His gaze was holding her own, his finger moving rhythmically within her. Her throat was too tight to speak.
The rhythm escalated. “Tell me.”
“
His thumb pressed hard on that sensitive button, his finger delved deeper. “All of it.”
Elspeth’s head was thrashing back and forth on the pillow, her teeth biting her lower lip to keep from crying out. “I want you, all of you.”
“You’re damn right you do.” His hands gentled, but his eyes were smoky-hot boring down at her. “And I’m going to keep it that way. I’m going to take you every way there is, and then I’m going to start over. I’m going to keep you so hot, all you’ll want is what I’m going to give you now.” His chest was moving with his labored breathing, and she could see the pulse leap in his temple.
He raised up on his knees and his rampant manhood was there before her. “See? I’m like this whenever I look at you, whenever I think of you, whenever I’m in the same room with you.” He took her hand and brought it to him.
Warmth, smooth hardness, pleasant to the touch. Her grasp unconsciously tightened around him.
His features convulsed, the cords of his neck stood out and he threw his head back.
His nostrils flared as he tried to force air into his lungs. “Let me go, Love. I can’t take this right now. Later.”
She reluctantly released him. Beautiful. That part of him was as beautiful as the rest of him.
His face was heavy, flushed, as he looked down at her disappointed face. “You like me?” His lids half-closed, veiling his eyes. “You want me again?”
She nodded, staring up at him helplessly.
His hands gently widened her legs. “Here?” His palm covered her. Heat, possession, emptiness.
He knew. Dominic knew what she did not. She could see it in his face, feel it in the warmth of his hand. He knew how to stop the hunger and the fever. “Yes,” she whispered.
He was there, nudging gently, his hands once more performing that fiery magic. “I’ll try not to hurt you,” he said thickly. “I can’t promise, but I’ll try.”
He had said that once before, she remembered dimly, and it had something to do with the reason why she should fight him. But it wasn’t the prospect of pain that had frightened her. It was something else.
He was entering her body. Fullness. Fever. His hard length fighting the tightness resisting it. On Dominic’s face was an expression of terrible pleasure. His eyes shut as his hands closed on her breasts. “You’re
Was that bad? It didn’t seem so, for he wasn’t trying to withdraw. In fact, he was pushing harder, farther into her. Why had he said it would hurt? There was no pain, just this exquisite fullness to combat the hunger.
He stopped, his eyes opening slowly. They were glittering, wild, almost unseeing with the pleasure enfolding him. He trembled; a shudder rippled through him. “It’s time.” He lowered himself over her, resting his elbows on each side of her. “Open your mouth, love. Take me into you.”
Her gaze clung to his face as it lowered slowly toward her. There was nothing else in the room, nothing else in the world but his dark face and his body joined to hers.
“Merge with…” She forgot what she had been about to say as her lips parted and she took his tongue deep within her. He groaned low in his throat, but the sound was lost as their tongues met, toyed, blended.
He plunged forward, ripping aside the last barrier that separated them.
Pain, hot pain. Her cry was muffled against his lips. Then completion, fullness, delicious containment. One.
He lifted his head and looked down at her. “It’s over. Did I hurt you?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t matter.” She lay there, full of him, and pushed up on her elbows to look down at their joining. How smoothly he fit within her, just like the statue she had seen in that temple in India. Yet the fit was the only smoothness about this jagged, pulsating, hungry intruder. She fell back on the bed. Her breasts beneath his hands were full, swollen, jutting up to touch his palms. “Is it truly over? There seems to be something… missing.”
He flexed slowly within her. “I only meant the pain was over.” He moved again and smiled with savage pleasure as she inhaled sharply and then moaned deep in her throat. “This is what it’s all about, Elspeth. This is why you came to me.”
She hadn’t come to him, he had come to her, but it didn’t seem to be worth arguing about at the moment. Her hands tightened on his shoulders as he began to move, buck, plunge with a rhythm that felt as if it were tearing her apart. She panted, her nails digging into his flesh. Hot liquid heat. Hunger. She was expanding inside, bubbling like the Sun Child, molten, and building toward an explosion.
“Elspeth.” Her name was a groan on his lips, spoken between clenched teeth. She could see the glow of perspiration on his throat and chest and the pungent scent of bourbon and musk surrounded him. “Mine. You belong to me.” He drove deep within her and stopped. “Say it.” His breathing was so labored he could scarcely get the words out.
She knew what he wanted with an instinct as ancient as time. Even though the haze of heat, the rhythm that was storming at her body, she knew what he needed. “Yours.” Her voice was scarcely audible, a mere wisp of a sound.
“Always?”
“Always.”
He began to move again, harder and hotter, cradling her buttocks to lift her up to receive each forceful thrust.
Tears were running down her cheeks. The world was trembling, the tension growing, his thrust deepening. Unbearable pleasure. Exquisite. Titanic. How could it go on without destroying them both? Was this magnificent destruction of the senses when she had feared? No, she would have been helplessly enthralled with it as she was now. Then what?
“Dominic.” Her tongue moistened her dry lips. It was difficult to speak, but she must. “The bairn.”
At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. The rhythm didn’t lessen, nor did the intense pleasure on his face. Then he looked down at her and shook his head to clear it. “What?”
“The bairn. What if-”
His fingers moved to her lips. “Hush.” A smile so beautiful it took her breath away lit his dark face. “Mine,” he said softly. “Do you think I don’t know how to care for what is mine?”
No, Dominic would love and care for his child as he did for Killara. He would give it all his devotion and protection. Dominic would not let his bairn suffer hurt or humiliation. “Yes.” She closed her eyes and let the sorcery of emotion flow over her. “You would know, Dominic.”
A pang of tenderness shot through him, tempering his passion. “You have my promise, Elspeth.” He kissed her lips with a sweetness that shook her even more than his raging possession. “Content?”
When she nodded, he once more started the rhythm that brought not contentment but soaring hunger and desire. She gasped, her hands fluttering up to clasp him.
“Elspeth, I think…” His eyes were glazed, his voice a hoarse guttural growl. He moved faster, deeper, the world was spinning, devoid of air, enveloped in flame. “
What did he mean? She was already taking him, all of him. He was part of her. Then she realized what he meant as the spinning increased before becoming a dizzying blue, snapping the tension and throwing them into radiant, pulsating darkness.
“Jesus!” Dominic’s chest was rising and falling as he tried to get his breath. He didn’t want to leave her, he never wanted to leave her. Yet if he didn’t, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t collapse on top of her. “Damn that bourbon.” He carefully moved off her and drew her into his arms.
His head fell to the pillow, still covered by the brown velvet coverlet. Why hadn’t she removed the coverlet when she came to bed? he wondered dimly. Now they were too exhausted to bother. His lips brushed her temple. “Are you cold?”
