‘You were untouched?’ he said, the question coming out on a tortured rasp.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have told you.’
‘Yes, but it is too late now,’ he said.
She didn’t know what he meant. Was he angry with her? But he didn’t sound angry, just stunned.
He touched her cheek, cradled her face.
‘Am I hurting you?’
It did hurt a little, he was so large and hard inside her. But she didn’t want to lose the connection.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to feel the pleasure again.’
He buried his face into her neck, pressed his lips to the sensitive skin under her ear, and circled her breast with his thumb. Teasing, tempting, until the tendrils of sensation returned.
‘You must tell me if it hurts,’ he said as he grasped her hips, anchoring her to him.
The arrows of sensation darted into her sex, devastating and demanding, echoing the same relentless rhythm as he drew out and sank back.
He rocked his hips, further, faster, nudging a place deep inside her, triggering a new tsunami of sensation.
Kasia sobbed. The storm was so much stronger and wilder this time, whipping at her skin, making every pulse point ache.
The pleasure overpowered her, battering her body and making her heart swell. She clung to him, the only solid object in the storm—just like before, her staggered mind cried, when he had cocooned her as the sandstorm had raged.
She screamed as he drove her over that final ledge and she plunged into the abyss, exquisite joy bursting everywhere.
She heard him shout as he collapsed on top of her, and his seed spurted into her womb.
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Raif struggled to control the vicious punch of his heartbeat, and forced his fingers to release their death grip on Kasia’s hips.
Shame and horror galloped on the heels of groggy afterglow as he withdrew from the tight clasp of her body and she flinched.
He had climaxed inside her, he had not intended to do so. But even as he grasped the humiliation of that, far worse was the knowledge that as soon as he had plunged into her to the hilt, and destroyed her virgin state, he had bound them both to a solemn covenant they could not break.
Why hadn’t he taken the precautions he always took, to research a woman’s background, to ask her the questions that would protect them both?
Because he had been desperate to have her, to claim her, something had been driving him as soon as he had stepped from the water this morning and seen her watching him, her eyes dazed with arousal. Maybe even before that. Had it been driving him as soon as he had spotted her, standing by her Jeep, her amber eyes sparkling with fear and defiance? Or as he had clawed his way back from the nightmare, coaxed by her soft voice and soothing fingers?
However, the beast had been awakened, and the destruction it had wrought—on his life, on hers—could not be undone.
Where he would have expected panic or even resentment, all he felt now was numb and strangely ambivalent about the inevitable repercussions.
Lying on his back, he stared at the ceiling of the tent, the rich fabrics, the dappled sunlight. Everything looked as it had when he had woken an hour ago, but now his whole life, and hers, would be different.
He had played with fate too many times before, he had known the risks always, had been so careful to guard against them, but with Kasia it had never even entered his head. Was that significant? Was there some comfort in knowing their fates had already been sealed?
‘Is everything okay?’
He turned to find her watching him, her hands clasped against her breasts, the rings on her fingers glinting.
The surge of renewed yearning was unmistakeable even as his mind reeled with the implications of what had just transpired. He examined her artless expression, looking for signs of duplicity.