Still she remained closed.
His jaw tensed and he pushed again, more powerfully this time. Her fingers clutched hard on his shoulders to the point of pain.
Her flush had faded. Instead, her face was set and pale and her skin stretched tight against the fragile bones. She closed her eyes in a wince of discomfort. In her distended neck, the tendons stood out like ridges.
Dimly, from the back of his mind, the voice of conscience told him a man of honor would leave her be.
Damn honor. Damn conscience.
He braced on one hand, using the other to angle himself better. He surged forward.
Resistance. Resistance.
Then suddenly, a marvelous yielding.
He slid into her with a long, shuddering exhalation.
She cried out at the intrusion. Then muscles that had relaxed to allow his incursion clenched hard around him. The pressure was delicious, like nothing he’d ever felt before.
For a long time, he rested in her glorious heat, luxuriating in her tight wet clasp on his throbbing cock.
Nothing could snatch this moment from him.
Grace was his at last.
The feeling was indescribable. She’d become part of him and he’d become part of her.
“I’m hurting you, Grace,” he said hoarsely. She panted with distress and he read tension in her face.
“No,” she muttered, although she gripped his shoulders as if she clung to a rockface and she’d tumble into a chasm if she let go.
He shifted to relieve the pressure on her, pulled out slightly. The searing friction nearly blew the top of his head off. She whimpered at the movement and arched up so the tips of her breasts brushed his chest. Experimentally, he rocked, working himself in again. Grace was sleek and wet. This time he slid into her more easily.
He flung his head back and withdrew, then went in harder. His world shrank to Grace and the scalding whirlpool of pleasure inside him. In a ferment of need, he began to plunge in and out. With every thrust, his frenzy built. He lost all sense of time and place. There was just Grace and his overwhelming hunger for her.
He slammed into the hot, mysterious depths. A dark whirlwind roared in his ears, made him deaf to everything but the furious pounding of his heart.
He withdrew on a shuddering groan then claimed her again. Heat. Darkness. Pressure. Paradise.
He picked up his rhythm, moving faster, more ruthlessly. The crescendo built and built. Finally it hit a dazzling summit. He could hold back no longer.
He jerked once, twice, and came.
White hot rapture seared him. The world turned molten with ecstasy. For an endless time, his body shuddered as he filled her with his seed.
Through all the thundering, shaking, scorching release, his heart drummed one word over and over.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Chapter 15
Grace lay unresponsive beneath Matthew whil
e he pounded into her. A hot liquid sensation flooded her womb. Her hands slid off his damp back to lie loosely at her sides.
Frustration chafed at her. She was jittery and feverish, as though someone had flung her high into a lightning-filled sky, then abandoned her on the edge of the storm.
Matthew groaned again. He’d left her behind long ago. She couldn’t doubt his enjoyment but she shared none of it. Instead she felt pummeled and squashed. A muffled whimper escaped her, but nothing indicated he heard.