Violet struggled to breathe, struggled to drag her mind from the sensations ricocheting through her body. The initial sting of his penetration had receded fast to leave behind a wild hunger that demanded fulfilment. Hunger she was immediately terrified he wouldn’t sate as he started to withdraw.
‘Please.’
Zak shook his head once, a tight, shaken expression still on his face as he glanced down at where they were still joined and then up to meet her gaze once more. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Does it matter?’
A rough sound barked from his throat. ‘You think it didn’t?’
‘Perhaps I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.’
He started to pull back even further. She clamped her legs around his waist, somehow believing that would stop him. Miraculously it did, fresh tension shadowing his face as he paused. ‘It is a big deal, Violet.’
‘Why?’ she asked, then winced inwardly. Dear God, was she really having this discussion with him? Right now?
Shock and a touch of bewilderment washed over his face. ‘You really think me so callous that I wouldn’t have minded whether you were innocent or not?’
She clamped her legs tighter. He shuddered, his body falling forward as he groaned. ‘It’s already done, Zak. Let’s not overthink it.’
For the first time in her life she spotted indecision on his face. It made her bolder, the thought that here, now, her femininity was more powerful than his resistance, sending a wave of triumph through her. ‘You wanted to take me. Well, here I am,’ she dared.
With a torn grunt, he surged forward, driving the last dregs of apprehension away and filling her with searing pleasure. One stroke. Two. On the third stroke, Violet was introduced to a new platform of sensation that made her jaw drop. Whatever came next, she was sure that this sublime feeling would never be surpassed.
‘Why, even now when I know I should be stopping this, can’t I end this thing?’ he groaned almost under his breath, his bewildered gaze dancing over her face. The gleam morphed, turning deeper. Possessive.
Why that infused her with even more pleasure, Violet didn’t want to pause to examine. Emboldened, she spiked her fingers through his hair, raking her nails over his scalp the way she’d tested at some point and discovered he liked. He shuddered, his eyes glinting in the dark as he stared at her.
‘You’re determined to bewitch me, aren’t you?’
‘Am I? Then why am I being denied?’
He sucked in a harsh breath, his chest expanding, dragging it against her nipples. They both shuddered. She undulated, that peculiar need surging high as her body demanded more. Zak thrust inside her one more time.
From then on no words were necessary. The slide of hands, the stroking of tongues, the slippery penetration transmitted need and propelled her towards another earth-shattering climax.
Violet was almost afraid that she would be wholly consumed by the depth of her pleasure, so much so she tightened her grip on him, attaching every part of her body to his solid frame, revelling in the deep shudders that racked his frame as he found his own climax. Eventually the tide receded, hearts slowed, reality intruded, leaving behind a slow-cooling lava of alarm that hollowed her stomach.
Because while throwing caution to the wind had been freeing and eye-opening in the pleasure stakes, she was terrified that she may have given a whole lot more than she had intended to.
Even now as Zak withdrew from her and turned to swim a few feet away, she wanted to grab him and pull him back, beg him for more of what he’d just given her. Like her distress as he’d taken up her thoughts and invaded her dreams for the last six years, with this experience she was suddenly terrified there would be none other like the man who had just taken her virginity.
There was no such profundity on his face when he tugged on his boxers and faced her, however. Just grim-faced shock.
‘Violet,’ he rasped, his voice ashen with something close to horror. ‘I didn’t use any protection.’ Regret and fierce condemnation drove away pleasure as reality smashed into her brain.
Oh, my God.
How could she have been so reckless?
He needed a moment to think. Scratch that. He needed several moments.
A week. A month.
Perhaps a stint in an asylum because only that would explain what he’d just done. His error of judgement came rushing back in a torrent wilder than the waterfall thundering behind him.
He’d taken her innocence.
Even while that admission sent another spike of primitive possessiveness through him, Zach was reeling from how he’d spectacularly compounded the severity of the situation.