heavy eyelids and looked up at her lover, and her hand went up to touch his face, feeling the taut jaw muscles clench under her fingers. He captured her questioning fingers and carried them to his lips, biting the tips gently.
    She said softly, huskily, ‘Is it appropriate to say thank you?’
    ‘If you wish.’ There was a smile in his voice, and his mouth was curving in disturbingly sensual appreciation.
    Flora realised suddenly that he was moving—positioning himself over her without haste but with definite purpose. ‘But I would prefer a more—tangible demonstration, mia cara ,’ he added softly, easing his way into her newly slackened and totally receptive body.
    She looked up at him, her eyes wide and startled as she felt herself filled—possessed utterly.
    ‘Hold me,’ he instructed tautly, and she obeyed, her hands clinging to the smooth brown shoulders as he began to thrust into her, gently at first, his eyes watching hers for any sign of fear or reluctance, and then more powerfully—more urgently.
    She had thought that he had taken her to the extremes of sensation, and beyond. That she was sated—content to be passive while he took his own satisfaction.
    But, as she soon discovered with astonishment, she was wrong. Because her body was answering him—mirroring the strong, controlled rhythm of his lovemaking.
    She lifted her legs, wrapping them round his sweat-dampened body, and he slid his hands beneath her, raising her towards him as he found her mouth with his.
    His kiss was raw and passionate, and her surrender was total,