Free Judith Ivory by Angel In a Red Dress Page B

impossibly attracted. Without realizing, without consciously willing it so, her mouth opened up to his. His tongue penetrated deeply. While every female sense in her body responded to his sharp masculinity. Her arms wrapped around him. She rose up on her toes, letting his arm bring her up to help equalize their heights. Her legs parted slightly as he pulled her, tight, against his hips; he pressed himself against the rise of her bone. Christina’s mind lost all coherent thought. His arms felt strong…. The muscles of his chest and shoulders were hard, contoured…. His legs had a muscular length…. And his hips, as they conveyed their small, suggestive pressure, were the devil’s own…. Then a stray, outrageous observation: For all its grace, his body would be heavy; his weight would feel sublime.
    Christina tore her mouth away from his, scrambling, trying to pull away from this thought. “Please—My God—” She turned her head away. She had never had such a strong reaction to just a kiss and the simple presence, through a dozen layers of clothes, of a man’s body.
    This time, however, he didn’t release her. He let her pull her face away, but he kissed her throat. He held her to him firmly, his lips traveling into the soft, sensitive place behind her ear where her jaw met her neck. Christina groaned. What began as protests on her lips somehow muddled into soft exclamations of pleasure. It made no sense to allow this, but sensation by sensation, she found herself delaying, promising herself she would stop him in a moment. In a moment….
    He found her mouth again, and, again, she didn’t refuse him. He was so tender, with such an incredible touch…. His hand went to her face, his thumb stroking her cheek as his fingers went around into her hairline. Then, slowly, the hand began to travel down her spine.
    A second later, a warm draft brushed across her shoulder blades. It felt beautiful. Then alarming. My God, she was coming literally undone: The hand, his fingers descending toward her waist, knew unerringly the pattern, the hooks and fastenings of a lady’s dress.
    The thought roused Christina. Yet, her responses were sluggish. “No—” She managed to get her hands around.
    He stopped readily. But the damage continued to accumulate. The bodice felt no longer snug. Her breasts lay loosely against the opened neckline. And he eased the neckline down a little, just off her shoulders, and bent his head. He kissed her throat and neck and shoulder. Then his hand, through the fabric of her dress, pressed her breast. He pushed it high over the edge of the loosened neckline to where his mouth could find it.
    “Oh, God,” she murmured. She wet her lips. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
    His lips and tongue felt moist against her skin. They left a hot, heavenly trail that ran along the neckline of her dress, then dipped down between her breasts. While his hands went into the dress at the shoulders, sliding it downward. She caught her dress just as it fell to her elbows. Bare shoulders. Open down the back. Only her crossed arms saved any modesty.
    She clutched these layers of fabric, her last defense. But this left her with no means—no hands—to stop him otherwise. His palms smoothed freely down her naked back, opening the dress further. She heard his breathing rasp, catch. He shifted. He had to brace himself against a low potting table; he was in no better shape than she. Christina began to stir restlessly in his arms. While Adrien’s fingers reached into her hair.
    Hairpins hit her shoulders, tickled as they brushed her bare skin on their way to the ground. The mass of copper-gold hair followed heavily to her shoulders, then down her back. Adrien buried his face at the curve of her neck as he spoke a litany of soft phrases, none of them intelligible. None of them, in fact, in English. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he drew her arms down. The dress fell.
    Bare breasts. High. Round.