“How do you wish—”
Daphne’s question caught in her throat as Pierce reached down, catching the hem of her chemise and tugging it up and over her head, “In bed,” he answered, drinking in her flawless nudity with a hotly intimate look that made her tremble. “When I’m deep inside you. When I can watch your face, your every expression, when I can see, taste, savor your reaction as I tell you, show you, how I feel. Is that all right?”
Dazedly, Daphne nodded, her husband’s vows shivering through her. “Can it be now?” she asked in a hushed, heated whisper. “I don’t think I can wait.”
“And I’ve waited too long already.” Pierce yanked his clothes from his body, flinging them haphazardly about the room, pressing Daphne back into the bedcovers and following her down. “No barriers, my beautiful wife,” he murmured, taking her mouth under his. “Nothing but us—and this.”
Daphne whimpered, opening instantly to the demand of Pierce’s lips. Passion exploded at the first glide of his tongue against hers, their kisses turning frantic, hungry, filled with poignant discovery and aching wonder.
Casting all past demons aside, Pierce gave himself to his wife as he never had before, showing her, not only that she belonged to him, but that he belonged to her as well.
“Touch me,” he commanded, capturing her hand and bringing it to his chest. “Touch me everywhere, and feel what you do to me, how much I need you.”
Daphne instantly understood what her husband’s request implied; eagerly embraced the gift she was being offered. Without hesitation, her fingers glided through the soft mat of hair that curled on his chest, the hard muscles that defined the powerful width of his shoulders and arms. Lovingly, she caressed his back, tracing a line to its base, absorbing Pierce’s shudder as she stroked his buttocks, the solid columns of his thighs. With a breathy sigh, she moved around to his abdomen, and Pierce gritted his teeth as her fingers drifted lower, lower still.
He was totally unprepared for the impact of her touch. When Daphne’s feather-light fingers brushed his rigid shaft, then curled around to explore its pulsing length, a hoarse groan erupted from his chest and he squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to curtail the hot release already clamoring at his loins.
Instantly, Daphne paused. “Am I hurting you?” she whispered.
Despite the nearly unbearable passion surging through him, Pierce smiled. “Not hurting me. Killing me. Christ.” He moved against her hand, another groan shuddering from his chest.
“Sha
ll I stop?”
“Never. Never, Snow flame.”
“But—”
Pierce opened his eyes, forcing himself under control at least long enough to erase the concern from Daphne’s face. “When you cry out my name, beg me to stop, do you really want me to?”
A spark of understanding lit her hazel gaze. “No.”
“Then don’t even consider ending your torture. It’s heaven—and hell.”
Tentatively, Daphne caressed him again, lingering at the velvety tip when Pierce growled harshly, caught her wrist in a vise grip. “Is that good?”
He couldn’t speak.
She repeated the caress, fascinated by the warm droplets of fluid that greeted her touch, awed by the very essence that was Pierce.
“Men and women are more alike than I realized,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “I wonder—what pleases me, would it please you as well?”
He might have nodded. He didn’t know, or care. For at that moment Daphne bent her head, her silky hair sweeping across his thighs as she took him into her mouth, learning his taste as he had hers.
And the world ceased to exist.
Pierce unraveled at her first exquisite contact, the first brush of her tongue against his throbbing flesh. He heard his irrepressible shout, felt his body and his mind reel out of control. Nothing existed but Daphne’s touch, the unendurable ecstasy of being possessed by her hands, her mouth, her breath as it rippled over his painfully sensitive shaft. He tangled his hands in her hair, urging her closer, begging her to take more and more of him, a dark haze dominating his senses as every fiber of his being screamed for release.
In an instant it would be too late.
Abruptly, he shook his head, pushing her away with his last remaining shred of sanity. “No,” he gasped. “Not this time. Not this way.” He rolled her beneath him before she could finish her initial protest. “Daphne.” Every muscle in his body was taut to breaking as he fought back his raging climax.
She responded to the urgency of his tone, her lashes lifting to meet the smoldering frenzy of his gaze.
“Do you feel it?” he demanded, dragging air into his lungs in great gulps. “Do you, Snow flame?”
“Yes,” she whispered, opening herself to him as she caressed his trembling forearms. “Oh, yes.”