Instantly her body trembled, and stiffened, and finally shattered all around him. She was exploding as though he’d driven her beyond all control, crying out his name as though she knew it too.
‘I didn’t want it this way,’ she whispered regretfully when she finally came back to herself.
‘Then you gave a rather good performance that you were enjoying it,’ Tak murmured, standing above her, his desire still painfully obvious.
Effie struggled to lift herself on to her elbows. ‘I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.’ She blushed prettily. ‘I think it’s obvious that I did. More than enjoy it. I just meant I wanted both of us to...’
‘We don’t have protection,’ he ground out, wishing his body wasn’t urging him to ignore such a substantial obstacle. ‘I didn’t bring anything. I told you—I didn’t bring you to Paris for this.’
And he had no intention of sleeping with anyone else whilst he felt this way about Effie. What did that say about their non-relationship?
‘But I came prepared.’ She offered a wry smile, fishing something out of her bra.
It took him a moment to recognise it for what it was. Then something slammed into his chest. Hard.
‘Then it’s a good job I’m not finished.’
Her eyes flew to his and she twisted her mouth nervously. For the first time it occurred to Tak that but for that one time in her youth—a one-off fumble which had resulted in Nell—Effie had no idea what she was doing.
For some reason that knowledge ignited some primal sense inside himself. She was rare, unique, otherwise untouched. She’d kept herself that way out of her own choice. She truly was his.
With a groan, he took the small packet from her fingers, lowering himself on the bed and moving over her body, his arms either side of her bearing his weight. Every inch of him was alive to every touch. Revelling in the way her hands roamed his body constantly, as though she couldn’t get enough either.
She skimmed her hands over his chest, then his shoulders, and down over his back, tracing his braced shoulder muscles and the way his body tapered to his waist.
For his part, he feasted on her mouth, taking his time, giving her the chance to come down from her orgasm and beginning the process of building her up to another. He rained kisses on her face, on the bridge of her nose, over her eyebrows and to her temples. He pressed his lips to the sensitive spots below her ear and at her throat until her nails dug into his shoulders and she whispered for more.
Tak was only too happy to oblige.
He bent his head, pulling down one bra cup to expose her breast, which he kissed and licked and finally sucked, and then turned his attentions to the other. Back and forth, he ignored the throb of his desire, the way he ached to plunge himself so deep inside her that neither of them would know where he ended and she began.
The rawness, the need with which he wanted Effie, was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Not least when she shifted and he nudged against her wetness. He feared he might be lost there and then.
It took him moments to open the wrapper and deftly slide on the condom, but it felt like an age, and then he settled back between her legs and eased himself close to her, his hand reaching down to stroke her silken folds and ensure she was ready.
He wasn’t prepared for her to wrap herself around him and draw him quickly inside, her muscles stretching around him as though she’d been made exclusively for him, clenching over him, her heat making him sear.
‘Easy, Effie...’ He barely managed to get the warning out.
‘I can’t.’ She lifted her hips, as though a slave to the rhythm they were setting on their own, completely independent of her. ‘I want this. I’ve wanted this for so long.’
As her hands moved down his back to clutch his backside, as if she must drive him even deeper inside her, Tak couldn’t stand it any longer. He slammed into her hard, again and again, and her cries urged him on as she rode out every wave with him. He moved his hand between them, stroking her, never letting up, and when he felt a shiver ripple through her body he pressed down hard and felt her orgasm take over.
For a while, he made himself hold on. Throwing her off the edge all by herself and watching her plummet, then soar. Waiting as she came back down to him. But before she could land he gave himself up to the moment, climaxing into h
er with a primitive sound which didn’t even sound like himself.
This time when she took flight he soared with her.
And he never wanted to come back to the ground.
* * *
‘It really must be something to be the King of Awake Craniotomies,’ Effie pondered at some point in the early hours, after he’d reached for her several times more, sating her, exhausting her, and then doing it all over again.
‘Hmm...?’
‘All those people at the conference today. They all came to hear you speak.’