The moment stretched into infinity as Ranelaw angled his hips and slowly pushed inside Antonia. Immediately he experienced that sense of homecoming. As though in all the turbulent world, this was the place he belonged.
She was taut, trembling, drawing him in. Her face was strained as though, like him, she recognized the importance of this joining.
Even though the need for completion blared in his head like a company of trumpets, he resisted the urge to thrust.
Take her. Take her. Take her.
But the tenderness that lit his passion like the last glow of sunset made him pause, take his time, ensure her pleasure. Beneath his physical hunger lurked a need to cherish this woman, with her spirit and beauty.
She sighed, a shaky exhalation, and shifted to take more of him. She linked her hands behind his neck. “Nicholas, don’t play games.”
Again the sound of his name pierced him to the bone. Such effortless power she exerted. “I’m trying . . . to demonstrate control,” he muttered.
“I don’t care,” she said roughly, arching with a restless ardor that set his pulse thundering. Her squirming promised to hurtle him over the edge.
He gritted his teeth and bent her knees around his hips. The change in position squeezed the head of his cock. He bit back a tormented groan. And tried to remember why he didn’t claim her in one deep lunge. “I do care.”
I do care . . .
Brief clarity blasted through the scarlet fog of passion. God save him, he did care about her. As more than a willing bed partner, magnificent as she was in his arms.
He barricaded himself against the unwelcome revelation. Easy when this woman rocketed good intentions to the skies.
Had she even heard his broken, unprecedented confession? He set out to make her forget his foolish words, drown their echo in passion. But whatever he did, the reverence underscoring his every touch declaimed the unwelcome truth.
He cared for her.
Desperate to stifle discomfiting emotion, he inched further. She was hot as a furnace and drenched with desire. Her breath emerged in frantic gusts and her fingernails raked his shoulders. The sting was negligible compared to the agony in his balls as he battled to delay possession. To tease her into pleasure.
Although this didn’t feel like anything as trivial as teasing. This union sent the planets spinning from their orbits.
She whimpered and her fingernails dug deeper. He’d emerge from this night as bloody as if he’d fought off an angry tigress.
Oh, yes, she was a tigress. He’d always loved that about her.
His muscles screaming, he made another incremental advance. Her choked whimper combined distress and pleasure. The sound roared through his blood.
More minuscule progression. His vision narrowed to a tunnel. He saw only Antonia. Her skin gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. Her breasts shook with the shuddering force of each breath. Her hands opened and shut on his shoulders in frantic supplication.
With a clumsiness born of frustration, she twined her legs around his buttocks, forcing him down. Resistance was excruciating, but resist he did.
“Please . . .” she begged in a cracked voice. “Oh, please . . .”
Her unabashed need jolted hunger through him. He couldn’t delay much longer. Red lights flashed behind his eyes as he struggled for one last, quaking moment of restraint before he yielded to the whirlwind.
From his depths emerged words he’d never thought to speak to a woman. In a final flash, before he sank into mindless passion, he recognized this was why he shoved her so pitilessly to the brink.
“Say you’re mine,” he growled in a voice he didn’t recognize. “Damn it, say you’re mine, Antonia.”
She hardly seemed to hear. She’d retreated into sensation. Each breath emerged as a strangled moan and she tossed her head side to side against the pillows. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. She looked as though he tortured her.
He rose to his knees and shifted his hands to her hips, hauling her into him without giving her what she wanted. She wriggled, sliding closer with a sinuous strength that tested his last shreds of control.
“Say it,” he repeated in that same guttural voice.
“Nicholas . . .” she whispered in helpless pleading. Her hands left his shoulders and closed like shackles around his straining forearms.
“Say it . . .”