Beloved Enemy by Jane Feather Page A

for him, he whispered to her to lie
still and accept the pleasuring; there was time enough later for reciprocation, and she lay back, glorying in a
passivity that by its giving was not truly passive. She had lain as immobile
and without feeling as a tree beneath Giles, but he had needed only to take,
and it had mattered not to him that what he took was not freely given, was
simply an obedience to a loathsome conjugal duty.
    Alex kissed the fast-beating pulse at her throat, raised each
wrist in turn to press his lips against the matching pulse, before moving down
her body, a finger playing in the shell of her navel as his eyes held hers. Her
body stirred beneath his touch, and he ran a long, lazy caress from hip to
ankle, still watching her eyes that held only a dreamy joy as she shifted with
languid pleasure.
    He parted her thighs, and Ginny gasped, her eyes sparkling
not with fear but with excitement. His fingers pit-patted across the sensitive
satin of the inner skin before moving higher. All the while he watched her
face, holding his own rising excitation in check, wanting to ensure that he was
truly pleasuring her.
    Ginny moaned softly as a strange tightness grew in her belly
— grew and coiled beneath the questing fingers that had found what they sought.
She opened like a flower under the morning sun, and the gentle probing became
insistent. How was he able to create this wonder? The thought came and went as
she felt a presence inside her, moving with the
same speed as the fingers outside, and then the coil tightened beyond bearing and
burst apart. She heard her own sobbing cry from somewhere outside herself as
the muscles of her thighs and buttocks squeezed around the magic of his
fingers, and then released to leave her pulsing and heavy with relaxation.
    Alex kissed her, his mouth hard as his own need became imperative. He stripped off his clothes and moved
over her as he slid his hands beneath her hips, lifting her to meet him. Ginny
cried out as he entered her, the exultant cry that he remembered she had
quenched before, when there were people who might hear, and her legs curled
around him, drawing him deep against the cleft of her body.
    She was a woman made for loving, Alex thought again, made for
the giving and receiving. As he moved within, Ginny moaned, thrashing wildly
beneath him, her heels pressing into his buttocks demanding her own fulfillment
as she promised his. Her eyes were open, locked with his, and he saw the
wonderful flash of surprise as exquisite pleasure overpowered her, the
incredible translucence of her skin as she gazed at him in bewildered wonder,
cried out again, and held him tight as his own completion throbbed within the tig ht chamber of her being.
    Ginny lay crushed beneath his weight, his fast-beating h e art pulsing in rhythm with her own, their skins
blended in th e salt mist of ecstacy. With a
reluctant groan, Alex rolled of f her and,
propping himself on one elbow, examined her lace. The shy smile she gave him
increased the radiance of her skin, the residue of wonder lurking still in the
gray eyes.
    "I do not think , "
he said softly, " that I have ever had such a
loving."
    "Since I have never experienced loving, I have nothing
to co m pare it with." She was teasing
him, and he chuckled.
    "That, Mistress Courtney, deserves a dunking."
    Ginny squealed as he sprang to his feet with a resurgence of
energy and hauled her upright, bending to put his shoulder against her stomach
as he tossed her over and ran with her to the sea.
    "Don't!" she yelped as he made to throw her
backward into the waves. " I do not wish for my hair to become
all salty. It is but newly washed."
    Alex laughed, standing waist high in the cold Atlantic . Mold it up, then, because you're
going in." He slid her down the length of his body, and she gasped as the
water s hiv ered her midriff.
    " It 's freezing, Alex!" Her teeth
chattered, and then she felt his hands parting her thighs beneath the waves,
cleansing her