His hand went between them and ripped open his shirt and pushed hers up, easily unclipping her bra and moving it out of the way. He looked down as he brushed his hair-roughened chest blatantly over the hard tips of her breasts and watched her shiver with reaction. His hips began to move upward over hers, throbbing with building passion as his eyes bit into hers.
“Tell me you don’t want to be filled,” he whispered at her lips. “Filled hard, and deep.”
She made a helpless sound and shivered again, totally helpless.
His hands went to her jeans, and then to his own, and seconds later, she felt his muscular, hair-roughened nudity against her softness with a sense of wonder. His body echoed the soft shiver of hers.
“Are you going to let me?” he whispered, drawing his hips against hers.
“We shouldn’t... Gene,” she choked.
“Yes, we should,” he whispered tenderly. His hands smoothed down her silky hips, under her thighs, and he lifted them, eased them apart with such gentleness that she couldn’t find a single protest.
He moved then, fitting himself to her in a silence that smoldered with promise.
She looked straight into his eyes and gasped softly as he began to possess her, with exquisitely gentle movements.
“Yes,” he whispered tenderly. “You see? It doesn’t hurt. No, don’t tense up. That’s it,” he coaxed. He took her mouth under his and cherished it. “That’s it, little one. I’m only going to love you. Isn’t that what you said you wanted? To be loved?”
She’d meant another kind of love entirely, but this was heaven. She wondered if he’d ever been so tender with anyone else, but he moved then, and she couldn’t think anymore.
He probed her body softly. “Yes, watch my eyes, Allison. You watched me, that night. Now I want to watch you.”
As he spoke, he moved, slow and easy movements that brought them first into stark intimacy, and then into contact, and then totally together. She gasped as she felt her body absorbing his, stunned with the ease of his passage, the readiness of her own body. She stared into his eyes with wonder, trying to feel guilt and shame, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t have imagined the expression on his lean face in her wildest dreams. His eyes were soft and warm, full of secret knowledge and tenderness and excitement.
He moved lazily against her, smiling as he settled on her body in a soft rhythm that lifted her very slowly to an ecstasy she’d never dreamed possible.
She cried out and pushed at his chest, frightened, but he continued the steady rhythm, increasing it now, his breathing suddenly changing as he watched her eyes.
“Don’t look away,” he said huskily. “I’m going to watch. Now, Allison. Now, little one. Now. Now!”
She made sounds she’d never made in her life as the sensations gathered and suddenly exploded. She wept in what sounded like anguished pain, her breath trapped in her throat, her face contorted like her convulsing body. He went with her every step of the way, only giving in when she was almost exhausted. He laughed even as his body corded over hers, laughed through the vicious ecstasy that suspended him above her in a shuddering anguish of satisfaction.
He ground out something and went rigid before he collapsed on her body, his heartbeat shaking both of them. He trembled, as she did, long afterward.
“I really should have closed the window,” he murmured dryly, feeling the heat in her cheeks. “Don’t curl up. We’re too far from the bunkhouse and the living room for anyone to hear you, and Dwight’s asleep. Did it hurt this time?” he asked, smiling as he lifted his head to search her eyes, knowing the answer already.
She swallowed. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She was still trembling a little, and so was he. They were both drenched with sweat, but her body felt deliciously boneless, although it still tingled with pleasure. “No, it was...” She searched for the right word as she looked into his soft eyes. “It was beautiful.”
“That’s how it should be,” he breathed at her ear, gathering her legs in the muscular cage of his as he kissed her tenderly. He lifted his head. “I hope you weren’t disappointed this time.”
“You were...watching,” she whispered, coloring. “Couldn’t you, well, see?”
“I saw, all right.” His face hardened with the memory and he kissed her roughly. “I’ve never watched before. I’ve never been satisfied like that before, either. If you don’t marry me, so help me, I’ll move in here with you until I shame you into saying yes.”
She swallowed. “Gene...”
He brushed back her damp hair. “Your conscience will beat you to death over this,” he said quietly, drawing her gaze along their bodies until she flushed and averted her eyes. “I didn’t force you or coerce you. It was mutual. We’ve got a lot going for us. I want to live with you, cupcake.”
“Sex wouldn’t be enough for you,” she whispered sadly. “And you’d have a long time to regret it.”
“I won’t regret it.” He brushed his mouth over her eyes. And he knew he wouldn’t. He was awash with new feelings, with a tenderness he’d never experienced before. He studied her quietly. “You’ll be everything I ever needed, or wanted. I’ll take care of you until I die. And someday, somehow, I’ll make you glad you said yes.”
Those words echoed in her mind long after they’d dressed and gone downstairs to announce their engagement. Allison couldn’t decide
