Lynne Connolly Read Online Free Page A

I would probably have to do.
    A gentle kiss between my shoulder blades informed me he had woken. The weight of his arm on my waist lightened. He smoothed his hand over my stomach, pulling me closer, but I rolled on to my back.
    We smiled at each other. Waking in the mornings constituted one of my favourite parts of the day.
    “Good morning, my love.” I adored the light in his eyes when I used the endearment he so richly deserved.
    “Good morning.” He kissed me, lingering over the greeting, gently caressing my lips with the tip of his tongue. When I returned the favour, he deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding inside my mouth with languorous certainty. He lifted up on one elbow and moved his other hand to caress my breast. His cock hardened against my thigh, and I went closer, enjoying his protective warmth.
    He broke the kiss and lifted his head. “Every morning and every night I give thanks. If I’d married anyone else, I’d be waking up in my own bed, alone. But I have you.” He twined one hand in my hair, drawing me to him for another kiss. The other hand lay on my breast, caressing with an increased urgency that heated me, sent tingles through every part of my body. “And every morning I want you with the same desire as on the first. Something else to give thanks for.”
    Small kisses on my jaw and my throat, his breath heated my collarbone, then his mouth replaced his hand on my breast, kissing, drawing on the tip, his tongue curling around my nipple, sending delicious thrills through to my groin. When he heard my “Ah!” of pleasure, he increased his efforts, moving to the other breast, his long, slender fingers delicately caressing the one he wasn’t kissing. He knew I had said yes, although not out loud. I didn’t need to.
    His mouth followed his hand and he kissed the new line between my navel and the dark curls below. “Nice of it to show me the way,” his wicked voice muffled through the bedclothes covering him. I pulled them aside so I could watch him and reach my hand down to twine my fingers in his short, golden hair. He lifted his head and looked up at me, past the gentle swell of my belly and the heavy mounds of my breasts. His smile filled my soul. Never had blue eyes appeared so warm.
    Propped up on one elbow, he gazed down at me, his free hand touching me, caressing me, and he inserted two fingers inside. I was wet enough to take him and he knew it, but he caressed, rotated his fingers and touched me so intimately I gasped in response.
    “You want me,” he said softly.
    “Yes. Oh yes, I want you, Richard, my love.” I caught another quick breath when he moved his hand again and sent sensations of rising excitement through my very heart. “How do you do it? Make me need you so much?”
    “Years of dedicated practice,” he said, coming back up the bed after one particularly soul-wrenching twist of his hand. “But you—you are the culmination. I’ll never get over you. I never want to.”
    He covered my body with his, needing no help to guide him, watching me as I watched him. I welcomed the careful pressure, his heat, the sublime sensation of his hard shaft probing my melting softness. My flesh shivered when he pushed his way inside.
    I breathed his name before he dipped his head and kissed me, deep and passionate. Then he leaned back so he could see me and watch my reaction to my growing need of him. I didn’t hold back. I knew he loved to watch me, and I loved to give him pleasure. Morning light gilded his skin, stroked the taut muscles in his shoulders and chest.
    Arching my back, I pushed against him, wanting as profound a joining as we could achieve. I lifted my legs to curl around him and hold him tightly. He drove in, plunged into me, and I opened to him, loved his ruthlessness when I clenched around him.
    I closed my eyes when my peak approached, fast as a bolt of lightning, as devastating as if that bolt had lanced through me, freezing time, stopping my heart. He grasped my