Velvet Lightning by Kay Hooper Page A

room smiling their empty smiles and looking at one another with treacherous eyes.” His voice was unusually rough, urgent, almost violent. “I want you.”
    “No.” But he knew too well how to arouse her, how to make her forget everything but him and need. The fever rose in her body, hot and dizzying. She could hardly stand, hardly breathe. One of his hands slipped down over her stomach, lower, pressing hard through the layers of clothing, and she gasped as the stark caress triggered a rush of flaming need.
    “Now,” he said roughly.
    Catherine half sobbed. “Yes. Damn you, yes!”
    Without another word he moved back and pulled her several steps to one side, to George Symington’s desk. There was an armless chair behind it, and Tyrone pulled it away from the desk. Quickly he freed himself and sat down, drawing her forward to straddle his legs as he pulled up her rustling skirts.
    She caught at his shoulders, biting back a moan when his knowing fingers slid up her trembling thighs and found the wet, hot flesh that was pulsing for him. Except for petticoats and a thin linen shift, she wore nothing beneath the gown, and she could see his gleaming gray eyes flicker in satisfaction.
    “You’re ready for me,” he murmured, fingers probing surely.
    Catherine shuddered when his hands slipped around to cup her buttocks, when he eased her down slowly. She felt the long, throbbing hardness of his manhood enter her yearning body, filling her, and the pleasure was so intense that her eyes closed, breath coming quickly from between parted lips. And she could hardly breathe at all by the time she settled fully against him, clutching his shoulders and swaying slightly.
    “Yes,” he muttered thickly, staring at her face through slitted eyes. “This is my Catherine, the Catherine only I know.” One of his hands lifted to the nape of her neck and he pulled her upper body toward him, kissing her hard, his tongue filling her mouth with sinuous passion. “All woman. Warm and soft with wanting me. Mine.”
    On some level of her mind Catherine was conscious of the danger of this, the recklessness, but she didn’t care. The throbbing inside her was a pleasure so potent she would have risked almost anything for it. A moan broke from her throat as he began lifting and lowering her slowly, and she smothered the sound against his shoulder, biting into fine cloth.
    She thought she would burst, that her straining body couldn't possibly hold the feelings inside. The heat was liquid, flowing, rushing. Her body pulsed in a faster and faster rhythm, tension gathering in a bittersweet agony. She heard his harsh breaths, felt his chest laboring, felt the bunching muscles of his shoulders and arms as he controlled her movements.
    Catherine had never felt so intensely, and she was only dimly aware of the sounds tangling behind her clenched teeth. The heat was swallowing her, consuming her. And then she felt the tension snap with violence, tossing her wildly to a crest of pleasure she had never known before. She collapsed against him with a whimper, her forehead resting heavily on his shoulder, dimly aware of his shudder and rasping groan.
    Limp, boneless, she couldn’t move and didn’t want to, despite a niggling urgency. No matter what happened, she realized, she would always be grateful that she had known this, felt this. It was the single reason the entire situation was bearable.
    She floated for a few precious moments, content, sated. Her breathing gradually returned to normal, and she felt his slow as well. If only I don’t lose this , she thought. Lose him . . . She forced the thoughts away and slowly raised her head.
    Tyrone kissed her, his mouth not hard now but warm and gentle. Then he looked at her with eyes that were still intense. “Catherine, are you pregnant?” The unexpected question jolted her, and her head snapped back almost as if he had slapped her. But after an instant she was able to reply in the same blunt tone. “No.