"Which means that it should start right." He silenced her with a kiss as his hands slid under her chemise and cupped her buttocks, his fingers kneading deep into the muscles.
As they kissed, she felt him hardening against her belly. She stretched with catlike litheness, enjoying the feel of his muscular body, and the way their bodies fitted together. As the kiss deepened, liquid heat began to burn through her veins.
She was about to roll onto the bed so that they could make love properly when he caught hold of her hips, then sheathed himself inside her with one swift movement. She inhaled sharply. "Oh, my. Now I understand why you put me on top of you."
He smiled and thrust upward. "Education is a wonderful thing."
"It certainly is," she said breathlessly. "L. J. Knight has written a number of provocative essays on the subject."
"As provocative as what we're doing?"
"This isn't provocation," she said with a choke of laughter. "It's blatant lechery."
"Mmm, lechery, my favorite deadly sin." He pushed upward again. She shuddered as heat coursed through her.
Carefully, she sat upright so that she straddled him. Then she peeled off her chemise with a deliberately seductive movement and tossed it over her shoulder. Lu-cien responded by raising his head and capturing her left breast with his mouth. As he suckled her, she moaned and rocked back and forth, driving him more deeply until he fell back on the pillows, panting for breath.
She leaned forward and trapped his wrists against the bed. Looking down into his face created the pleasing illusion that she was as strong as he. Wanting to see him helpless with longing, she slowly ground her pelvis against him. He gasped, his expression utterly open, every nuance of desire visible as he responded to her.
There was a profound intimacy about making love in the daylight with gazes locked. She discovered a whole range of delicious new ways for male and female to move together. Every movement by one of them was instantly reflected in the other's face, as if they were not two bodies but one.
She bent her head and kissed him with hot-tongued ardor. They were doubly joined, each inside the other. With painful intensity she yearned to merge emotionally as deeply as she had physically, to complete her ragged self with his powerful spirit.
No sooner had the thought formed then a clench of fear drove her back to the safety of humor. Breaking the kiss, she said lightly, "Now I understand a joke I overheard at the theater about a woman riding a man."
She saw a shadow-disappointment?-in his eyes and felt his subtle emotional withdrawal. Sadly, she recognized that in her need to protect herself, she had failed him again.
Swiftly masking his reaction, he answered humor with humor, saying drolly, "You should also be able to think of a whole new interpretation of the old nursery rhyme about riding a cockhorse to Banbury Cross."
"Lucien!" she exclaimed, laughing even as hot color flooded her face. "That's indecent. A cockhorse is just another name for a rocking horse."
"That's what they tell little girls, but little boys know better," he said darkly. "Since you're a writer, you might want to reevaluate phrases you've used without thinking. Cock of the walk. To feel cock-a-hoop. To go off half cocked. To be cocksure. The language is full of double entendres."
"Don't forget Scottish cock-a-leekie soup," she said primly, "where a tough old bird is stewed with a mess of leeks. And very good the cock tastes, too."
She didn't see a double meaning until he laughed. Whole new realms of bawdiness opened before her. Beet red, she closed his mouth with a kiss. Luckily, he took pity on her bruised modesty and teased her no further.
Kit had not known that passion could be so playful. She mastered the art of inflaming him by rolling her hips, and of keeping him simmering on the brink with her stillness. She found that she could behave like a wanton, and he would delight in her abandon. And she almost choked with laughter when he gasped, "Do you smell something burning? I think we're scorching the sheets."
But her levity swiftly died. In the next twenty-four hours everything would change. God willing, her sister would be free, but the price might be that never again would she know such intimacy with Lucien. And there was a very real element of danger; she felt it hovering around Kira like a dark London fog.
With sudden frenzy, she used her newfound skills to bring them both to culmination. There was no room for fear or regret in the violence of fulfillment.
The cure was a fleeting one. As she lay panting in his arms afterward, it was hard to conceal the melancholy that beat in her blood like a drum. Never again, never again, never again.
Lucien stared at the ceiling, feeling Kit's heartbeat as strongly as his own. She was pressed against him as pliant as taffy, and they had just made love with searing intensity. That being the case, why did he feel that she had been silently saying good-bye?
The closer they came to Kira, the more Kit detached herself emotionally; that had been blindingly clear when they made love and normal defenses dropped away. The logical result of this would be that when they found Kira. he would lose Kit entirely.
At the beginning he had been confident that physical intimacy would draw them ever closer, but that was no longer true. Though he didn't doubt that he could persuade her into marriage-gratitude was a potent force,and he was a master of subtle manipulations-he was no longer sure marriage would give him what he wanted.
He was no longer sure of anything.
It was a relief when Kit spoke. "I have a horrible feeling that rescuing her will be harder than you think," she said somberly. "Remember that Kira said there were guards? There's danger there, Lucien."
Glad to return to the mundane, he said, "How many guards can there be? We're not talking about laying seige to a sovereign city. The kidnapper is merely one wealthy, perverse man. The chances are there will be a single guard, two at most. If the villain is there himself, that would be three." He shrugged. "Even if there are half a dozen, which is hard to imagine, we'll still prevail because we have Michael."
"I'm awed that he is willing to risk himself when he has no stake in the outcome. Jason and I love Kira, and you are doing this for my sake"-Kit gave him a quick kiss-"for which I am deeply grateful, but Michael is acting from friendship for you and the goodness of his heart. Those are rather abstract motives."
"I suspect he is glad to use his warrior's skills for such a good cause. He would have made a fine medieval knight."
"Slaying dragons and rescuing damsels?"
"Precisely." Lucien looped an arm around her waist, wanting to hold her a little longer.
But time had run out. Kit pushed herself up. "If we hurry, we should be able to catch Lord Ives at Cleo's flat."
"Are they living together?"
"Very nearly." She smiled a little. "He wants to set her up in a larger, more luxurious house, but she keeps refusing. She says she'd rather be her own woman than merely a lord's mistress. It's ironic; she means every word of it, but it might result in him offering marriage to keep her."
"It wouldn't be the first time a lord had chosen his lady from the theater," Lucien remarked. "I've heard the way he speaks of her. They might do very well together." Losing interest in the subject, he caught Kit's wrist and pressed a kiss into her palm. "Twenty-four hours from now we'll be celebrating Kira's freedom. Then we can think about a wedding date. Personally, I favor a special license and an immediate marriage. Would that be agreeable to you?"
He wanted her to react as if she wanted that as much as he did-or if not that much, that at least she did want it. Instead, she gave a gentle smile that could not conceal the sadness in her eyes. "As I promised last night, I will agree to whatever you want."