He possessed her utterly. Thoroughly. Entirely. He refused to let the flames fade, but held her hips and drove steadily into her, almost immediately stoking the blaze again.
Forcing the flames and her higher, then higher.
Then he bent his head and fastened his mouth about the peak of one breast and suckled fiercely.
She shattered into a million shards, so completely fragmented she wasn’t, for one bright shining instant in time, sure she’d survived.
Then glory rushed through her, golden and welcome, filling her veins, swamping her nerves, pouring delight through her as he continued to fill her, thrusting long and hard, yet still ruthlessly in control.
She was open to him, completely given over to him.
Surrendered.
His.
Christian’s warrior self crowed, gloated, even as he tightened his reins and held himself back from the beckoning edge.
He wasn’t finished with her yet. She’d needed distraction; he’d needed her. The exchange was straightforward, but he hadn’t yet had his fill.
When the last ripples of her release faded, and she slumped, boneless against the bonds, her body softening deliciously about his, he reached up, yanked the cord free of the bedpost. Leaving it dangling from her wrist, he drew her against him. Lowering her arms, she draped them about his shoulders. His throbbing erection still buried in her scalding sheath, his hands beneath her bottom supporting her, he carried her to the side of the bed.
Juggling her, he drew down the covers, then withdrew from her and tumbled her onto the bed.
Swiftly he arranged her as he wished—stretched out on her stomach down the length of the bed, her head to one side, just off the pillows, her hands level with her head, one on either side. He’d positioned one plump pillow beneath her hips before he’d rolled her over. He drew her long legs down, her ankles only a little apart; she was so boneless she could barely raise her head, much less question his decrees.
He knelt at her feet and considered her, smiled at the sight of her legs still clad in her garters and stockings. Shifting, he caught a garter and worked it down, drawing the stocking off with it. He repeated the exercise on her other leg, stripping garter and stocking away, leaving her totally bare.
Then he stretched himself over her, eased himself down on her, sensed the slight tension that reinvested her limbs as she took his weight, felt it pin her.
Half supported on one arm sunk in the bed beside her shoulder, he reached between her legs, positioned his aching erection at her entrance, and slid slowly home, eyes closing as he thrust slow and deep into the slick scalding haven of her sheath.
He nearly groaned.
She tightened just a little about him, but she didn’t have enough energy left to do anything other than lie beneath him and—as he’d warned her she would—let him have his way with her.
Greedily, hungrily, eager for the contact, he let himself fully down upon her, his chest to her back, his shoulders heavy across hers.
He’d taken her from behind before, but never like this. Not with her helpless beneath him, his body spread over hers, trapping her fully under him—giving her no option but to receive him as deeply and for as long as he wished.
Her body was a cushion of feminine curves and hollows against which his rubbed, another delicious friction as he settled to ride her with a slow, steady thrust and retreat.
He’d waited for this. He was going to extract every last ounce of pleasure from it, from her. Expose her to every last facet of his need of her.
And hope she understood. Hope she saw the raw need that drove him to have her as explicitly and as possessively as this for what it was—a symptom of complete and helpless devotion.
A need to have, to possess, that went beyond sinew and bone, that, as his spine flexed in its slow, rigidly controlled rhythm and he felt her instinctively soften, then tighten about him, welled and filled him.
Expanded, then coalesced and tightened within him.
Bending his head, his chest tight, his breath gasping, he pressed his lips gently to her shoulder.
Closed his eyes and let her take him.
Let her have and know all he was. All that he wanted and needed.
Her senses swamped with glorious warmth, Letitia felt his strength all around her, surrounding her, enveloping her, holding her. Rocking her, pressing into her, stroking inside her.
He lay like a cloak over her, possessive unquestionably, yet there was more to it than that. Even with her mind floating in hazed pleasure, in the golden aftermath that courtesy of his body moving on and within hers seemed to be stretching endlessly, she felt the connection—the forging of something new, blending and strengthening what had previously been, what had in the past linked them.