Hell, watching her surrender so openly to him now, there was a part of him ready to give her an eternity.
If he had anything to say about it, this moment was already the start.
“Mathias,” she murmured, breathless from the aftershocks of her climax. “I don’t want this feeling to stop. Not yet...”
“No,” he growled. “Not yet.”
Stripped out of his clothing and boots, he then knelt beside her, growing hungrier, impossibly harder, as she drank in his nakedness with passion-drunk, heavy-lidded eyes.
His pulse hammered in his ears, in his temples, his blood running like molten lava in his veins from the intensity of his need for this woman. His glyphs surged with heat, color flooding their swirling, arcing patterns on his chest and shoulders and biceps.
His fangs pressed against his tongue, razor-sharp tips fully extended, and he knew that Nova was seeing him at his most inhuman--in his savage, predator’s form.
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t tremble.
She reached for him. “Mathias...”
There was nothing more she needed to do or say.
He kissed her, unhurried, and positioned himself between her parted thighs. Her cleft was slick and hot against his shaft as guided himself to her. He couldn’t stop now. His desire for her swamped all of his senses.
He pulled his hips back until he was seated at the core of her ready body.
Then he drove home, inch by delicious inch, into the sweetest, hottest pleasure he’d ever known.
~ ~ ~
He filled her more deeply than she thought possible, cleaving her core with so much heat and strength and passion that she could hardly draw her breath. The sensation overwhelmed her, stunned her.
Obliterated every thought she’d ever had for what it meant to be at the mercy of a man’s carnal needs.
Nova clung to Mathias as he rocked into her with unbridled force.
Her body was still pliant from its release, nerve endings still thrumming from the pleasure he’d given her with his lips and tongue and touch.
She felt that release winding up again as he crashed against her, the friction of his cock moving inside her swiftly becoming more than she could bear.
On a cry, she shattered. Felt herself splintering apart into tiny pieces.
Without warning, sudden tears filled her eyes. Burned the back of her throat.
Mathias went stock-still above her, halting in mid-thrust. His breath sawed out of him, and the curse he swore was abrupt, dread-filled. “You’re crying.”
She gave a feeble shake of her head, struggling to find her voice. “I just...I thought it would be different,” she choked out. “I thought I could handle it...”
“Ah, shit. God damn it.” Every muscle in his body had ceased moving now. His scowl deepened. He started to withdraw from her. “Nova, I’m sorry--”
“No.” She clutched his shoulders and swallowed back the raw lump that was blocking her voice. When he continued to shift his weight off her, she wrapped her legs around the backs of his thighs to hold him in place. “No, Mathias. That’s not what I mean. I’m not crying because you did anything wrong. It’s because this feels so incredible. You feel incredible inside me. I wasn’t prepared for this--for how we’d feel together. I didn’t expect it.”
In his silence, he stared at her, unmoving. His fiery gaze warmed her face with its heat. “You feel all right, then?”
“More than all right,” she assured him. “I feel...alive. With you inside me like this, I feel whole. For the first time, Mathias, I feel like the rest is really behind me. You’ve given me that.”
He swore again, something low and reverent. Then he kissed her with more tenderness, more aching pleasure, than her heart seemed able to contain.
When he finally broke the contact, he was grinning, fangs glinting.