Even so, she was damned tight.

He paused and sucked in a deep breath redolent of Charis.

She’s alive, she’s alive, he chanted in his mind as he eased into her. She’s alive, he told the ghosts in his head, blocking his ears to their panicked clamor.

She whimpered again and shifted, drawing him deeper.

The voices grew more insistent. He couldn’t hold them off. Cold sweat prickled his skin. His grip firmed on her hips. As his vision faded, he inhaled. The world shrank to one spark of light.

He had to do this now or fail utterly.

“Charis, forgive me,” he said in a strangled voice. He tautened and thrust.

Pain shafted through Charis with the vivid, immediate brightness of lightning. A scream welled in her throat, but she bit it back.

Still, a choked moan escaped. She felt like she’d been split in half with a blunt ax. It was excruciating. Blinding.

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for it to be over.

Breathe. She needed to breathe.

She gasped for air, but Gideon’s weight crushed her into the mattress. He was bigger and heavier than she’d realized. His height and superb coordination disguised how well muscled he was.

Frantically, she dug her fingers deeper into the sheets. He’d done what he needed to. Why didn’t he pull out and leave her be?

Breathe, Charis, breathe.

The part he’d pushed into her chafed tender flesh. He was hard as granite. But unlike granite, he was hotter than a furnace. Stupidly, she’d imagined he’d feel cool, even cold, because of his reluctance to touch her.

His smell, familiar yet unfamiliar, surrounded her. She knew the clean scent of his soap and the essence of his skin. She guessed the extra spice in the air was male arousal.

His breathing was ragged, and he trembled. She raised her hands to grip his back, then remembered he hated to be touched. He wouldn’t want her embrace, even as he lay buried inside her in the closest connection she’d ever known.

She sucked in another breath. An easier one. Where they joined, she still hurt, but the fierce agony faded.

He shifted with a soft grunt. The pressure changed, became less excruciating.

Charis waited for him to pull away. But his muscles tightened, and he thrust again. She bit back another moan and gripped the sheet to stop sliding up the bed.

She’d imagined this would be quick, over in seconds. But he was still inside her. He moved once more, and released a deep groan.

Another thrust. His hips pumped several times, and she felt a liquid heat deep inside her. He groaned again and slumped over her. In a cruel parody of tenderness, his head came to rest on her shoulder, his silky hair tickling her neck.

After all the hardness, the fleeting softness seemed alien, wrong.

After an endless time, Gideon withdrew and carefully pulled down her shift, hiding the tops of her thighs. Then he rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. His shirt was twisted and flapped free of his gaping trousers.

After one brief glance at him, Charis concentrated on the dark beams crossing the ceiling too. She didn’t want to see the organ he’d pressed into her body.

She supposed she should say something, but she wasn’t certain her voice would work. Her throat clenched so tight, it hurt. Although she was cold, she couldn’t summon energy to reach for the covers.

Who knew how long they lay alongside each other? Not long, she guessed, although every second felt like an hour.

Where he’d taken her, she stung, although the piercing pain had subsided to a constant throbbing. She felt lost in a vast emptiness, as though the world had been destroyed in some unimaginable cataclysm. How odd that this most intimate act of all left her feeling like the only human left on earth.

Slowly, stiffly, he sat up. For one intense second, she felt him study her. She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Like distant thunder on a summer’s day, devastation nudged at her awareness. But for the moment, exhaustion kept it at bay.

Tags: Anna Campbell Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net