But then he wouldn’t have her here, slick and hot and sumptuous.
She screamed his name as his tongue teased the crease at her core.
Her fingers found his shoulders, her hands strong and capable, and she held onto him like a life raft when, in fact, he was the storm.
He couldn’t remember ever being this hard, this eager, this close to the edge from little more than the sound of her pleasure and a taste.
Of course, he couldn’t remember a taste quite like her before, either. And as she bulldozed the competition in his record book, he was taken aback at what was happening to him. She was mesmerizing him, luring him into a dazed stupor with every passing and savored second he spent with his hands on her, his mouth on her...and if he went further, if he steered them into a union, as was his undeniable plan, she would wreck him.
What was happening between them, what blossomed, was as far from the careless encounters of a sailor on leave as a lake from the ocean. This was the stuff of forever, and deeper connection, and baring real emotions. Everything paled in comparison to Hel because he had never felt this for another woman. Their bodies told him what their battle-weary hearts resisted: this was the stuff of love.
It was too late to change course now, though. Sometimes the only way out of a storm was through it.
He was ready for the tempest when she came apart the second time, lapping her up like a fool in the rain. Her thighs clenched around his head and he smiled against her, glorying in each and every one of her unintentional reactions, each reflexive tightening and release, each pulsing wave that carried her away with as much surprise as joy.
She would carry this memory of him with her forever. He’d make sure it was unforgettable.
He held her there, helpless to both his attack and her pleasure, until her hips relaxed in his hands and the pulses of her climax slowed, her breathing jagged and airy.
Again, he knew she thought she was done, wrung out. It was written in the boneless fall of her body, the dazed glimmer in her eyes.
Humming a long “mmmmm” against her, he began to trail kisses upward again, over her stomach, before stopping to shower her breasts with more attention. In no time at all, her soft sighs grew heavier, elongated and interspersed with drawn-out pauses, moments of time standing still.
While he kissed the plump underside of her breasts, his hand returned south, finding the heat of her core. Fingers once again playing along her entrance, his thumb found the little bud at the top that held the key to it all and pressed with gentle firmness, before beginning the alternating dance of pressure and release that would push her over the edge yet again.
If anything, she was more responsive. And why should he be surprised? Her body was a well-honed machine—of course, she responded to practice like a master. She was a true wonder.
He slipped one long finger inside as she moaned and her inner muscles clenched around him so hard he groaned, sweat beading on his forehead. It was absurd—she couldn’t be this tight and hot and not kill him. Her body was a vise around his finger, so snug the thought even flitted across his own mind. Would he fit?
He had always laughed the concern away in the past, as confident in the engineering of nature as he was in his endowment, but now, when it mattered more than it ever had, he doubted.
Would she be ready? Could she take him? He didn’t want to hurt her.
He slipped another finger in, stilling both digits to allow her time to adjust and stretch.
A tremor radiated from her center outward and he shuddered, unsure if he would make it for the first time in his life. His control had been ironclad the night three older friends had taken him to a house of ill repute to make a man of him.
Tonight, it threatened to break with each silken compression.
Would he survive it?
Whatever the answer, the time was at hand. Knowing throbbed in him as hard and hot as he was.
Rising over her, he was filled with an unfamiliar wave of possession. Eyes glittering, she stared up at him, unflinching and hungry despite having been sated time and again. She belonged to him and no one else.
She would let him in, and him alone. He could offer her a part of himself and never fear betrayal.
Without words, her body whispered the most tempting lure of all.You can trust me, it promised, and the incredible thing was, he believed he could.
The revelation was heady and powerful.
Reaching an arm between them, he gripped himself, already cloudy with his excitement. Then he ran his sensitive head along the same hot seam that his fingers had traced earlier, torturing them both with the electric waves each movement set off.
Breath catching, her fingers squeezed into his shoulders, when he paused at her entrance, pressing just slightly, holding there, breath, time, life itself on pause for the space of a heartbeat, before continuing the sweet agony of the caress.
She whimpered beneath him, hips lifting unconsciously inviting him deeper.
Where the strength came from, he could not say, but he held fast.