Page 32 of A Match Made in Heather

“Garrick,” she whispered, his name a soft plea as she stepped back.

But he pursued, cupping her face between his hands and lowering his head to claim her mouth in a hungry, yearning kiss that left her weakened knees shaking. “I’ve dreamt about this night for ten years,” he murmured against her lips. “I thought I would never see you again. But then you were here . . . only now a woman in full, sure of herself and her desires.”

Despite the way his seductive words made her eyes sting with unshed tears, Arabel nearly laughed. Tonight, she was anything but sure of herself! But she knew what she wanted, and she opened her mouth beneath his to return his kiss and increase the need and hunger between them, to tease their passion into a wildfire that demanded release. She pressed herself against him and wrapped her arms around his neck, daring to writhe her hips against his hardening erection—

He stepped back from her arms, stopping the kiss and leaving her gaping at him. There would be no rushing; he was making certain of it. Her chest squeezed hard, as if it knew how endangered her heart was. Because a night of slow, tender intimacies with Garrick could destroy her the way that uncontrolled flames of passion never could.

A whimper for mercy fell from her lips, but he gave her no quarter, gently caressing his thumb across her bottom lip as his dark eyes stared down into hers. Every slow stroke was an unbearable torture.

“There have been other women in my bed,” he confessed quietly.

Of course there had been. A man like him . . . Still, a piercing stab of jealousy ripped through her.

His thumb slowly looped up to trace the outline of her lips. “Yet no one but you has ever been in my heart.”

A tear escaped down her cheek. He slowly lowered his head to kiss it away.

“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered, his lips brushing against her temple as she rested her forehead against his chest and struggled to find her way through the fog of desire that had engulfed her. “And let me prove to you how much I still want you, how much I still care.”

But not love.

She should have been glad of it, should have been relieved . . . What she felt instead was a hollow, aching loss. Nodding as hot tears swelled at her lashes, her voice choked by the knot tightening in her throat, she placed her lips where she’d longed to kiss him—in the center of his chest. Right over his heart.

“Arabel,” he whispered and lifted her chin to kiss her. His mouth captured hers, molding against hers and plunging his tongue between her lips in a steady rhythm of relentless thrusts that left her breathless and weak.

When she finally tore her mouth away to gasp for breath, his lips trailed down her neck. He tongued the indentation at the base of her throat where her pulse raced, sending an electric jolt flying through her.

“I’ve waited years to be with you again.” He unfastened the handful of buttons at her neckline and let the night rail billow open, then slipped his hand beneath to cup her breast against his palm. “And tonight, I’m going to savor you,” he promised as he kneaded her fullness, his thumb strumming over her taut nipple. “Every last delicious inch of you.”

She moaned softly as his fingers increased their teasing, arching her back to press her breast harder against his palm. The heat of his large hand seeped into her chest, then all the way down between her legs, where it flamed into a fierce throbbing that demanded release. She knew then that she’d been lying to herself and that she’d never truly moved on. Only Garrick could make her body burn with the intensity he lit inside her, while also melting her heart with his tenderness.

“Yes,” she breathed, pushing the night rail off her shoulders to bare her body to the shadows. And to his dark eyes that prickled heat beneath her skin everywhere he looked.

He sucked in a mouthful of air between clenched teeth, as if the sight of her pained him.

“Garrick?” she breathed softly. Sudden doubt clutched at her heart.

He murmured, “Dear God, you are so beautiful . . .”

All her worries vanished, until there was only him. Until she knew only the mix of warm affection and tingling excitement he blossomed inside her.

He dipped his head and captured her breast in his mouth, to suckle gently at her while his other hand continued to tease at her nipple, gathering it into an impossibly hard point. He knew exactly how to alternate sharp pinches with soothing caresses to give her the most pleasure, while his mouth drew her deeper into its moist heat with a hard sucking that left all of her shaking.

She gasped when he pulled back on her nipple even as the suction grew harder, until it slipped free of his lips with soft pop.

But he gave her no time to enjoy the pulsing sensation throbbing through her, because he trailed his mouth further down her front, lowering himself onto his knees. He kissed the softness of her belly and paused in his downward path only long enough to swirl his tongue inside her bellybutton, giving a low chuckle when she shivered from ticklishness.

“Tell me you missed me, Arabel,” he cajoled softly as he buried his face against her belly. “As much as I missed you.”

“I missed you,” she whispered as another tear slid down her cheek. “So very much.”

His hands went to her ankles. “What did you miss? Tell me.”

“The sound of your voice.” Goosebumps covered her bare flesh as his hands moved steadily upward, his thumbs stroking along the insides of her legs in a tantalizingly erotic pattern. “The way your laugh rumbles through me when you’re holding me.”

His fingers reached her bare thighs and stilled. “Did you miss my hands on you, caressing you like this?”

She bit back a moan, and her own hands went to his head, to cradle him against her as she leaned over and placed a tender kiss on his temple. “Yes.”