their sensations fuse.
“Morning will come too soon,” she told him softly, feeling her resolve slip away. “Lie with me.” She was gripped with the sudden conviction that she must make the very best of this night with him.
A sigh shuddered along his length. “Things have changed. If we keep pursuing our Bond, what we feel will intensify and it may be more than we can recover from in a few hours.” But he braced his legs apart and trapped her with his thighs.
“Ben, we don’t know…. Who knows what time they’ve got, or what tomorrow’s going to bring?”
“No one,” he said into her hair, stroking her back from neck to waist and cupping her bottom. He lifted her against his pelvis.
“Can’t this—whatever we make of tonight—can’t it be because we want to be together? Without thinking about all the heavy stuff family expectations put on us?” If she was aggressive, so be it. She had always been too reticent when it came to showing how she felt about him.
“That’s more or less what you said the last time you wanted us to be together without any strings.” He raised his chin and looked down on her. “I can’t let you go, Willow. Not ever. I can’t live without you—I know that now.”
She knew it, too. She felt as if she bled inside at the thought of losing him, but she couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t change over time, and that would be even more unbearable.
“Why did you send me away before?” he asked, his face sad and nakedly honest.
Carefully, on tiptoe, she worked the band out to free his hair and let it fall to his shoulders. “You look like a warrior. I love your hair free. You’re a wild man when you’re like this.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
For a moment she regarded him seriously. “I can’t tell you, Ben. Except that it was out of…love, and fear. And I don’t know if I’m over the fear.”
He spread one big hand over the side of her cheek and head and turned her face up to his. “Does that mean you do know you’re not over the love?”
“I’m not going to lie. I can’t stop loving you. I never will—not that it looks as if I’ll be around long.” She gave a little laugh, but it didn’t sound convincing.
Absently, he stripped off the shirt. His broad, muscular shoulders and clearly defined chest shone. What low light did for Ben’s body ought to be against the law.
“You ought to be scared of the way you make me feel,” she said.
“You don’t know danger when it peers into your eyes, do you?” Ben said.
“Don’t I? Maybe I like danger.”
He took hold of her left arm and pulled her in front of him. When he sank to his knees, she stood over him, and he stopped her from joining him on the floor.
Willow had on white sweats and a pair of Mean ’n Green sneakers. She figured she didn’t make a sexy picture.
The way Ben looked at her suggested otherwise. He slid down the zipper on her jacket, starting slowly, but losing his control a little as the front parted and he saw the white cotton bra that was all she wore underneath.
He tossed her jacket aside. Her pants slid easily to her ankles, but then he had to stop and take off her shoes. She held his shoulders, but if the moment might have seemed funny at another time, it didn’t now. Her heart beat rapidly and hard, and despite standing in only her bra and panties, she was hotter than ever.
His own feet were already bare and she shucked his jeans fast.
One glance proved foreplay would depend on his control.
Maybe she didn’t want him to have any control.
Tossed over his shoulder, Willow couldn’t make any plans for moves of her own. Ben deposited her on the mattress, hooked her knees over his shoulders and plunged his mouth into the soft, moist warmth between her thighs. His tongue worked rapidly beneath her panties and flicked over the hard, swollen bud there.
Willow writhed. She heard the noises she made—like a squealing animal.
Ben had a capable tongue, a sexy, talented tongue. In seconds, with his hands covering her breasts, he brought her to pulsing readiness. She crossed her ankles behind his neck. Her mind wouldn’t work properly, and she didn’t try to change a thing.
Willow’s climax tore into her. She broke into a sweat that soaked her body. When she opened her eyes, Ben’s face leaned over hers, his eyes searing, flame-blue. His chest rose and fell with great breaths. She couldn’t stop her hips from rising and falling, or her breasts from stinging.
Ben flipped Willow to her feet, and she clung to him. “I’m going to fall,” she said.
“I won’t let you. Willow, say the word and there’s still time to stop.”
“Are you into torture?” she asked him.
“I don’t think I can be… I just don’t want to hurt you.” He had never looked more desperate. Longing mingled with apprehension. “I couldn’t bear it if I did.”
She undid her bra and shrugged it off.
Ben’s lips and teeth closed over a nipple, and she moaned, couldn’t stop herself. From his lips to her flesh and beyond, live shocks tore into her. She heard his panting, and the moan in his throat. In seconds they were both completely naked.
“Wait,” she breathed. “Wait, Ben, please.”
He pulled back, anxiety deepening the lines around his tensed mouth.
She tried to push him onto the mattress, but there was no moving him until he moved himself, never taking his eyes from hers.
Willow sat beside Ben, slipped her mouth over him. She used her teeth, slid the soft, wet insides of her cheeks along the length of him again and again, held his testicles and squeezed gently.
“Oh, my God,” he said through his teeth. “Oh, Willow, please.” His face contorted with pain but she didn’t feel any guilt. This was the prize they shared, the pain that pleased more than anything any “normal” person could hope for.
Her teeth, digging a little deeper, brought his pelvis against her lips in a frenzy. He squeezed her breasts, ran his hands over as much of her as he could reach.
Grabbing one of her ankles, he pulled her leg between his, then underneath him until they rode, her mound to the hard, insistent parts of him. He stretched her other leg along the length of him and took her toes in his mouth, sucking in rhythm to the beat of his hips.
Then he was inside her, gliding up, penetrating more deeply than she had imagined possible. He seemed to reach her womb. She wanted him to fill her up completely. Her arms fell loose and she splayed them. Ben’s muscles, with the power of a releasing crossbow, sent arrows that flamed and scorched their way through her body.
The rush of him inside her, the yell at his release, had her shaking and clinging to him convulsively. Before she could catch her breath, he turned her over, pushed his knees beneath her and massaged her clitoris with his fingers.
How could there be more white-hot sensation already? But there was. And need. Pulling on her knees, he slid her over the bulk of his thigh muscles and entered her again. “Willow,” he said, clear and strong. “I love you. You’re mine, Willow.”
She couldn’t form a single word. All that escaped her were jarring little groans with each fresh thud of their joined bodies.
They made love four times with only minutes between each soaring journey to satisfaction, between each provocative wound they lavished on one another.
Belly to belly, Willow collapsed on top of Ben. Their breathing rasped.
Willow trembled. “I wouldn’t change it,” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t even if I could.”
“We don’t know if there is only one person for each of us,” she said, and wanted to cry bitterly just with the thought she hated so much.
“Yes, we do.” His firm voice never wavered. “You must accept what is obvious, Willow. Somewhere, somehow, the Millets became creatures no one could bear to experience just once—or twice—or a thousand
