Christmas Wedding Belles: The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride

‘The man was a fool.’ Daniel sounded angry, but his hand at her breast still stroked with seductive gentleness, his palm a little rough against her skin. ‘You are not cold by nature. You are very, very passionate, Luce…’

He punctuated the words with little kisses scattered across the soft skin of her belly and Lucinda shivered. ‘We must make sure that you don’t feel repulsed now,’ he whispered. ‘You must tell me what you want.’

His hands moved caressingly across her bare stomach and she felt the muscles there jump and tighten.

‘Do you like that?’ Daniel asked softly.

Lucinda gulped. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. Tiny quivers were running along her nerves as his lips followed his fingers, teasing, stroking.

‘And that?’ His voice was a low murmur.

‘It is tolerable,’ Lucinda managed. The hot excitement was building within her again, but she sensed that Daniel would not let her hurry. He had reached for the ruined skirts of her petticoat, deftly rolling them up so that his hand could skim the top of her stocking and settle in sly caress on the soft skin of her inner thigh.

‘I protest,’ Lucinda said weakly. ‘You are a practised seducer.’

She heard him laugh in the darkness. ‘Acquit me. I never had the time to practise. This is all for you, Luce. Only for you.’

Lucinda caught her breath as his fingers grazed the secret place at the juncture of her thighs. Pleasure, tantalising and sublime, swept through her. He paused just long enough for her to worry that he had stopped altogether, and then his fingers resumed their gentle slide back and forth, a teasing motion that would soon, she knew, have her begging aloud.

‘Daniel—’

‘Yes?’

She could tell he was enjoying tormenting her, damn him.

‘Please…’

He did not reply, but she could almost feel his smile, there in the hot darkness. He shifted, and she sensed him moving lower, and then she felt his hand on her bare stomach again, this time below the petticoats, and the tip of his tongue instead of his fingers at the very core of her.

She shrieked, arched upwards, and felt his free hand on her hip, warm through the petticoats, holding her down so that his mouth could plunder her at will. It was blissful, agonising. Her legs were quivering now, the muscles of her stomach tight beneath his palm, her fingers clenched in the fur-lined blanket. The rub of the material against the back of her thighs was blissful torment. Never, ever had she felt like this. The incandescent sensations grew and exploded irresistibly in a cluster of light, and she felt as though her whole body had shattered too.

But only for a moment. He did not give her time to think about what had happened. He slid back up her body and took her mouth again, and she moved beneath him and gave a little moan. The sensations he had aroused had not gone away. They thrummed through her like the vibration of an instrument. Her skin felt hot with a passion she had never experienced before.

‘Please,’ she said again, and hardly recognised her own voice.

There was a brief moment of cold as he withdrew from her, but then he was back, the whole of his long, hard body matching and fitting perfectly against her. But when he eased himself inside her at last it was so slow and gentle that she almost screamed with frustration.

‘Damn you, Daniel.’ Temper flared in her. ‘Don’t tease me so…’

He laughed. ‘My impatient Lucinda.’

The controlled, smooth friction was driving her to near madness, and suddenly she wanted to know her own power, to show him he could not always dictate to her. She dug her fingers into his back and bit his shoulder, and she felt his body jolt as his restraint broke at last and he plunged into her, hard and fast, all gentleness fled, and in its place a driving masculine possession that almost consumed her.

His kiss had a savage urgency; she heard him cry out her name and then the exquisite shudders racked her body again, primitive and intense. She felt the force of his climax sweep them both away and held on to him desperately as the only sure thing in a tumultuous world. Gradually her senses started to settle, and she shifted into the circle of his arms. They held one another close as the bitterness of lost love was finally wiped out by all the bright promise of the future.

Later on Lucinda lost the petticoats, and with them the very last shreds of her modesty and inhibitions. The snow had stopped falling and they had run out into it, naked in the moonlight, Lucinda squealing as Daniel tumbled her into a snowdrift and kissed her until she forgot the cold and clung to him with the blood racing hot again through her veins.