Her Christmas Earl by Anna Campbell

reach. The hot brush of Blair’s skin, the scent of his body, his lips on her breast, the touch of his hands, nothing eased the coiling tension.
    Blair raised his head to stare down at her stretched beneath him. In the candlelight, his expression was stark with need. She’d never imagined he could look like this. His green eyes glittered with hunger. The skin over his high Celtic cheekbones was taut. His mouth glistened from her kisses.
    Instead of this new version of Blair terrifying her into retreat, another shiver of arousal ran through her. He was such a superb man. And right now, he was hers to enjoy.
    Emboldened, she began to explore his body, learning the hard lines of muscle and bone, the jut of his hip, the curve of his buttocks. Yesterday, even an hour ago, she’d have hesitated to touch him like this. But she was beyond holding back. He was her husband and she wanted to claim every inch of him.
    “I feel like I’m caught in a storm,” she confessed, her voice husky.
    “Me too.” He cupped her jaw and tilted her face for more soul-stealing kisses. He nipped her bottom lip and drew it between his teeth, sending another of those extraordinary jolts through her. “You make me tremble.”
    “I’m glad.” Once she’d never have believed that plain Philippa Sanders could affect him so profoundly, but she couldn’t mistake the ripples of reaction running through the body poised above hers.
    Her hands tightened on his shoulders and she raised her mouth to his. The knowledge that she had this experienced man of the world shaking with desire made her want to cry. After her mother’s cold account of the sexual act, she’d dreaded her husband’s attentions. Now she began to suspect that her mother had neglected the most important information. The section about how her husband could drive her mad with anticipation. Blair’s kisses had always promised pleasure rather than shame and submission.
    Now the delight she found in his arms was astounding enough. Even more astounding was that yielding to Blair’s passion was an act of heart as well as body. Every brush of his hand or glance of his lips lured her far beyond the physical realm.
    “Oh, my beautiful sweetheart—” he groaned, grazing her neck with his teeth.
    She cried out at the tingling response. Her eager hands tested the hard ladder of his ribs, his narrow hips, the powerful thighs. Daringly she ventured lower, toward the part of him that remained a mystery.
    He groaned again as her hand brushed his silky heat. Briefly cowardice defeated curiosity. She withdrew and curled her hands across his back. He buried his silky head in her shoulder and breathed in great gusts that shook her with their force. Their kisses in his dressing room hadn’t prepared her for the powerful intimacy of lying beneath him.
    “Should I stop?” Philippa asked shakily. Her inexperience made her feel suddenly awkward. She had no idea what a man liked a woman to do to him.
    “Hell, no,” he gasped on a warm puff of breath that set off a fusillade of sensation inside her.
    “I may touch you?”
    His laugh was edged, as if he was in pain. “Please.”
    “I don’t want to hurt you.”
    Another difficult laugh. “I hurt with wanting you.”
    The jagged admission banished the last of her timidity. With more confidence, she curled her hand around him. He felt alive and strong and dauntingly big. How on earth would he fit inside her?
    “Goodness gracious,” she breathed, tentatively running her hand down the hot, satiny column, feeling vitality in the raised veins beneath her fingers.
    Liquid heat flooded her at her bold forays. She shifted, feeling sleek and needy. More slowly she moved her hand up until she brushed the swollen tip. He was damp, too.
    As all the new experiences of the night crashed down upon her, she snatched her hand away.
    She felt fretful, needy, hungry. This wasn’t at all what she’d imagined after her mother’s advice. She’d pictured herself