Claiming His Runaway Bride / High-Stakes Passion. Yvonne Lindsay

      Luc nodded slowly. Would she remember what had happened next? He wasn’t disappointed.

      “You…you picked me up and brought me here, laid me down on the blankets and—” She gestured to the rose on the blankets. “You made love to me, first with the rose and then you covered me with your body.”

      Luc shifted across the distance between them, lowering her onto her back and sliding over her until her hips cradled his.

      “Like this?”

      “Yes.” She sighed. “Just like that.”

      Beneath him she flexed her hips, pushing her mound against his now-straining erection, forcing him to swallow a groan of need.

      Belinda let her eyes slide closed and shook as memories cascaded through her mind, memories and sensations that wound her body tight with need, playing like an erotic dance against the background of her consciousness. She lifted her hands to cup Luc’s face between them, to draw his mouth to hers, to take his lips and delve beyond them with her questing tongue. Another shudder shook her as his tongue grazed against hers, and she relished the taste and texture of him. Relished and, she realised with a thrill of sheer pleasure, remembered the way he made her feel. She drove her hands up into his hair, holding him to her—terrified that if she let go, or if he broke contact, the exquisitely precious memories that flooded her mind would become as ephemeral as the gentle breeze that caressed their bodies.

      Sunlight dappled against her closed lids, sending a kaleidoscope of sensuous rich reds to imprint on her retinas. Luc shifted slightly, and she moaned with pleasure as his lips trailed along her jaw, to her earlobe where he took the unadorned piece of flesh between his teeth, letting them graze softly over the surface. Then his tongue dipped into the hollow behind her ear, and her nerves jumped with pleasure.

      For everything she’d forgotten it was clear he remembered it all. Remembered every tiny part of her that could send pleasure cascading through her body.

      “Luc.” His name was a sigh across her lips as his hands pushed up under her T-shirt, skimming the surface of her skin with a gentleness she wanted to drive to the next level. She didn’t want gentle from him, not now. Not when her memory burned with the remembrance of the first time they’d made love here in this enchanted glade. Where he’d driven her body to heights she’d never dreamed possible, leaving her spent and weak in his arms before doing it all over again.

      She shifted slightly as he clenched the fabric of her top in fisted hands, dragging the material up her torso and over her head, dropping it somewhere. She was beyond caring as the soft breeze stroked her skin.

      “Open your eyes,” his voice commanded, thick with the desire she felt surging through him like the inexorable journey of the river beside them.

      She forced her heavy lids open, met his green-eyed gaze and felt the instant buzz of connection she now knew had been missing in the past twenty-four hours.

      “You’re mine. All mine.” The words ground past his lips and she nodded.

      “All yours,” she whispered as he bent his head to her breasts, his teeth pulling aside the lacy cup of her bra and exposing her aching nipple to the caress of his tongue, the rasp of his teeth. A spear of pleasure shot straight to her core, and she clenched her inner muscles reflexively against the sensation, the movement setting up a ripple of smaller bursts of pleasure to thrill through her body.

      Now she understood why those words had given her that shocking sense of déjà vu this morning. Why it had left her feeling as if she was a boat adrift from its moorings. He’d uttered the same words to her only months ago as he’d worshipped her body on these very blankets. But she no longer felt as if she was adrift. No, she was where she belonged, with the man to whom she belonged. Their reunion felt right on every level, and while she wanted him to hasten, to race her to the completion she knew lay on the periphery of his touch, she also wanted to savour every exquisite second.

      She traced the shape of his head with her hands, stroked the cords of his neck, gripped the hard-muscled strength of his shoulders.

      She was his. He was hers. How could she have forgotten such a simple truth?

      Luc moved lower, his hands now splayed across her rib cage, his tongue tracing tiny circles around her belly button. She ached to feel him inside her again, to feel him fill her, complete her the way she now gloriously remembered. When his hands skimmed down to the waistband of her jeans she sighed in relief. He unsnapped her fly and pushed the denim away from her hips and down her legs.

      He dipped his head lower again, his tongue dancing a tantalising line across the waistband of her panties, his hands now sliding beneath her buttocks, kneading the globes of flesh as he tilted her hips up. The contrast between the firmness of his hands and the enticing featherlight touch of his tongue as he tormented her with tiny touches sent her wild. At the tiny hollow at the top of her thighs, in the curve of her hips—everywhere but where she craved him most.

      Then, gloriously, his mouth was suddenly, hotly against her. The warmth of his breath through her panties made her arch her back as sensation roared through her. She pressed against his mouth, her head thrashing from side to side, words tumbling from her lips begging him for more. His hand twisted in her underwear, tearing the fabric away from her body, baring her to his touch.

      The contrast in sensation between the breeze that swept around them and the heat of his mouth as he closed over her sent a piercing shaft of desire through her. As his tongue swirled over her, at first softly then with increasing pressure, she clutched at the blankets beneath her. Her thighs trembled, and her inner muscles clenched in rhythm with his onslaught until, with a scream that tore from her throat, she went hurtling over the edge.

      Luc shifted and Belinda, too boneless to do anything but watch, lay before him—her legs splayed, her skin flushed with orgasm—as he pulled off his shirt and shucked off his jeans and briefs. There was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Framed by his short dark lashes, they gleamed with the heat of his need for her. A need that spiralled again within her, within seconds, as if she hadn’t just climaxed moments before. As he positioned himself between her thighs again, a tremor of anticipation shivered along her spine.

      “My wife.” His voice was low pitched, almost guttural.

      She could feel the heat of him, his blunt tip teasing her as he hesitated at her entrance.

      “Luc, please,” she begged, “please!”

      He plunged inside her, driving himself to the hilt, and she hooked her legs around his waist, tilting her hips higher to take him in more deeply. She clung to his shoulders, near mindless with bliss as he slowly withdrew then entered her again, repeating the motion with increasing urgency until she felt him tense and shake, every muscle straining, holding back his climax. He slid one hand between them, where they were joined, before sliding his thumb across her hooded bundle of nerve endings. At his touch she felt the ripple begin within her again, this time with an even more urgent edge than before, and she clenched against him, her hips rising to meet his, forcing him to increase the pressure against her until she fractured apart. As the waves of pleasure undulated through her body, she felt his muscles bunch beneath her hands, heard his raw groan of completion as he shuddered against her over and over as the paroxysms of his pleasure rocked his body.

      When he collapsed against her, Belinda could barely breathe, but she welcomed his weight, his total possession. This was how it had been between them—she knew it at a level that was soul deep. She could begin to thank her lucky stars that her memory of this link between them had returned, and from here who knew what would come to her next.

      But for now, she decided as she stroked her hand down the line of Luc’s spine and over his buttocks, she’d relish every second of this reunion.

      Luc waited for the racing beat of his heart to slow, for clarity to return to his brain. He’d been so overwhelmed by the power of his response to her he’d barely been able to think, but now he realised he was crushing Belinda. He rolled off her and wrapped his arm about her slender waist, dragging her half over