Naked and trembling, he knelt before her, gazing deep into her eyes as he reached for the sheet...and tugged gently. Then she was naked and trembling, too, but not with fear. Desire. Desire that matched his. Her eyes told him she wasn’t afraid, but they also told him what he already knew—this would be her first time with a man. Which meant he had to go slow. He had to build her desire to fever pitch before he did anything else.
If he could hold himself back. If it didn’t kill him.
He reminded himself she had led a sheltered life. Her mother had died when she was a little girl, and though she was close to her ambassador father, it wasn’t the kind of closeness a girl had with her mother. She might know the basics of what went where—impossible not to know that in this day and age—but he doubted she had any idea of everything he wanted to do to her. Would he shock her? Offend her? Or would she listen to her heart and know that every way he touched her was right...because he loved her?
She made room for him on the bed, her eyes on him betraying a nervousness she wouldn’t acknowledge. She didn’t know what to do with her arms, her legs, and they shifted restlessly. Then she lay back against the pillow and hesitantly parted her legs. He laughed softly, shaking his head. “No, little one. That is not the way. Not your first time. Not even your thousandth time.” He brought his body gently over hers, feeling her tremors of uncertainty. And suddenly it wasn’t so difficult to hold himself back. He smiled down at her and his voice was little more than a deep whisper when he said, “Let me show you, Juliana.”
* * *
Juliana tossed and turned restlessly in her sleep, moaning to herself. The dream had come despite her stern warning to herself at bedtime. She wanted to stop the dream, but she couldn’t, and now it was too late. The dream consumed her, controlled her. Naked and trembling.
* * *
Juliana knew the moment Andre surrendered to her...to the desire racking his beautiful body. His eyes, his face were transformed, and she thought, He loves me. He couldn’t look at me that way and not love me. It gave her the courage she needed to be a woman for him, and not a girl shrinking away from her first sexual encounter. But this isn’t sex, she reminded herself with joyous anticipation. This is love—mine and his.
She slid sideways on the bed, making room for him. Nervousness returned out of the blue, but she lay back against the pillow and hesitantly parted her legs. Then was startled by Andre’s soft laughter as he rose over her. “No, little one,” he told her. “That is not the way. Not your first time. Not even your thousandth time.” His voice dropped. “Let me show you, Juliana.”
With exquisite care and knowledge of women she didn’t stop to question, he showed her. His big hands roamed her body, slowly, achingly, caressing every inch of her skin, building her desire step by incredible step. He was hot and hard against her, but he seemed to have an iron control over his body, because he refused to succumb to her frantic hands, her desperate pleas that he take her now...now. Instead he wove a magic spell as his hands lightly touched her here and there, until she was weeping from the beauty he created, until she was shaking and crying for him to release her.
She clung to him as tremors pulsed endlessly through her body, and he kissed away her tears. Then he moved, positioning himself at the damp portal of her womanhood, and thrust deeply. There was a brief, sharp pain, and Juliana couldn’t hold back her sound of distress. But he was kissing her again, swallowing her pain and making it his own; his lips, his hands apologizing for having to hurt her this once.
“Never again,” he promised her, remaining motionless.
Juliana sensed he was waiting for her body to accommodate his, waiting while her inner depths stretched and contracted, accepting his invasion, waiting while a fine sheen of sweat broke over his body from the strain she only vaguely understood. He was so deep, so tight; she couldn’t believe they had ever been apart. Then he withdrew slowly, agonizingly, and the emptiness was unbearable. “No,” she breathed, clutching at his hips until he filled her again with another sure thrust. And another.
“Now,” he whispered to her in Zakharan, his eyes alight in the darkness. “Now it begins.”
* * *
Juliana woke with tears on her cheeks. “Andre,” she whispered, her throat aching. She didn’t understand, would never understand how Andre could have made love to her with such exquisite tenderness, and then...
Remember the rest, she told herself savagely. She impatiently threw back the covers and rose, then moved to the open window and stared out at the sleeping streets of Drago at the bottom of the hill. She was angry with herself for crying for the moon, for crying for a fairy tale that had no basis in reality. Angry for shedding tears after all these years for a man so cruel, so uncaring he could humiliate her by sending agents to tell her he wanted nothing more to do with her.