Sunshine and the Shadowmaster by Christine Rimmer Page B

arrowed down to her toes and out to her fingertips.
    He parted the top.
    And he said a word that was deep and husky and crude as well.
    He touched her nipple, and she felt how hard it was, aching with want.
    Heather couldn’t bear it. She wrapped her hand around his head and pulled him toward her.
    His mouth closed over her breast.
    She cried aloud, a needful, famished sound. He kissed one breast and then the other, taking the nipples deep into his mouth, where it was so silky and so wet.
    Down inside her, the fire went molten, a slow, delicious, burning ache.
    And then he was lifting his head, looking in her eyes. “I’ve never kissed your lips.” He whispered the words tenderly, with a touch of humor and no small amount of wonder.
    Gently, carefully, he leaned forward until his mouth touched hers. Briefly he brushed her lips. He pulled back, then kissed her, quickly and softly, once more.
    And then he wrapped his hard arms around her and pulled her up tight against him. Her eyes widened. She could feel him intimately, even through their clothing.
    His mouth found hers.
    It was a long, deep, brazenly carnal kiss. In her whole life, Heather had never known its like. It went on and on, as his hands roamed her back in smooth, knowing strokes. She never, ever wanted it to stop.
    But at last, he pulled back. “Wrap your legs around me,” he said as he stood. Heather did as he bid her. He carried her swiftly through the dining room and into the downstairs bedroom.
    Once there, he lowered her to the bed. Then he went to the windows and pulled back both the curtains. Starlight bathed the room in its faint, silvery glow.
    He turned to her, a silhouette against the night. Very quickly, he removed all of his clothes and dropped them on the chair in the corner.
    When he was naked, he came to her, reached for her and swiftly slid away the pajama top and the bottoms, too.
    Then he lay down on the bed with her, in the silvery light. He pressed his hard, lean body against her soft one. And he stroked her—long, arousing caresses that made her whimper in surrender long before he rose above her, parted her legs and settled himself between them.
    She moaned as he entered her. He slid in very deep.
    The feeling of having him there was so good, so right, that tears filled her eyes and overflowed, running down the sides of her face, into her tangled hair. She moved with him, by instinct it seemed, as if she’d been born to do this act with this man.
    And she thought, in a far-off sort of way, of her family, of the deep, dark streak within all of her grandfather’s sons. Hell-raisers, all of them. Her uncles and her father. It took each of them so long to make their peace with life.
    And she herself, so different, she’d believed, from the rest of them. Born happy. And living happy. Marrying a man of light and goodness, settling down at nineteen, having neatly escaped the dangerous darkness that ran in her blood.
    Or so she’d thought. Until recently. Until she lost everything.
    And now there was tonight.
    She’d stumbled upon fulfillment. In this time of fear and sorrow. Here, in the darkness, as it never should have happened. Yet it was happening.
    A dark miracle, this night. It was lifting her outside herself, for the first time in so long. So that what her mind kept whispering was wrong, was somehow good and right—and so utterly, unbelievably sweet.
    Lucas pushed in deep. Heather moaned.
    â€œCome with me.” It was a command. And a challenge. And a sweet, beguiling taunt.
    She looked up at him. There was only one answer. “Yes, Lucas. Anything. Anything you want...”
    And he moved faster, deeper, on and on. She went with him, wrapping her legs around him, holding him to her so that what they shared became a passing back and forth of energy, white-hot—and expanding to encompass all the earth.
    She cried out. And so did he. They both stiffened, pressed tight together.
    And