She pressed against him, body rooting for the next level of pleasure she sought if her mind didn’t yet know what it wanted and needed.
Maintaining the game was excruciating. He knew he could plunge into her at any moment and she would scream in relief, the fullness her body instinctively knew it craved achieved, but he did not.
Her sighs and moans became puffs of frustration and her eyes flew open, irritation as clear as the blue in her gaze. Faint pink danced across her cheeks, flushed and glowing as she was, and it was all he could do to hold the line.
His shaft virtually wept for release, but he denied them.
She shifted her hips, opening wider, giving him greater access. He groaned, muscles taut and screaming, body screaming, throbbing, screaming, but continued to tease.
Another noise of frustration and then the word he had been waiting for, breathlessly uttered and slipping between her plump lips.
“Please.”
It was a whole sentence when she said it. She needed something from him, didn’t know what it was, but trusted him to interpret her impassioned plea and give it to her.
“Please, Drake,” she said again, his name an intoxicating addition.
And he could hold back no longer.
He plunged into her in one stroke, using all his strength to hold still, and he strained under the assault of sensations. Heat, grip, slick and pulsing. Fully sheathed, her body held him like a vise. They stayed like that, still joined, while the veins in his neck bulged. She might kill him, but he would die happy.
And then she began to stir and it was only iron will that stopped him from embarrassing himself.
Tentative at first, soon she was exploring the feel of him with her characteristic boldness. And when he knew he could take no more, he took charge, setting a slowly building rhythm. He knew the instant the smooth friction snared her attention, baiting her down the path of falling part yet again.
When another hot wet wave engulfed him, he knew she was close. Close enough to increase his pace, diving and driving her harder and deeper, her increasing moans telling him everything he needed to know about her enjoyment. And when even that wasn’t enough, when he had to push harder, deeper, she kept pace without lagging, her energy more than enough to match him, her strength promising him he couldn’t break her.
His name was her last word, called out like a dying woman before her body tightening stole the very breath from him, before she broke into a thousand searing convulsions. The realization that would be burned into his soul from this moment forward was his last coherent before he was tossed to sea himself, pounding to the very depths of her before breaking into a million little pieces.
He came to with his arm wrapped around her, holding her upright in the curve of his arm, her legs dangling in the pool.
She radiated the contentment they both felt, bodies joined and humming in tune, the physical evidence of the way things had changed.
Because things had changed.
He was unwilling to look at the most profoundly intimate sexual encounter he’d ever had and pretend otherwise.
His mother’s words, her ever-optimistic mantra, whispered in the back of his mind.You never know what flowers the manure will turn up.
His arrangement with Helene might not have grown from love, but the potential for it was there. That much was as clear as the blue of her eyes. That he could love, not merely tolerate, the daughter of Dominic d’Tierrza was a testament to the power of the emotion, the idea so foreign that the possibility had never once occurred to him all of his plotting—not even after seeing her and realizing the task might not be so onerous as he’d once imagined. Only now.
It was a delicious if unexpected icing on the cake he’d finally gotten a slice of—because if her actions were any indication, and this matter was one in which action was as good as word, she had agreed to be his accomplice, his partner in justice. Even when his mind and body were tempted to float away in favor of examining emotions other than triumph, reticent emotions that lurked beneath the surface, entirely unconcerned with obsession and revenge, and all the more powerful for it.
Those emotions were best left for times after they’d worked through their shared business.
Her vow had been thoroughly burned to ashes.
His children, his name, would replace d’Tierrza on the map.
That victory had come wrapped up in the most phenomenal package he’d ever had the pleasure of opening, was more than a cherry on top.
If they had not already achieved his ultimate goal of seating his children on the d’Tierrza throne, it would certainly be a pleasure to try again. And again.
The incredible had occurred: he’d gotten his cake and got to eat it, too. He’d turned tragedy into triumph so monumental that he was on the verge of pinching himself. He couldn’t stop the smile that stretched wide as he pulled her close and nuzzled his face in her hair, drawing in the fresh scent of her, before shifting her gently. Her noise of protest had him wincing, tightness squeezing his chest as he pulled back. He’d been lost in thought when he needed to see to her comfort.
“It’s time to get you out of this pool. I’m sure you’re wrinkled all over by now.”
She groaned, the sound a tremor quaking through her body. He felt it like a knife edge along the oversensitive line where they were still connected. He slid out of her slowly, careful to go easy, knowing she’d be sore nonetheless.