The moment overloaded her mind in every way, obliterating the hollow emptiness that had dwelled deep within her when he’d first laid her on the bed.
With an effort, she raised her lashes. His eyes were shut; his face appeared graven, every plane sharp-edged with desire. With reined passion. She could feel the rigid control he wielded—to give her what she’d asked for.
Lids falling, she mentally reached out and wrapped her expanding senses about them—and savored all the excruciatingly sensation-filled moment was doing to them both. They were both panting, heated breaths mingling, lips dry, but still hungry.
They were both poised, nerves tighter than drum skins, reined, teetering on that sexual brink . . .
Then with a last, small thrust, he was there. Embedded within her, filling her completely, the head of him nudging her womb, the heaviness of his sac brushing her sensitized skin.
This was what made her his, but equally it made him hers.
Lips curving as much as the overwhelming tension would allow, she whispered, “Thank you.” Blindly reaching for his head, sinking her fingers into his hair, she raised her head a fraction, whispered against his lips, “Now let go,” and kissed him.
Passion erupted. Held back for so long, it raged unrelenting, unforgiving. It whipped them along, harder and faster, whirling them through the age-old dance and straight into the flames and the fire.
Up, and higher, harder, and yet more furiously needy, they gasped and raced, driving for the peak, the ultimate pinnacle of intimate joy.
Their hearts thundered; their breaths came in raspy pants. Locked together, striving together, they yearned and stretched, reached and sought.
She was as caught as he, as subject to the passion they’d unleashed, yet she was aware and was with him, much more so than the first time, able to sense and feel, know and appreciate the turbulent power they’d evoked. Provoked.
Physical and ephemeral; even as they gasped and clung, she felt his hands on her, felt his awareness of her, felt how through his body he spoke to her, through hers, through her senses.
No words could breach this plane, could encompass this elemental reality.
Making love could, and did.
She tightened around him and they raced on through the searing wonder.
And in a heady rush of pounding joy they found that pinnacle, their oh-so-desired destination, without pause leapt past and on and flew.
Tension imploded. Sensation, molten and scalding, erupted and flashed outward from where they joined, flooding their veins, sinking deep into their flesh.
They shattered. She screamed; he roared.
Ecstasy speared through them, broke them, wracked them.
Caught by her own primal contractions, she felt him stiffen in her arms, felt the heat of his seed pulse deep within her.
She surrendered. Felt him do the same.
And ecstasy’s benediction flooded them, a blessing so richly sensuous it brought tears to her eyes and made her cling.
To that moment, so fleeting, so precious.
Then it faded, as it always would, yet even as she let go and, with him buried deep within her, connected beyond the physical, sank into satiation’s sea, she knew that it—that moment of ultimate intimate communion—would always exist, would always be there, waiting for them, forever a part of them.
Satisfied beyond measure, lips gently curved, she let bliss draw her into its embrace.
Ryder slumped on top of her, too wracked to move.
Too wrung out to think, to even care.
The danger had been there—and he’d fallen.
His last conscious thought before he surrendered was: Is this how it feels to be conquered?
There were only seven more days to their wedding—and those passed in a blur.