He looked younger, kinder, a brighter image of the man she knew. A man life hadn’t mistreated or betrayed. Whatever the pain of this union, she loved that she gave him this momentary peace. This encounter lurched from the physical onto a different plane. A plane revealing a new emotional landscape. She felt lightheaded, lost.
She blinked back more foolish tears and brushed away a lock of hair that tumbled over his forehead. Tenderness lit her from within. As though this man were her other half. As though they were meant to be together forever.
Stupid.
“I hurt you.”
She found it in her to smile. “Not now.”
“I’m glad.” He tilted his head to move into her caress like a cat.
Carefully, so she relished each inch, he slid free of her body. She shut her eyes on the loss, although his retreat awakened a thousand new sensations.
“Prepare to be surprised, il mio cuore.” He dropped a fleeting kiss to her shoulder. The salute’s reverence moved her as deeply as anything else in this painful, astonishing encounter.
“Show me, Jonas,” she murmured, surprised at how readily she entrusted herself to wherever he wanted to take her. Right now if he asked her to fly to the moon, she’d grab his hand and ask which way to leap.
“With pleasure.”
He thrust again. Under them, the bed creaked loudly. Her hands curled into his shoulders and she tilted her hips. The change in angle launched a volley of pleasure. An incandescent web of delight tangled around her.
He groaned with audible approval and pressed a fevered kiss to her lips. All became biting, eager passion. He surged in and out of her as endlessly as the ocean surged against the cliffs. Tenderness dissolved into hunger, although its memory lingered like the echo of distant music and lent a glow to rising excitement.
Jonas drove her higher and higher. She stretched beneath him as he pounded into her. She opened dazed eyes. Tendons stood out in his neck and his mouth thinned over his teeth. He looked savage. He looked desperate. He looked like a man she trusted with her life.
For a blinding moment, she poised on the edge of something beyond comprehension. Something wild, free, and true. Then the tension spira
led and shattered, and she tumbled into a dazzling hail of fire. Flame assailed her from every direction. The astonishing pleasure took her where she’d never been before. Into the stormy ocean. Up with the whirlwind. One with the lightning.
From a distance, she heard a guttural groan, then Jonas tensed and liquid heat gushed inside her. He moved once, twice, three times, then collapsed upon her with another groan.
Sidonie lay on her back, gasping and staring upward. Jonas’s body pinned her to the mattress. Jonas’s arms held her against the night. Jonas’s seed pooled inside her. He’d taken her on an incendiary journey to ecstasy. Now she floated back to earth with every preconception in tatters.
As rapture slowly ebbed, she reluctantly returned to the real world, even if that world was forever changed. Beneath the lingering pleasure, disquiet stirred. She almost wished Jonas had left her in ignorance of this radiant joy.
Because having tasted such joy, how could she live without it?
Through the golden haze, Jonas recognized a growing imperative to move. He must be heavy as the devil, crushing Sidonie into this rock-hard mattress.
He wasn’t eager to shift. Superstitiously he feared if he broke the physical connection between them, some awful fate would befall. He didn’t trust happiness. He’d experienced so little since his father’s disgrace. Making love to Sidonie Forsythe—he wanted to call it fucking but to his dismay the crudity felt blasphemous—was as close to paradise as he’d ever get.
One minute more. Surely his allotment of bliss could encompass another minute. Was that too much to ask?
Now that he resumed something approximating thought, he was aware his knees ached from digging into the unforgiving cot. Otherwise he was in heaven. His nose was buried in Sidonie’s shoulder and her scent surrounded him. Lemon. Female. A trace of sweat after he’d used her well, for all that she’d been a virgin.
He should be ashamed. He’d hated himself when she’d screamed. Then she’d started to purr and the world turned to fire.
Her arms circled his back and her hair clung like silk to the side of his face. He loved her hair. Hell, right now, he couldn’t think of one damned thing about her he didn’t love. He tried to blame his well-being on the awe-inspiring sex. Good sex always left a man in a fine mood. This was the best sex he’d ever had, in spite of Sidonie’s inexperience. In spite of that gut-wrenching moment when she’d cried out because he hurt her.
He’d almost stopped then.
Thank holy heaven she’d got into the business quickly after that. His heart leaped in delight as he recalled her squeezing him at the height of pleasure. A memory to illuminate an entire life.
She made a soft sound, perhaps of discomfort. Perhaps of exhaustion. He really should move. He tightened his arms, daring fate to steal her away. He didn’t trust fate. Fate and he had long shared an uneasy relationship.
She shifted. The glide of her body teased his cock and he hardened. He wasn’t a savage. He couldn’t tumble her again straightaway. Nor could he spend the night pinioning her to this bed because he feared losing her. Still it was only with utmost reluctance that he separated his body from hers and rolled aside.
He’d forgotten how narrow the bed was. “Hell’s bells!”