Slowly. Deliberately.
She stopped breathing when, reaching the tops of her thighs, he paused. Then his hands left her.
She sucked in a breath—lost it when he opened his mouth and drew one tortured nipple deep, and suckled. Her shattered cry echoed through the room.
Then she felt his left hand close about her hip, holding her steady once more. His other hand returned to her mons, with a strong, firm stroke brushed over her curls, then reached beyond.
He opened her, explored her, tracing the entrance to her body while he continued to suckle her breasts, first one, then the other, constantly racking the tension that held her tighter. The emptiness inside her expanded, waiting for him to slake it. Nerves flickering, she waited, breath bated, expecting the slow penetration of his fingers, needing his touch, wanting it.
It didn’t come.
She was ready to beg when his hand left her. Desperate, she caught her breath on a sob, felt the fingers wrapped about her hip dig in, anchoring her. Releasing her breast, he lifted his head, found her lips—took them. Ravaged them.
Her world teetered, rocked, then she realized on a rush of quivering relief that his other hand was at his waist, flicking the buttons free. He laid the flap of his trousers open. She immediately went to press closer, to sink down and take him in.
His hands gripped her hips, held her still for an instant, poised as he adjusted himself to her. She felt the broad head of his erection touch her, press fractionally in.
Eyes tight shut, her whole body a mass of urgent, heated need, she tried to gasp through the kiss.
He pulled her down onto him. Impaled her.
Her senses shattered.
He was fully aroused, engorged, more rigid unforgiving iron than velvet.
A low moan escaped her; he lifted her and ruthlessly drew her down again. Further, this time, so she took more of him. He thrust deeper, shifted beneath her, then his hands were at her hips, sculpting her legs, lifting them, rearranging them. As he wished. As he wanted.
He didn’t ask, didn’t order. He lifted her knees and wound her legs about his waist, leaving her helpless with no purchase to move.
Totally in his control, totally at his mercy.
He showed none; for her part, she asked no quarter.
All she wanted was him deep inside her, and he gave her that, as much as she wished, as much as she wanted.
Arms twined about his neck, she clung as he moved her. He set a steady rhythm, hard and deep, the head of his staff nudging her womb. She felt so full of him, as if he was pressing against her heart—and he only drove deeper, sure and true.
He held her to their kiss, tongues tangling, mouths merged.
Held her on his lap, naked and exposed, more vulnerable in the moonlight than she’d ever been.
More his.
All his.
When he finally released her lips and returned his attentions to her breasts, she let her head fall back, eyes closed.
Tensing as he again teased her nipples until they ached, then suckled anew, hard enough to make her fight to swallow a scream.
The next time, she lost the fight.
He was lifting her, working her on him, around him; simultaneously he was feasting at her breasts. She couldn’t take much more stimulation, more of the sensations he was ruthlessly pressing on her, heightened, made infinitely more powerful by their position.
She licked her lips, managed to gasp, “Take me to the bed.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “No. Here. Like this.”
His voice, all she could hear in it, very nearly made her weep.
With joy, with a pleasure that was far beyond the physical.
Need—simple, abiding, far deeper than she’d expected.
Never before had he been like this, never before had he dropped all pretence, every last vestige of sophistication, and allowed her to see so far, so clearly, to see that naked need. To know by her own experience so no lingering doubt could remain what truly drove him.
She wanted to say the words. They welled in her chest, pushed up through her throat, but she swallowed them. If she told him that…
She had no wits left with which to think; instinct was her only guide. So she left the words unsaid, sobbed instead as her body started to convulse.
And he slowed.
Thrust harder, deeper, but slower.
So she felt every tiny slither as her senses unraveled, felt every last fraction of her helplessness as she climaxed more powerfully than she ever had before.
Tony raised his head and watched her, her ivory limbs silvered by the moonlight as she came apart in his arms. He drank in the sight, one he’d needed, one the prowling beast inside him had simply had to have.
Sunk to the hilt in her body, bathed in its scalding heat, he set his jaw and relentlessly drove her through the longest, most extended climax he’d ever forced on any woman. The soft strangled cries that fell from her lips were balm to his raging soul; the ripples of her release, the contractions that beckoned, her body helplessly gripping and releasing his erection, soothed that most primitive side of him.
It would be an easy matter to finish with her there, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Tonight he needed more.
He waited until her muscles relaxed, until she was limp, wholly pliant in his arms. Then he lifted her from him, simultaneously stood, and carried her to the bed. He laid her on the coverlet, then stepped back and stripped off his clothes.
Then he joined her.
Propped beside her, he ran a hand down over her back, over the smooth globes of her bottom. Slowly, surely, he roused her again, then positioned her curled over her knees before him. He entered her slowly, eyes closed, savoring every fraction of an inch as her soft, swollen sheath closed about him.
Then he rode her.
Slowly at first, then without restraint.
Until she was sobbing, hair threshing as she struggled for breath, incoherent in her need, totally wild, completely wanton.
She was usually neither; that last rein of restraint she’d not before released had snapped, broken.
He savored every second of her abandonment, of her complete and absolute surrender, listened to her cries as she fell from the peak—then found his own surrender beckoning.
This time he went willingly. He knew, in some dark corner of his mind, just what he’d been doing. Knew it wouldn’t work.
Didn’t care.
He’d had to do it—to show her all there was, to tempt that side of her he didn’t think she realized she possessed. She was a deeply sensual woman, but exploring her sensuality, opening her eyes to its true nature, had only more clearly demonstrated his own weakness, his own vulnerability.
This was one battlefield on which he was helpless. This was one fight in which there was no enemy.
Only surrender.
On a groan, he did, gave her all he was, all he could ever be.
Spent, he collapsed, then gathered her to him. He’d given her far more than his body. He’d lost his soul. And his heart. And perhaps even more.
