He entered her slowly, pausing for her slick body to move past the sharp sting of his presence before he pressed deeper, inch by inch, his pace deliciously teasing, luring her to lift her hips and meet his as she stretched to accommodate him.
The thick pressure of him inside her was a wholly new experience, his heat a pulsing rod, radiating warmth from her core outward. Her heart beat in time with its pulse, and the rhythms of their bodies connecting and syncing threatened to dance her into oblivion once again.
She gasped his name and he increased his pace, sliding deeper and deeper into her with each stroke. The veins in his neck and arms were pressing taut against his skin, his own breathing becoming choppy and irregular.
Sensing he was nearing the same peak, she locked her ankles around his back, angling her hips to allow him even deeper access, driven by primal instruction. He growled in response and the sound sent a wild thrill of possessiveness through her. Tightening her arms around his back, she dug her nails into him, marking him as hers even as he irrevocably claimed her body with each thrust.
“Ay,Dio, Mina!”
The words were ripped free from his lips, their strained tenor nudging her own system ever closer toward the edge they both teetered on. They moved in sync, drawn together by a kind of magnetism that had nothing to do with poles, their breath coming fast, their bodies slick with sweat.
A jumbled assortment of words rose in her mind and slipped between her parted lips. “Yes. Keep going. Don’t stop.”
He obliged, maintaining a pace that was driving her crazy with no sign of flagging, his endurance and stamina obviously a match for the demands of her body.
And demanding it was. Inexperience seemed to have no effect on its sense of entitlement to the pleasure she knew only he could provide. The bonds that held them together made this her right and, overtaken as she was by the sensations it set off, she had every intention of exercising it.
“Mina, Mina, Mina...” Her name was a chanted prayer on his lips, a desperate litany dancing torturously along her nerve-endings, each utterance a lick of fire.
Tension screwed his body tight and he sped up, no longer holding back the force of his own need. She felt the edge of his control in every cell of her body, its rigid urgency weaving them even closer together, binding them toward a fall that would obliterate them both.
“Zayn...” His name on her lips was its own form of begging—a plea for him to carry them into oblivion together.
He obliged, surging into her, plunging them both over the edge, until they dissolved into twin waves, each pulsing deep inside as he emptied himself into her, every heated jet shattering them both into millions of little pieces.
Undone, Mina fell back into the plush mattress she had only just noticed. Zayn dropped to his elbows, his arms still bracketing her, his body hovering just above hers.
A laugh bubbled out of her. She doubted laughing was standard pillow-talk, but the sound had escaped before she’d had the presence to be self-conscious enough to stop it. And it felt good.
Still smiling, she looked up at him and said, “You can relax. You’re not going to crush me.”
Something like hope flashed across his gaze before he bent down to catch her lips with his. This kiss wasn’t the passionate demand of his earlier kisses. Instead it was a soft command, infused with warmth, that wrapped around her from the inside out and held her there.
When he pulled away, though, anything she thought she’d seen was gone, replaced by the charm of the practiced grin he flashed at her before collapsing on her dramatically. He rolled off quickly, then reached for her again as they settled side by side.
Still wondering at that look she’d seen in his eyes, she nestled closer to him, for the first time in her life unwilling to ask a question and risk breaking a moment in the name of curiosity.
Hints of that strange warmth were creeping back into her skin, and now that she’d seen where following sensation could lead, she wanted to follow where these took her as well.
“Are you sore?” Zayn asked.
The question had her cheeks heating, even after the experience they’d just shared. “I’m comfortable, thank you,” she said, her voice taking on a prim note she couldn’t seem to hold back.
Holding her as he was, she felt his low chuckle ripple through his entire frame. “It’s a reasonable thing to ask after a woman’s first time.”
Mina’s body flushed a hot red. “Who’s to say it was my first time?”
Laughing, he pulled her closer. “I am, Minaamora.”
“Hymen lore is mostly that—lore,” she said tartly.
“I don’t claim any expertise in the mythology,” he said, then paused before continuing in a dry voice, “But I felt yours.”
“Oh.” Well, she hadtriedto save her dignity.
After a long pause, he asked, “Are you embarrassed?” His voice held surprise.
Mina opened her mouth to deny it, but the automatic response seemed foolish, given the circumstances. Instead, she said, “A little. At a certain point virginity becomes a bit sad.”