An Unexpected Song by Iris Johansen

another age,” he said softly. “One who had no rules when he wanted a woman. All those hours I sat there in the cottage and watched your father paint you and thoughtabout how I’d like to do this. I began to have all kinds of fantasies.” He undid the last button, his gaze on her breasts tumbling from the loosened bodice. “About how I’d take off your gown and sit down in that big chair on the platform with you on my lap. How I’d like to put you astride me and rub you against me.” He parted the material of her bodice and looked at the full globes of her breasts. His breath expelled in a burst of air. “Damn.”
    She couldn’t breathe and she was trembling uncontrollably. The summer wind touched her taut nipples but she felt no cooling. The eroticism of his words was as much an aphrodisiac as his gaze on her body.
    His big, warm palms cupped her breasts.
    Her teeth bit into her lower lip to keep from crying out.
    His gaze held her own as he squeezed and released, squeezed and released, rhythmically, gently, possessively. “I thought how you’d like it. How you’d squirm and move against me.” His head lowered and his mouth enveloped her nipple. He sucked strongly, pumping her, his teeth pulling at her. “How you’d let me do anything I wanted to you.”
    Her spine arched backward and she moaned softly.
    “Wouldn’t you?” he muttered. “Tell me.”
    She couldn’t make sense of his words; she was lost in heat and sensation.
    “Tell me.”
    “Yes …”
    He drew her closer and the warm, naked flesh of his chest and the triangle of dark hair was a sensual shock against her nipples. Another moanbroke from her as he slowly rubbed her back and forth against his body. “Yes, that’s right,” he said thickly. “Feel me.
Know
me.” His hands left her hips and moved to her hair, loosening the combs that held it in place. It flowed around her, and his fingers tangled in its soft thickness. “Your hair … I’ve wanted to do this so many times … I want to wrap it around me, drown in it, drown in you.” He stripped her quickly, feverishly pushing her down on the ground. The grass was cool against her nakedness, the scent of earth and growth surrounded her.
    Life, again. The night was brimming, burning with vibrant life, and she wanted to hold on to it, all of it, before it slipped away.
    He stood looking down at her, quickly shedding the rest of his own garments. “Let me look at you. Open your legs,” he begged hoarsely.
    She slowly parted her thighs, and she could feel his gaze on her womanhood, vulnerable to him. The muscles of her stomach clenched and she felt her breasts swell as she looked up at him. He was a giant male, overwhelming, and she had never felt more exposed than in this erotic, submissive position.
    He fell to his knees and moved between her thighs. His palms pressed down on her diaphragm, throwing her breasts into greater prominence but not touching them. But she wanted to be touched, she thought dazedly. She wanted to be devoured, absorbed by him.
    “Do you want me?” he asked hoarsely. “If you don’t, say so now. There’s no going back once you belong to me. Hell, I don’t think I’ll be able to maintain control once I start.”
    Belong. For an instant she felt a frisson ofapprehension at the possessiveness of the word. Othello. This wasn’t the wry, clever man who had become her friend in the last week. In the moonlight he was all fierce, sensual warrior.
    He leaned forward and his warm tongue touched her belly.
    “Quick,” he muttered. “Neither of us can wait. Do you want me inside you?” He moved up, nudging against her but not entering her.
“Do you want me?”
    She was burning up, dizzy with need and recklessness-banished caution. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
    He plunged forward, burying himself in the depths of her.
    She cried out and her spine arched upward. Fullness, thickness, warmth. “Jason!”
    He froze. “Lord, why didn’t you tell me? Did I hurt you?”