Free A Secret Passion by Sophia Nash Page A

pillow.
    He sighed. “I want you. I want all of you right now.”
    She lay still on the silk comforter, her mind and body torn between an unknown, intense need and complete embarrassment.
    In a haze, she remembered spying on a stallion and her mare in heat in the middle of the hot summer stable when she was fourteen years old. She had stared in shock and wonder as the stallion nipped the mare on the shoulder, forcing her to submit to the mounting. Then, the earsplitting squeals from the animals as the male entered and pumped his seed into the female. She had stayed hidden long after the men overseeing the breeding session had separated the animals and departed. She loved her horse and had wanted to know everything about her. But it had been more than she could have imagined. And now she wondered how she would endure this interlude, which was sure to embody pain.
     

     
    Rolfe looked into her half-closed aquamarine eyes as he edged onto the bed and pulled her body close to his. He wondered how much of his intense attraction to her was due to his five years of self-imposed celibacy. His mouth followed the trail left by his hands as he discovered her body. As he kissed her soft, small waist, his hands caressed her slim, firm thighs. Her legs trembled as his fingers moved up along her inner thighs and pushed them apart. When he reached the downy, darker curls of her femininity, she gasped. He massaged the center of her womanhood and was gratified to feel wetness. He leaned forward to tease the tip of her high, full breast to tautness again with his lips and heard her indrawn breath. She lay silently as he tried to enter her with two fingers. He was stilled by the realization of untried tightness. His mind reeled, and for the first time in many years, he felt very unsure of himself.
    But then, it could not be true, he reasoned. He knew it could not. She was a widow. As he probed further, he could feel her stiffen.
    He withdrew his fingers and sat up. He leaned over her to pick up his fine lawn shirt off the floor and drew it over his head. “Mrs. Lovering, we must stop this nonsense, immediately.” He paused before adding, “I do not take pleasure in deflowering virgins. And I am not on the marriage mart.”
    She lay on the bed and looked up at him. “I would not have you as a husband, my lord,” she said low. “But you yourself brought me here, and proposed a rendezvous not long ago. Have you forgotten?”
    “You are an innocent. I should have recognized the signs.”
    “You said I was a widow and you a widower. You suggested a liaison, and now you lack courage? Is that it?”
    His eyes drifted to her beautiful breasts once more, and he felt drugged as he once again cupped the curls of her womanhood. A jolt of raw desire raged through his body when he felt a rush of dampness. He swore and raised himself from the bed to strip off his boots and breeches and to take off his shirt for the second time. In the dark, faraway recesses of his mind, he knew he would come to regret this inability to deny himself.
    He spied apprehension in her eyes at his nakedness. As he moved onto the bed again and eased his body close to hers, she tensed.
    “Please tell me what to expect,” she said in a small voice.
    “You will feel pain. That is certain,” he murmured in her ear, giving her one last chance to stop. He wondered which would be worse, stopping now or finalizing the act. He accepted her silence as an invitation to continue.
    He grasped her hand on the silk covers and slid between her legs. The fingers of his other hand delved between the folds of her femininity. He dipped his head to suckle her breast again. She reached for his face as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply her faint lavender scent. He fought to control the hard edge of his desire as he pushed her hands back and kissed her. The pressure within him pulsated with need. A rosy blush overtook her porcelain face as his fingers explored the most intimate places on