Chapter 11
Maggie bit her lips, as the pressure between her legs verged on the edge of pain.
Above her, Joss was hard and huge. He was breathing in great noisy gusts, and beneath her hands, the muscles of his back were as unyielding as rock. As unyielding as that part of him invading her body.
When he moved a fraction deeper, she couldn’t muffle a whimper. Immediately he stopped and rose on his elbows to stare down at her through the flame-tinged darkness. “My darling, I’m sorry.”
He sounded like the Joss she knew, like the Joss she loved. She sucked a breath into starved lungs, and her discomfort faded a fraction.
“I like you calling me your darling.” She lifted one hand to caress his stubborn jaw.
“Is it so bad?”
He sounded in such torment at the thought of hurting her that she almost forgot her pain. “I can bear it.”
“I’ll be careful.” He reached down and hooked her knees up. The strain eased.
“I like being so close to you.”
This closeness, she knew, could well result in a child. She’d faced that possibility before she’d come to him and decided that she was willing to take the risk.
“I’ll get closer yet.” He kissed her with all the passion she sensed he was reining in so he didn’t hurt her.
Maggie closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pleasure of his lips on hers, so when he plunged forward and claimed her, the pain hardly registered.
He raised his head. “Are you all right?”
Better than that. Much better. She felt filled and possessed and united with Joss. Despite the shaky beginning, she found herself smiling. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
She slid her bottom further down in the bed, and the angle of Joss’s penetration changed delightfully. At last she started to notice things, apart from the strangeness of a man’s body joined with hers. How his warmth radiated into her. How she felt his every breath. How his scent marked the air—and her.
“There’s more.”
She ran her hand down his face, whiskers prickling under her palm, and set it on his broad shoulder. “Show me.”
Slowly he withdrew. She braced for discomfort, but the long glide set every nerve in her body singing.
“Oh,” she said, astounded at the revival of the glorious responses she’d experienced when he’d first touched her. She’d imagined such pleasure belonged purely to the prelude. Most wonderfully, it seemed that she was wrong.
Even more wonderful, he paused and thrust again, pushing her deep into the mattress. This time the sensation of being taken over was wholly rapturous.
“Oh, Joss,” she sighed.
When he kissed her, the sweep of his tongue into her mouth had her squeezing around him. He groaned against her lips. “Good God above, do that again.”
“This?”
His answer was a long, jagged sigh. “You’re made for delight, Maggie.” He paused. “You’re made for me.”
Before she could question that hoarse statement, he started to move more purposefully, stealing all capacity for speech. But something in that husky bass declaration had sounded like love. And her last misgivings fled.
Because she had been made for him. Just as he was made for her.
He settled into a hard, driving rhythm that sparked a spiraling, craving sensation inside her. Blindly she tilted her hips to meet him, seeking relief from the rising need. But still the tension built, until her breath emerged in harsh sobs. Surely if this went on, she must shatter into a million pieces.
Joss rose above her, and she felt he went so deep into her body, he became part of her. She released a choked moan and tightened her grip on his hard male shoulders as he drove her higher.
He slipped a shaking hand between her legs and touched her in that place that made her tremble. A blast of exquisite sensation seized her, and on a flash of blinding light, she tumbled over into the abyss.