Improperly Wed (Aristocratic Grooms #3)(31)
Author: Anna DePalo

“On the other hand, if you bent forward,” he continued, “my mouth would close over here.”

His thumb skimmed over her nipple, and Belinda gasped and her eyes went wide.

“Would you bend over for me?”

“I—it’s a theoretical question,” she responded thickly.

“But it doesn’t have to be.”

He settled his lips on hers again, and Belinda’s response was muted.

This time, rather than holding still, he folded her into his arms, and she slid her hands around his shoulders.

Colin found the zipper hidden in the side seam of her dress. He lowered it slowly, and cool air hit her skin.

Colin trailed his lips across her jaw to the delicate shell of her ear and then down toward her throat.

Images, words and scents from their night in Vegas came back to her. They’d been joking and teasing…until suddenly they weren’t. Instead, they’d lain back on the bed, entangled in passion.

It had been the best sex of her life. Colin had been tender, prepared and patient—that is, he had been until a powerful cl**ax had shaken him and sent her over the top with its aftershocks.

And now he was doing it again.

The dress slipped away from her.

Colin took a step back so that he perched on the corner of his desk. “Come here. Please.”

If he’d been arrogant or impatient, she’d have had a chance at resisting him. Instead, she took two steps forward and fit in the space created by his legs.

He leaned forward, and his lips nuzzled her cle**age.

Belinda’s eyes drifted closed.

He licked first the tip of one breast and then of the other, stoking a fever of emotion inside her.

She moaned, and her fingers spread through his hair.

Colin settled his mouth on one breast, and Belinda arched up to him.

She felt deliciously alive, her body humming with desire. She rubbed against Colin’s erection, the evidence of his burgeoning passion.

Colin groaned and turned his attention to her other breast.

It was all too much and yet not enough, Belinda thought hazily. It was consuming and liberating.

Their clothes fell away from them, one by one, until only Colin’s trousers remained as a barrier between them.

With her gown and panties pooled at her feet, he lifted her, not breaking their kiss.

Her high-heeled pumps hit the library floor with a thud, one after the other.

Colin strode with her across the room and stopped next to the sofa. She slid down his body, feeling every hard plane and muscle on the way, her br**sts grazing the sparse hair on his chest, until her feet touched the ground.

A low fire burned in the hearth nearby, casting shadows on the Oriental rug before it.

She looked up at Colin. “I thought we’d be safe in a room without a bed.”

He grazed her temple with his lips. “There are ways around it. And we’ve already tried a bed.”

“The Renoir hangs in your bedroom. Isn’t that the key to your seduction?”

He gave a choked laugh. “Call it arrogance, call it flying without a net, but maybe I thought I would be enough.”

Colin skimmed his hands over her thighs and then up her back.

Together, they lowered to the sofa, and he leaned over her.

His eyes glittering down at her, he cupped her intimately. He parted her folds and dipped inside her. She clenched around him instinctively.

She felt the caress of his thumb at her most intimately guarded place. Her eyelids lowered, and she bit down hard on her lip. Waves of sensation lapped her.

“You drive me crazy when you do that.”

“Oh.” Then she realized she wasn’t sure what he meant. “Oh?”

“I keep thinking of sucking on that pouty lower lip of yours.”

Unthinkingly, she bit her lip again.

“I want you.” Already shirtless, he stood up and disposed of his trousers, and then sheathed himself with protection that he retrieved from a pocket.

The flames from the fire cast their flickering shadows on him, showing him in all his bronze glory.

He was magnificent—primed and male and wanting her. Right now.

Liquid fire coursed through Belinda.

Colin lowered himself to her, settling himself between her legs.

“I’m sure this sofa is an antique,” she protested.

“Then it’s been witness to plenty.”

Without another word, he glided inside her, causing them both to sigh.

It had been so long—three years—that Belinda found herself trembling. A tremor went through Colin, too. She could feel it.

He began a rhythm that she soon took up in counterpoint, her fingers finding traction on the dips and plateaus of the muscles of his back.

They both moaned.

“That’s right,” Colin urged.

“Yes.” The blistering word was all she could manage.

The sofa groaned and creaked with their increasingly urgent movements.

They were so hot for each other that it was a wonder their coupling wasn’t over in minutes.

She was impressed by Colin’s control in order to give and receive pleasure. He was making it good for her, just as he had in Vegas.

Waves lapped her with increasing strength until she felt herself undulating with cl**ax.

She cried out and Colin held her, soothing her.

Minutes later, he built his rhythm again, until he suddenly stilled and gave a hoarse groan.

Belinda followed him over the edge again on a throaty cry.

Afterward, they lay together, spent and breathless.

If there was any doubt, Belinda thought, about their first time being a fluke, it had been put to rest.

Ten

“Congratulations, Melton.”

Colin glanced around him after offering the words. He and Sawyer, along with Hawk, were sitting in the library of Sawyer’s London abode, a luxury flat in Mayfair. Tamara, Sawyer’s wife, had come home from the hospital yesterday, after giving birth to Viscount Averil. She, Pia and Belinda had gone to the nursery with the baby.

“Thank you,” Sawyer said in acknowledgment of his words. “In lieu of cigars, I’ll suggest a round of scotch.”

“It is a rather stupendous occasion,” Hawk remarked.

“Rather,” Colin commented. “The newly arrived viscount is in fine form, though he came a little early.”

Belinda had received a call that Tamara had given birth, a few days after the trip to Covent Garden. Colin had driven them to London at one of the earliest opportunities.

Still, his brief time at Halstead Hall with Belinda had been spectacular, Colin thought with an inner grin. Three years had not dimmed his memory of their wedding night in Las Vegas, and the night of the opera had been a fitting sequel.