Every time with him it got better. Excruciatingly better.
“I can’t... Please... You...you... Now...”
He understood, gave her what she needed. The sight of his face seizing, his roars echoing her screams, the feel of him succumbing to the ecstasy she gave him, the hard jets of his climax inside her. They hit her at her peak, had her unable to endure the spike in pleasure, then everything dimmed, faded....
* * *
Heavy breathing and slow heartbeats echoed from the end of a long tunnel as the scents of satisfaction flooded her lungs. Awareness trickled into a body so sated it was numb.
She felt only one thing. Raiden. Still inside her, even harder, larger. She opened lids weighing half a ton each, saw him swim in and out of focus. He was still kneeling between her legs, her buttocks propped on his thighs, her legs around his. One of his palms was kneading her breasts, the other gliding over her shoulders, her arms, her belly.
“You are mine. Mine. As Scarlett. As Hannah. As Katya.”
She lurched at hearing her real name on his lips. She’d known he must know it now, but hearing him say it...
She moaned as he ground deeper inside her, reaching the point where the familiar expansion turned into almost pain. An edge of dominance that was glorious, addictive, overwhelming, even a little frightening. The idea of all that he was, melding with her, at her mercy as she was at his, filled volumes inside her, body, mind and soul.
“Say it. You’re mine. All of you. Every version of you.”
“There was only ever one version. The version born to love you.”
She truly didn’t know what happened after that.
Raiden devoured her, finished her, then did so again and again.
It was as though his passion had always been curbed, but now all his shackles had been broken. He showed her what it could be like with him fully unleashed.
It was beyond description.
After the nightlong conflagration, she lay in his arms in a stupor, every cell in her body overloaded with bliss. At least before the ticking timer inside her resumed the countdown.
Her ten weeks were almost up. No matter what he’d said now, how he felt, his plans were more important, couldn’t be changed. And she’d have to exit his life soon.
But she couldn’t even contemplate being cut off from him forever.
There was only one way she wouldn’t be.
Unsteadily, she struggled to prop herself over his endless chest. Looking down at him, she marveled again that all this beauty and power could be hers, even if temporarily.
Then she made the tentative bid for permanence.
“I want to amend our arrangement, Raiden. I want to remain your lover after you’re married.”
Eight
Raiden sat up slowly, not only because Scarlett’s offer had rocked him to his core, because he felt he’d drained his very life force inside her. Four times.
After that statement, that she’d been born to love him, he didn’t know what had happened to him. It was as if every iota of control he’d ever practiced had been building up an opposite wildness, and only a measure of that had been released in the past with her, probably because on some level he’d felt there had been something not quite right. Since they’d been together again, their whole situation had rationed his uninhibitedness. Then she’d made that declaration, and it had been as if the dam inside him had burst.
The way he’d taken her, in a sustained eruption of raging hunger, the way she’d surrendered unconditionally, and the explosive pleasure they’d wrung from each other... It had been transfiguring, transcendent.
After that last time he’d taken her in the shower, he’d taken her back to bed and had been feeling another cataclysm building. Then she’d staggered up and made that out-of-the-blue offer and everything had dissipated with shock.
She was now looking at him avidly, her hair hanging around her gleaming shoulders in thick, wet locks, her lips and body showing the effects of his fierce possession.
He’d never seen anything more beautiful, known anything more overpowering.
The seductive smile playing on her kiss-swollen lips didn’t reach her eyes. Those were faltering as she painted his chest in caresses. “Powerful men in Japan almost always have mistresses, and it’s accepted as long as they’re discreet and don’t disgrace their wives and families. I will abide by any precautions you need to maintain our secret.” She pouted in a rickety attempt at reprimand. “You’ll certainly have to curb the impulses you’ve been having of late, popping up wherever I am, taking me out or home for all to see.”