“Rico.” She closed her eyes against that betrayal, wanting him to fall back into the miasma with her. She slid her touch between them, seeking the shape of him. So taut and smooth, damp on the tip, tight at the base.
His breathing grew ragged, telling her she was lacerating his control.
“Poppy.” His voice reverberated from somewhere in his chest, ringing inside hers. “Open your eyes.”
She didn’t want him to read how anguished she was. How her soul was right there, seeking his as her body yearned for the impalement of his flesh. It was too much.
“Let me see you.”
She opened her eyes and time slowed.
“Take me into you,” he commanded, biting at her chin, using his powerful thighs to spread hers apart.
She guided the tip of him against her folds, parting, distantly thinking she ought to be more self-conscious, but she was only joyful. She was aching. She needed this slick motion of him against her sensitive button of nerves. She hummed with pleasure, growing wetter. Needier. She gloried in the pressure as he slowly forged into her, so hot as to burn her slick, welcoming flesh.
And sweet. Oh, the sweet, sweet easing of the ache as he invaded. The breadth of him was exactly as she remembered it. There was even a moment of distress when she thought he was more than her body could accept. Her fear eased within the next heartbeat as he settled and pulsed within her.
They were both quaking.
She thought he might have asked her if she was all right, but she only pulled him into a kiss. This moment was utterly perfect. She never wanted it to end.
But after a few drugging kisses, he began to move and she remembered now that pleasure was music on a scale, some notes sharper than others, but every single one a necessary part of the beautiful whole.
There was the smoothness of his skin across his shoulders, the power in them so delicious against the stroke of her palms. There was the friction of his waist against her inner thighs as her legs instinctively rose to hug him. The stretch of tendons at her inner thighs somehow added to the sweet tension that gripped her.
There was his mouth, dragging new, glorious sensations against her throat and jaw, then sucking her earlobe and making her scalp tighten before he kissed her, letting her taste the blatant sexuality in him. There was the silk of his hair grazing her cheek when he sucked a love bite against her neck. The moans they released were the chorus to their dance and the colors behind her closed eyes were matched only by the erotic sensations streaking through her whole body as he thrust and withdrew.
The sensations where they joined were particularly acute. No friction or tenderness, just shivering waves of joy that began lapping closer together, coiling tension within her until the intensity became unbearable.
“Rico.” She writhed beneath him, fingernails digging into his buttocks, aching for more of him. Harder. Deeper.
“Only me.” He held her face between his hands. Possessive, no question, but she thought she tasted wonder in the graze of his lips across hers. A strange reverence that sent quivers of joy through her whole being.
“Only you,” sh
e agreed. But she didn’t think she could stand this level of tension. Trembles of arousal shivered over her, alarming in their intensity. “It’s too much.”
“Bear it,” he said with a savage flash of his teeth. “Feel what we do to each other.”
He moved in heavier strokes, her slippery heat gripping him instinctually, making the friction all the more acute and glorious. She gasped in breathless need as the universe opened with infinite possibility. Her hips rose to meet his and his shoulders shuddered with tension as he held back. Waited for her. Waited.
His eyes were black, his cheeks flushed. They were both coated in perspiration. She wanted to tear the flesh from his bones, she was at such a screaming pitch of arousal.
Then she tightened convulsively in the first notes of release. His control cracked. He moved faster, the bed squeaking beneath them. She didn’t care about anything but the purposeful thrusting that was driving her so close to the edge she was ready to scream with agony. Anticipation. Craven demand for satisfaction. Her thighs clamped around his waist and her arms clung to his shoulders. She was ready to beg.
He made a feral noise and pushed his hand under her tailbone, tilted her hips and struck a fresh spear of sensation through her, throwing her soaring off the cliff, her climax so profound she opened her mouth in a soundless scream, gripped in the paroxysm of complete ecstasy.
While his own body clenched and shuddered over her. Within her. His eruption became an intimate complement to her own, extending her pulses of pleasure so they simply held each other tight, letting the convulsions, the clenches and twitches and fading pulses of aftershock wash over them again and again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
POPPY WOKE DAZED and tender and alone. She sat up, looking for the baby monitor without finding it. It was daylight. The clock said 9:10 a.m.
She looked at the pillow, but even though both of their suitcases were still standing near the foot of the bed, his pillow was undented.
After making love, they had dozed, caught their breath, then made love again. She had a vague recollection of him leaving after that. She hadn’t been able to move or even ask where he was going, but apparently he hadn’t come back.
Which put a hollow ache in her chest.