She reached for him, tried to pull him down to her.
Without breaking their rhythm, he shifted his hips, pressing more intimately between hers, then thrust deeper still, harder still.
She gasped, tugged, but the sight of her held him. Eventually lifting his gaze to her face, he saw the glimmer of her eyes beneath her lashes.
Alicia studied his face, licked her lips, felt her world teeter. She was so close to that joyous edge, yet, as always since that first engagement, no matter how desperate the moment, he held to his control, waiting, watching, certain to follow her, yet still…
“Come with me.” She struggled to find breath enough to add, “Now.”
His black eyes, until then hooded, opened wide— enough for her to realize she’d asked something no other ever had.
Her nerves shivered, started to unravel. Dragging in a breath, she lifted a hand to his face, traced his cheek. “Be with me. Please.”
She wasn’t sure how, but she knew what she wanted. Needed.
He knew, too. He gave a shuddering sigh; the tension rippling through him increased, hardening his
body as it rode against hers, thrust into hers.
Their gazes remained locked. He shifted his weight, freed a hand, held it open close by her head. “Give me your hand.”
She did, shifting her hand from his face, watching as he interdigitated his fingers with hers, then closed them, locking their palms. Then he pressed their linked hands into the pillow.
“Wrap your legs about my waist.”
She could barely make out the gravelly command. The silk sheets caressed her skin as she complied, then gasped as he shifted fully over her and drove deep. Her spine bowed, but his weight pinned her, held her down as his hips flexed in a faster, more urgent, more compulsive rhythm.
For an instant, gasping and breathless, she rode it, then she felt his eyes on her face, met his black gaze, once again screened. Felt the flames inside rise, coalesce, fuse to an inferno.
He lowered his head, drove into her harder, faster, more powerfully.
“Now.” He breathed the word against her lips, then took them, took her mouth as the conflagration roared— and caught them. Overwhelmed them. Consumed them.
As one. Together, as she’d asked.
Tony felt the reins he’d released whip away, sensed them cinder, all control sundered and gone. For only the second time in his life, he plunged into the heart of that familiar fire with a woman, by her side. Her hand was his anchor; he clung to it as her body tightened beneath his, closed powerfully around his, hot, scalding, driving him on, taking him with her into the world beyond the flames, into the pleasure of sexual satiation.
If she wished, so he would; they whirled, joined more intimately than he’d ever been with any other, not just their bodies but their awarenesses fused, experiencing together, simultaneously soaring. Higher, then yet higher.
Until they were both gasping, bodies locked and straining. Until they were there, twined together at the peak.
Until they fell, hearts thundering, senses merged, glory pouring through them. Souls as one.
She was his. Totally, completely, beyond recall.
The words drifted of their own volition across Alicia’s brain.
Her body, trapped beneath his, thighs vulnerably wide with him buried so deep inside her, was no longer hers.
Her lips curved in sleepy satisfaction. No matter her thoughts, her will, her determination, logic had no place here. Despite all uncertainty, despite the nebulous unease that even now she could sense, a fog hovering just beyond the bed, even now, despite all, her heart rejoiced.
Lifting the hand he hadn’t claimed, she laid it on his hair, then gently stroked. Let her fingers play among the silky strands.
Let her emotions have their way.
Let them well, and fill her mind, fill her throat and her chest, fill her heart, and overflow. Let them slide through her veins and sink into her flesh, a part of her, forever.
He lay heavy upon her; she delighted in his weight. Within her, the warmth of his seed radiated a glow of deep and abiding pleasure. She’d given him all she was; tonight, he’d taken, claimed, but when she’d wanted and needed, he had surrendered and given, too.