Free Beloved by Stella Cameron Page B

and placed them at her sides. He turned her around and began unfastening her gown. She
     sucked in a breath, but made no effort to stop him.
    Slowly, cool air swept over the skin he bared. Her gown was undone, and her chemise. He slid them slowly from her shoulders
     and down her arms, pulled the sleeves over her hands and let them fall.
    Ella bowed her head and waited. If this was what Saber wanted, then she wanted it too.
    She was naked to the waist. Never before had she been naked in front … Ella pressed away the memory that crowded in. It did
     not count that she had been forced to suffer the scrutiny of men while she’d worn only a transparent scarlet gown. Her mind
     had fled that moment, just as it had fled the sights that had surrounded her on that terrible night, in that terrible house
     of evil. And at least, thanks to Papa, she had been saved from the full extent of whatever dreadful fate had been planned
     for her in that house.
    Saber kissed her again, this time on the vulnerable back of her neck. She shivered.
    “Cold?”
    She shook her head and hunched her shoulders, fighting an urge to cover herself. With Saber this was right, it was as it should
     be.
    He urged her against him. Her back met his chest and she leaned. Then his caressing hands rose over her shoulders and across
     the tender place at the dip in her throat, and passed lower to stroke over her breasts.
    Ella smothered a cry. This was Saber, the man she loved. He covered her breasts, lifted and supported them, and rested the
     sides of his thumbs on her nipples.
    She took little gulps of air. Her breasts ached. Her nipples grew hard beneath the flicking brushes of his thumbs. Hard and
     searingly aware. Arching against him, she rolled her head, seeking. Seeking? What could feel so? What could pass through a
     woman’s body like white hot strands, strands of pleasure that demanded to be drawn through her without end?
    His next kiss lingered on one shoulder, his breath slipping over her breast.
    She did not need to see him to know his face, to know his form, to
feel
him.
    When he took his hands from her breasts she was bereft, but waited patiently for his command. Very quickly he slipped her
     clothes from her hips until they fell about her feet.
    Clad in only her stockings and slippers, she stood in a strange room, in a strange house, with the man she had loved since
     she scarcely knew what love meant.
    Her ribs, her waist, her belly—he explored them all with reverent care. Her thighs received his patient attention.
    They had no need of words.
    There was no before. There would only be now and forever. He touched her there! “Hush,” he said against her shoulder when
     she made a sound. “Whatever you have known is in the past. This is what I want you to know now—and to remember. My wish is
     to give you pleasure.”
    The place at her center burned at his probing.
    Bewildered, Ella twisted to face him. She tried to hold him but could not. He bent and licked the tip of a nipple.
    “Saber!” Her legs jerked, and she gripped his tensed arms. Cupping her breasts, nuzzling between, he captured first one nipple,
     then the other. He drew her deeply into his mouth, and she was helpless. Nerve and flesh, all wanting—all taking.
    He straightened, and claimed her mouth again.
    Ella slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her breasts to his chest. His hair teased her nipples, inflamed the hot,
     white threads again, and this time she knew where they began and where they sought to bury themselves. The curls between her
     legs hid the source of tormenting desire that did not fulfill or release her.
    Saber’s hips met her belly. The part of him she knew was his manhood thrust against her. Huge in its strength, it sought her.
     Again the dim but awful images hovered in her memory. They had no place here. Those were other bodies, other mindless bodies
     that providence had kept from harming her.
    With greedy fingers, she sought the weight of