They’d held off as long as they could; she suddenly knew it—sensed he did, too. With his thighs, he spread hers wider, settled between; she felt the blunt head of his erection at her entrance.
She expected him to simply thrust in and fill her. Instead, he broke from the kiss.
His breathing as ragged as hers, he reached around, caught her hands, one in each of his, and dragged them up, anchoring them in the pillows above her head, locking them there in one hand.
Their gazes met. Across the few inches of heated shadows between them, their eyes locked, held.
With his free hand he reached down, gripped her hip, tilted her hips beneath him.
And entered her.
Slowly. His eyes on hers, holding her, his weight pinning her beneath him, he pressed into her body relentless inch by inch…so slowly she felt every second of his possession. Every tiny nuance as he penetrated her, stretching her sheath, filling her.
Completing her.
He didn’t stop until he’d filled her to the hilt.
His eyes still on hers, he drew back—slowly, tot
ally controlled—held back for an instant, then surged slowly in again.
The friction was intense.
The sensations filled her mind.
She closed her eyes, arched beneath him.
He continued to fill her, to command her body and her, to swamp her senses with pleasure and delight until her fingertips burned.
Until her body was afire beneath his—and his burned, too.
Not with their usual flashfire, but with something more powerful. More intense, more all-consuming.
It surged from deep within them—finally wrenched all control from him.
In those last moments they were together again, helpless again, at the mercy of what, together, they’d evoked.
Something stronger, more wondrous, more earth-shatteringly glorious.
It racked them, wrecked them, broke them with its glory. Flung them into that never-ending void.
Drained them.
They floated back to earth in each other’s arms. She had no idea how long it had been since she’d led him to her room, to her bed. Since she’d given herself into his arms.
Only knew, beyond thought, beyond doubt, that she belonged there.
As satiation dragged her down, her only thought was a wish that their future might be.
Her only reservation was a fear—that she wouldn’t, despite all, find the courage to trust him with her heart again.
Christian stirred sometime in the long watches of the night. Dawn was not yet here, but he knew he had to leave. Agnes notwithstanding, he couldn’t push the woman in whose arms he lay, whose body lay curled around his.
He felt her closeness to his bones, simply lay and savored it for long moments. Her hair was a tumbled mass flung over his chest, the weight of the soft silky veil a subtle benediction.
She’d always been flagrantly, blatantly, possessive—in the past. Since he’d returned…although from the first of their recent encounters she’d been as fiery as his memories had painted her, not until tonight had she relaxed and accepted him to the point of once again sleeping wrapped around him.
Claiming him as hers even in sleep.