Him.
She let out a sharp, tremulous cry when she made the poignant realization. It was heaven to fall into the dizzying depths of desire, but it was a pain unlike anything she’d ever known to know that it would never, could never last.
“Shhhh,” she heard him soothe, and she realized in her dazed lust and need that he’d stopped photographing her and knelt next to her on the blanket. He stroked her sun-warmed back with his hand. “I’ve turned off the camera, Sherona.”
“Then hurry,” she whispered hoarsely, her lips feeling swollen and sensitive.
She thought that given their frantic state that he’d take her with the force of a locomotive, but he didn’t at first. She keened softly when he entered her slowly, his girth stretching her tissues, making her grind her teeth at the pleasure spiked with just a touch of pain. He caressed her bottom and her back with one hand as if he wanted to quiet her clamoring nerves at the same time he excited them into a frenzy.
The moment his engorged cock filled her, throbbing deep inside her, and his balls pressed against her hypersensitive sex, Sherona exploded in climax. She quaked as pleasure tore at her, freeing her from the captivity of her need and enslaving her to it, as well.
She distantly became aware of him murmuring to her tensely as she came.
“That’s right. Come on my cock. I’ve captured you, beautiful. Now we’re in each other’s blood, and I’ll fuck you like you’re mine. All mine,” he grated out.
Then he began to move, proving the truth of his words. She was his, and he was proving that to her, fucking her with the sort of barely restrained energy and abandon that typified Chance, branding her very spirit with his mark.
Chapter Nine
After their scalding first joining, they made love again, this time with Sherona free of her bonds, loving Chance in the golden evening sun just as fully as he loved her. In the aftermath, he held her against his naked chest and stroked her hair.
“Come with me tomorrow,” he said.
Sherona blinked open her eyes from her satiated doze. He touched the side of her face, prompting her to look up at him. The sunlight was turning his hair into a burnished gold.
“To the airport in St. Louis?”
“No,” he said, a smile twitching at his mouth. “To the Middle East. Not just there, though,” he added, his grin fading. “I want to show you the world. I want to see your face when you look at the pyramids for the first time and the Simonas Petras Monastery on the Athos peninsula and the Italian coast and Ha Long Bay . . . all of it. It’ll be like discovering the world all over again. I wan
t to see it all again through your eyes.”
For an unguarded second, she pictured it—the two of them standing side by side, staring enraptured at the miracles of man and nature, making love in exotic lands, the smell of spice and adventure in the air. She’d dreamed of traveling her entire life. To do so in the company of Chance would be a fantasy she’d never even begun to conjure in her imagination until now.
But of course, it was just a dream.
“That’s lovely of you to ask,” she said, moved by his invitation.
“Then say yes.”
“Chance, I can’t,” she exclaimed, wincing when she saw his handsome face darken with disappointment.
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t afford a trip like that in a million years, and even if I could, I couldn’t leave Derek alone.”
“Why not? Isn’t he on his own when he’s at college?”
“Well, yes, but that’s different. At a university, there’s some kind of supervision built in.” Chance gave her an incredulous glance. “There is. At least if he gets into trouble, he has places where he can go.”
“Sherona,” he said, giving her a give-me-a-break glance as he stroked her hair, “everyone in Vulture’s Canyon would rally to help Derek if he should need it. But if you can’t come this summer, maybe you can travel with me in the fall when Derek is at school. I’ll come back to do the cookbook photography, and then we’ll leave after that,” he said, staring off into the distance as if he were working out all the logistics in his mind.
“Chance, I can’t do something like that.”
“I don’t see why not,” he said, his manner completely practical.
She rolled her eyes at him in fond exasperation. As a wealthy heir to a fortune and a famous photographer, Chance didn’t even consider finances a major issue in making decisions. Of course, it was different for Sherona.
Quite different.