STORY EXCERPT

Blaze awoke and stretched with slow grace. How long had she been asleep? She wasn’t sure. All she knew the ground was hard and unforgiving, its profound earthy smell mingling with the musky sweet scent of their lovemaking. She inhaled deeply. That was one aroma she wasn’t going to forget as long as she lived.

Raven moved slightly, turned over onto his back and took her into his arms. “Are you awake, mon amie?” he asked sleepily.

“Aye,” she murmured, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on his bare chest. “Now that I’ve given myself to you, I am yours totally.” Without warning, he grew tense and stiff. “Is there something wrong?” Her heart banged in her throat. Did she say something wrong?

“Nay, my sweet.” He moved to sit up. “You caught me unaware ‘tis all.”

“I will go anywhere you ask, my love.” She stroked his arm. Rope like muscle resided there, hard and unyielding. “I belong only to you.”

He let out a resigned sigh. “You do not know what you are saying, ma cherie. If you come away with me, it means that you will never see your family ever again.”

“I know what it means,” she said, continuing to touch his velvety flesh. “From the moment I kissed you and you made love to me, I became yours. It has never been any other way.”

Without a word, Raven got to his feet and started dressing.

Blaze was stunned. Was this the action of a man who had just been told that a woman loved him with all her heart? “Did I upset you?”

The distant, quick shuffle of his breeches as he drew them on along with his shirt filled the dank cave. She froze. Was he going to answer her question or leave her here to find her own way out?

“Since you have given me such a wonderful gift, I’m not wasting it,” he said triumphantly. Rustles of silk as he moved to get his boots accompanied his movements. “I’m going to leave for a while, but I will return. Can I trust you not to run away? To wait for me?”

She propped herself up on an elbow and clutched his arm. “Where are you going?”

Raven tamped his feet into his boots, the hard thud resounding through the cavern. “You will have to trust me.”

“How will I know you’ll be back?”

He knelt next to her and took her hands into his gloved ones, laying her naked palm on his bare chest through the open vee of his shirt. “This tells you,” he said in a gentle voice. “This beats only for you. Will you stay?”

“Without question.”

With that assurance, he possessed her lips with a fierce abandon then left her, threading his way through the formations that she had bumped into from time to time.

Blaze lay back as a smile crossed her lips. Finally, the passion she had dreamed about all her life was to be hers. To hell with her father. Her grin widened. To hell with Daniel, too.

ADULT EXCERPT

“Are you certain, ma cherie?” Raven questioned with his body poised over hers, ready to bring pleasure to her yet again. His voice was soft and warm, like finely aged brandy slipping down her throat.

“Aye, that I am, Raven.” Her hands traced the soft angles of his jaw where the slight growth of beard tickled her fingers. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

“Then so am I,” he murmured, his lips tantalizing the skin of her neck, igniting all of her emotions, while his naked fingers parted the slick folds of her already pleasured pussy.

“May I take off this blindfold?” she begged as her senses climbed higher. “I want to see you.”

“Not yet.” His hand slipped from her sex and she heard the distinct hiss of an extinguished candle before his lips returned to their former position. “Now you can.”

Blaze removed her blindfold only to discover he had plunged the cave into total darkness. “Why did you put out the light?”

“’Tis too dangerous for you to see me, ma cherie,” he said seductively as his fingers slipped into her wet channel and filled her pussy to the limit. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

With his slow ministrations, Blaze didn’t bother to protest about the light anymore. His touch was all she required. Her hands traveled up and down his flesh, making her shiver. She delighted in the hardened, chiseled planes of his body, as well as the smoothness of his skin. Blaze shuddered. Why didn’t Daniel make her feel this way?

“I could stay this way forever.” Her confession left her lips before she was ready for it. Too late to hold back now.

“Aye, cherie, I could as well.” Raven’s tongue drifted over the curved funnel of her ear, making her nipples tingle.

Before she could utter another word, Raven’s mouth slipped over hers, capturing her tongue and inviting her to dance to his tune. Back and forth their lips played, tasting and teasing. Just as she delved into the wide waters of passion, Raven left her mouth and burned a hot trail of kisses down her neck toward her flat belly. He paused between the valley of her breasts, laving the small space with his tongue before moving to take a ripened berry into his mouth. Blaze moaned as she arched, her fingers twining in the long dark tendrils of his hair. How lucky she had been that he had found her after her fall. He’d tended to her over the last three days, making sure she was comfortable and well taken care of before he seduced her.

He seduced your mind long before your body, her mind told her. Aye, the small voice of reason was always right. Raven had claimed her mind long before her body through his compassion and caring. He acted as any husband or lover would. Was this the love she had so often dreamed about?

Raven’s palm fit neatly over her breast as though the mound were made for his hand only. She tingled from head to toe as he massaged her, root to tip. Her pussy was beyond wet, more like dripping. He was making her come with the softest of touches, something she had never imagined.

“Lower,” she begged, pushing his head toward his obvious prize.

“As you command.”

Raven kissed his way down the indented valley of her belly, his hands skimming her slim hips. Her sex pulsed as he spread her wide, his thumbs holding her fiery hair-covered lips apart, the walls of her channel convulsing in anticipation. A scent of musk filled the air. “So delicious,” he murmured as he caught the ripened nub between his lips. His tongue flicked at the tiny bit of flesh. She called aloud, her fingers gripping his hair hard. She heard him grunt and she let go. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt him. “Yes, that’s it! Deeper, my love!”

Raven peeled the hood of her clit back and sucked with abandon while two fingers slipped inside of her, filling the chamber. Immediately, Blaze clamped onto him. He swore softly against her sex. “You’ve no idea what you do to me, woman.”

“I know exactly what I do to you,” she gasped.

Raven let go of her nub and licked her anus to clit with a teasing swoop. “I will make you pay for that little remark, my wanton vixen.”

“How?”

“Like this.”

Raven’s tongue burrowed between her nether lips and stroked her inside with a confident air. Her hips were beyond her control now. She arched against him, pressing her mound into his mouth for a deeper penetration. He obliged and thrust inside. She teetered on the precipice of danger as well as passion. The game she played was very dangerous, not one that she would ever play again.