Free The Men of Pride County: The Pretender by Rosalyn West Page B

a layer of cotton, the sensation made her gasp in awe and unexpected arousal.
    She needed to feel him closer.
    Her fingers trembled over the small buttons of her chemise, then peeled the fabric away so the next covering would be the surprising heat of his hands. He thumbed an even tighter welcome before bending to taste and tease and torment with the pull of his lips. Having never realized such delights, Garnet moaned wantonly and arched into his suckling kisses. A strange new yearning began to knot low in her belly, the sensation so disturbing, so raw, she sought a way to alleviate it. Moving against him in anxious little pulses seemed to help at first, then only made matters worse when he leaned back to give them both a saving space.
    “We can stop now,” he told her. “We should stop now.”
    But his eyes said different, and so did her quivering soul.
    “No, we can’t. It’s too late, isn’t it?”
    The storm brewing in his gaze broke with lightning intensity. “It was too late the first time I saw you and thought I’d gone to heaven.” Then he concluded with a husky, “I was right.You’re my angel, and this is the only heaven I’m ever going to know.”
    She pulled him to her, into her urgent kiss.
    It was too late. Deacon surrendered to that fact with both reluctance and relief. He shut his mind to circumstance and consequence and opened his heart to this woman who deserved no less from him. He’d never wanted anything quite so badly as this brief chance to explore happiness in her arms, to have his sense of wonder reborn each time she gasped in discovery.
    Awash in the first pink of dawn, he undressed them both. To overcome her awkwardness, he murmured whatever came to mind, praising her beauty, her femininity, her softness, her desirability in words that made her quake and all wooingly warm—because she’d never heard those things before, had never truly believed them until he’d made them so. She opened to him without hesitation, opened her heart, her eyes, her inhibitions, and then her knees, so he could settle between them.
    “Don’t be afraid,” he crooned in a tight-throated voice, struggling to slow and control the moment so she’d have no reason for fear.
    “I’m not,” she assured him with a shaky bravado, then confessed, “I don’t know what to do with my hands.”
    Charmed by her naïveté, Deacon pressed kisses to her palms, then fit them over the swells of his shoulders. She grabbed on tight, sensing the moment was at hand when mystery wouldbe replaced by knowledge. Then there’d be no going back.
    She felt him push hard and alarmingly huge against her. Modesty bade her to recoil, but instinct whispered for her to relax and trust him. The instant she let down her anxious guard, he breeched the last secret of womanhood with one swift, sure stroke. Innocence and her sense of isolation were both torn away at the same time. This was belonging, this wonderful, foreign fullness that spread all the way to her soul.
    “Oh, Deacon,” she sighed, her eyes going misty with emotion. “Surely this must be heaven.”
    He dropped a fierce kiss of agreement upon her lips and began to move within her. Slow and easy, with regard to her inexperience and his own healing injury. Slow and easy, to contain his raging passions. The degree of effort shook along his limbs but rewarded him at last with her sudden explosive cry of revelation. He drank up the sound and let himself go, riding out the same satisfying spasms that left her limp and smiling in sated lethargy beneath him.
    Breathing hard and drained of all vitality, he rolled onto his side and continued to cuddle her close. And somehow that was as fulfilling as the act itself. He’d never lingered after the fact before, seeing no reason to remain nor feeling the desire. But this was a moment he never wished to end. He wanted to bask in the thrall of passions well met. He wanted to preen with accomplishmentand hear flattering claims of his