The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (The Cynster Sisters Duo 2)

He blinked, then arched his brows in patent disbelief. “You want to go slow?”

“Only when I say,” she quickly clarified. “And only for those moments.” She held his gaze, then arched a brow back; with him, challenge was undeniably her best weapon. “For the rest . . .” She raised a shoulder. “I would prefer to go at our usual headlong pace. So much more us, don’t you think?”

When he didn’t reply—when she saw wary suspicion bloom behind his eyes—she laughed. “No, truly.” Folding her arms, she settled on his chest, pillowing her breasts on the thick muscle, delighting in the tension that spread through him in response, and smiled into his eyes. “So what do you say?” Abrasion from the crinkly hair on his chest made her nipples ruche painfully tight; resisting the impulse to close her eyes in bliss, keeping them on his, she pressed, “Can we do it my way—just this once?”

“Once?” Ryder wasn’t at all sure it would be once. Or rather, that the once wouldn’t affect him—and them—forever more. His instincts, entirely uncharacteristically, were no help; on the one hand, they warned—stridently and insistently—that danger lay waiting along the path she was, sirenlike, luring him down, consequently urging caution, if not retreat, while simultaneously, those very same instincts were pushing him to give her whatever she wished. More, were insisting it was his duty to slavishly pander to her every whim.

And there really wasn’t any choice. Despite awareness of the former, the latter impulse was dominant, if not paramount. Drawing in a deep breath, steeling himself against the more definite pressure of her breasts against his chest, he held her gaze. “All right. Your way. This once. So how?”

Her smile beamed like the sun. Shifting higher on his chest, eyes sparkling, expression eager, she reached for his face. “I’ll tell you when.” Then she bent her head, set her lips to his—and plunged them back into their fire.

Leaving him reeling, then mentally racing, trying to catch up with her—trying to exert some degree of control.

He hadn’t known the flames had hovered so very close. Yes, he’d been brutally aroused from the moment he’d joined her on the bed, but he’d thought—had expected—that she would have cooled, that it would take time—

But no. Just one kiss, one flagrant foray into his mouth, coupled with his instinctive response, and she turned to living flame in his arms.

And there was no slowing down, no controlling the fiery passion, the conflagration of desire that raked and razed and raced through them both. That consumed them both.

Abruptly, she rolled onto her back; he didn’t need her urgent tugging to follow. And then they were tussling, her hands streaking over his skin, reaching for his erection, greedy fingers searching, finding, closing, palms hungrily stroking.

Her breasts filled his hands while he filled her mouth, and she, his wanton, urged him on.

Slow? Where was her slow?

It was she who parted her thighs wide, who wriggled and writhed to get his hips just so. On a curse, he pulled back from the kiss long enough to reach between them and position the blunt head of his aching erection at her entrance.

Scalding slickness bathed the broad head. She was wetter than wet, so ready and willing, as the desperation in her clutching hands assured him.

Equally trapped in the heated desperation, lying fully and heavily atop her, prey to her every arch and writhe, he clamped both hands about her hips, plunged back into the fiery delight of her mouth, and tensed to thrust home.

She wrenched back from the kiss. Hoarsely panted, “Now. Slow now!”

Now?

“God almi

ghty.” His weight on his elbows, he gritted his teeth, jaw clenched to cracking as he locked every muscle against the driving, pounding insistence that he move—that he thrust into the heated haven waiting, beckoning.

She gulped in air, managed a tiny nod. “I want to feel . . . you. There. I didn’t get a chance to the first time . . .”

Her explanation wasn’t helping. “I’ll try,” he ground out, then shut her up in the only way that ever worked.

And fought, battled, to give her what she wanted.

He eased in—a fraction. Just enough to push the head of his erection past her tight entrance.

Beneath him, he felt her quiver—not with fear but with a sensual expectation that reached to his bones and made him shudder, too.

Gave him the strength to try for another half an inch. Then pause. Then another incremental advance.

Her body tight as a bowstring, every bit as tense as he, she sighed into his mouth, then shifted her lips enough to whisper against his, “Oh. My. Lord. Yes.”

The quality she invested into the last word—that alone would have been worth his pain.

Accepting that, accepting that acceding to her request had indeed lavished untold pleasure on her, made it easier still to continue to penetrate her inch by slow inch.

Mary lay beneath him, utterly overwhelmed, her senses locked on the sensation of the veined rod, hot as flame and as unforgiving as forged steel, slowly, and now more steadily, pushing into her. Stretching her, filling her, in some way she didn’t fully comprehend, completing her.