She wanted to hold him to her, but her arms were too weak to support herself on just one.
So she had to sit there, propped on her arms, and let him do what he wished to her. Let him taste her, savor her. He licked, laved, suckled. Her breasts, her shoulders, then her navel. The outer curve of her hip, the junction where thigh and hip met, the long upper sweep of her thigh.
While he lazily and unhurriedly claimed her with his mouth, his fingers continued to stroke between her thighs.
Until she thought she’d go mad.
At last he knelt between her knees. By then she was so heated, so tense, so desperate, she made not the slightest demur when he drew his fingers from her, slid his hands beneath her bottom and gripped, held her and shifted her, then replaced his fingers with his mouth, with his tongue.
Tasted her there, and as he had elsewhere, licked, laved, and suckled.
Slowly. Thoroughly. Unhurriedly.
She thought she might die.
He’d made love to her this way before, but not like this. Not with such intent control, such slow purpose.
The same purpose she suspected he’d had throughout-to possess her utterly. Completely.
Helpless, more alive than she’d ever been, more aware of the intimacy of the act than she’d thought possible, she had to lie back and let him do as he wished-let him love her as he would.
Let him overwhelm her senses and reduce her to mindless need, to a craving that reached to her bones.
Until she needed to feel him inside her with such desperation it hurt.
Until she was thrashing, sobbing, pleading.
Then he held her down and took her with his tongue.
Possessed her utterly. As he wished.
She heard herself scream, luckily breathlessly. A massive wave of heat rose, then broke over her and dragged her down. Into a whirlpool of fire, of flames that leapt and roared. The fragile furnace within her couldn’t contain the conflagration. It shattered, shards of heat flying down every nerve, eventually slowing and sinking into her flesh, to melt and warm.
As reality, still heated and flushed, returned, she felt battered and racked by the intensity of the release-the explosion he’d wrought.
That he wasn’t-wouldn’t be-finished with her, she knew. Even through the miasma of spent passion she could feel the familiar emptiness within. An emptiness she’d never felt except with him-an emptiness only he could fill.
She opened her eyes, through the shadows saw him walking toward her.
He’d shed his clothes, doused the guttering candle.
He was totally naked. Fully aroused.
He was hers.
She knew it-for the first time since they’d come together again, possibly the first time ever, she felt that in her bones.
She was too wrung out to move. She lay there and watched him come to her.
He reached the end of the bed, loomed over her, then he sank both fists into the coverlet on either side of her and leaned nearer to look into her face. He searched her eyes, then stated, “Don’t say a word. Don’t try to do anything.”
She simply blinked, and obediently held her tongue.
He eyed her suspiciously, but then drew back. Pressing his hands beneath her, he lifted her. Kneeling on the bed, he moved up it, then laid her back down with her head on the plump pillows.
He followed her down, and covered her.
Found her lips and covered them with his.
As his hands found her body and stroked.
She arched into him, inviting his touch-begging for it. He languidly traced, caressed, effortlessly possessed, and she sighed. She’d expected flames and their usual explosive passion, but this was loving of a different sort-strung out, nerves tense and aching-waiting for the next touch, the next kiss, the next act of communion.
Which always came. He was a dark, possessive male who loved her in the dark, who made her ache, then fed her, who commanded her senses, filled her mind, and took slow, unhurried possession.
Not just of her body. Not just of her mind.
He was familiar, yet not. He was different, and so was she. They were no longer the young lovers who’d found each other-their other halves, their soul mates-so easily. Too easily, perhaps.
Now they were older, wiser, now they both knew the value of what they’d had. Of what they’d lost.
Of what, she knew, he wanted to reclaim.
Find again, take again, hold again.
As she writhed beneath him, helpless and yearning, soothed by his hands, by his lips, by the slow build of heat that wrapped them about, that cocooned them in her bed, she honestly didn’t know if they would ever be that way again.
Only knew she would be with him in trying again.
In attempting to find their way forward again.
A different way, perhaps.
Like this.
Even though this was the bed she’d shared with Randall, he’d never been her lover. The man in her arms had been-still was-her one and only.
Her one and only love. If there was a way forward for them, she’d be a fool to turn away.
The moments rolled together as they tangled on her bed; she was no longer interested in rushing ahead. This enveloping, caressing warmth was new, precious; it held passion and desire, but also something deeper. Something finer.
She’d always been passionate, but this was passion on a different plane, a deeper desire, a stronger yearning.
Her hands spread on his back, she held him to her, shifted beneath him as she kissed him back-only to be overwhelmed by the kiss he returned, only to fall back and let him surge in and fill her mouth. Let him take it, mimicking the way he would take her body soon…
They’d held off as long as they could; she suddenly knew it-sensed he did, too. With his thighs, he spread hers wider, settled between; she felt the blunt head of his erection at her entrance.
She expected him to simply thrust in and fill her. Instead, he broke from the kiss.
His breathing as ragged as hers, he reached around, caught her hands, one in each of his, and dragged them up, anchoring them in the pillows above her head, locking them there in one hand.
Their gazes met. Across the few inches of heated shadows between them, their eyes locked, held.
With his free hand he reached down, gripped her hip, tilted her hips beneath him.
And entered her.
Slowly. His eyes on hers, holding her, his weight pinning her beneath him, he pressed into her body relentless inch by inch…so slowly she felt every second of his possession. Every tiny nuance as he penetrated her, stretching her sheath, filling her.
Completing her.
He didn’t stop until he’d filled her to the hilt.
His eyes still on hers, he drew back-slowly, totally controlled-held back for an instant, then surged slowly in again.
The friction was intense.
The sensations filled her mind.
She closed her eyes, arched beneath him.
He continued to fill her, to command her body and her, to swamp her senses with pleasure and delight until her fingertips burned.
Until her body was afire beneath his-and his burned, too.
Not with their usual flashfire, but with something more powerful. More intense, more all-consuming.
It surged from deep within them-finally wrenched all control from him.
