Claiming the Courtesan

She hadn’t stopped fighting him. He knew that in his bones. But he had dominion over her body for now, and she wouldn’t deny him at least her physical capitulation.

With a groan that seemed to rise from the soles of his feet, he slid into her, feeling her muscles resist, then relax to accept his entry. Her inner passage was slick and tight around him, drawing him deeper.

No other feeling in the world rivaled this. Would ever rival this. He clutched her closer, as if daring fate to take her from him.

Against his chest, her nipples formed hard little nubs. Clumsily, he grabbed her knees and bent them up around him to ease his penetration. He was deep enough inside her to touch her very heart.

He waited for her to rise to meet him. She always had. Except for last night.

But she lay still beneath him, her breath emerging in distressed little gasps. He lifted his head to try and read her expression through the darkness. He caught the silvery glint of her eyes as she stared fixedly up at the ceiling. And there was no mistaking the tension in the slender, unmoving body under his.

After a moment, he realized her will would withstand any magic he worked on her senses. How could he bear the mental barriers she raised against him at this moment of greatest intimacy? He had to destroy them or go mad.

He began to move, establishing the slow, intense rhythm that he knew drove her wild. He exerted every ounce of his skill to woo her into surrender. After a year as her paramour, he knew her and he knew what gave her pleasure.

He wanted her so desperately that holding himself back was agony. The need to seek his own release threatened to snap his spine, incinerate his brain, tear every nerve from his body.

But still he persisted. Gritting his teeth, he harnessed every shred of control to force

her to admit defeat in this, if nothing else.

But no change in angle or touch or pressure could make her participate in the journey to ecstasy. Her body recognized his mastery, but with every stroke into her hot depths, he felt her will defy him.

Damn her. She wouldn’t cheat him of this. This, the only part of her that he could still reach.

Anger corroded what little command he still held over himself. His movements became more ferocious as the force inside him gathered, built, ignited. He’d meant to be gentle with her, but those intentions disintegrated under the titanic force of his passion.

Still she didn’t move to join him. Still she didn’t give any acknowledgment that she wanted him, wanted this, although her body was slippery with musky perspiration and every time he thrust into her, she clasped him harder.

Knowing he couldn’t hold on much longer, he pounded into her. Through the inferno in his mind, he heard her moan. Whether in discomfort or pleasure, he didn’t know.

Even if it killed him, he had to break her resistance.

He had to wait.

He couldn’t wait.

He couldn’t wait…

At last, at last, on the very edge of his breaking point, she began to tremble in his arms. She was almost there. He skated his hand down to touch between her legs.

With a strangled cry, she reached out to cling to his shoulders, digging her nails in hard. He ignored the stinging pain. It meant nothing compared to the fact that she held him of her own volition.

He took a great shuddering breath as her sleek inner muscles clenched in the prelude to her climax.

She finally lost control and convulsed around him. He kept still, luxuriating in her quaking pleasure.

Even in his own extremity, he knew what this meant. She wanted him. He didn’t suffer this tempest of desire alone. Burying his head in the curve of her neck, he drowned in the sensations of her shivering peak.

She was his. She’d never escape. Never.

But too soon, it was over, and her exhausted sighs rattled hot against the side of his face.

Then all awareness of everything except his own crisis abandoned him and he was lost. His sinews and bones tightened almost to pain as he spilled himself inside her in a blinding explosion of rapture.

For what felt like forever, he emptied the bitterness and yearning in his soul into her prone body. He shuddered over her until his limbs lost their strength and he collapsed on her, utterly spent. His heart pounded as if it wanted to break out of his chest. His head held nothing but the hot scent of her.

Slowly, reality returned. Gradually, the torrent of his blood quietened and calmed, although blinding pleasure still thrummed steadily through his veins.