The Seduction (Notorious 1)

His mouth captured her scream of passion as she shattered around him. Giving her no surcease, his

hands closed over her buttocks, lifting them so he could thrust even more deeply inside her.

His face contorted with pleasure and pain, Damien exploded inside her.

She was still clinging to him long moments later when he lowered himself to her side, shaking with aftershocks. He held her limp and trembling body, cradling her in his arms, his breath harsh, ragged.

She was weeping, he realized with alarm. “Angel?”

Concern flooding him, he turned her face up to his to search her shimmering eyes. “Did I hurt you?”

Swallowing, she nodded her head. “Yes, a pleasurable hurt,” she returned huskily, echoing his earlier reply.

When he saw her tremulous smile, his concern eased. Her tears were tears of joy, of wonder. She had tasted the warmth and passion he knew her capable of, and it had shocked her, that was all.

Tenderness assailed him as he held her lightly. He wanted to kiss those tears away. “Your body is becoming awakened to desire for the first time.”

To his surprise, she reached up and tentatively touched his lips with her fingertips. “I never realized stars could be so lovely.”

A smiled filled his eyes. In her deplorable innocence, she hadn’t known lovemaking could be so powerful, so soul-wrenching. Nor had he, in all honesty. The shattering intensity of his climax just now had startled him. As jaded as he was with pleasures of the flesh, passion with her had seemed somehow fresh and new.

And he knew that one taste of her would not be enough.

A chill night breeze wafted over his skin, cooling his heated flesh and hers. Feeling her shiver, he reached down to draw the covers up over them both, then gathered Vanessa closer. Her body weak and sated, she buried her face against his shoulder, an unconsciously sensual gesture.

Damien felt a fresh stirring of desire and a dangerous tenderness. As she lay languid in his arms, he toyed with a lock of her satiny hair, his thoughts a strange fusion of emotions.

His plan to satisfy a fleeting hunger for her had ripened into something far more compelling. What had started as a carnal seduction had become a tender wooing… a wooing he was determined to continue.

Her sexual awakening would be like nurturing a hothouse flower, but before she left him, he would make her blossom fully as a woman. His lips pressed against her burnished hair as he made the solemn vow.

Vanessa sighed at his gentle touch. She felt cherished, protected, as she drifted off to sleep in his arms. Her dreams were a tangle of erotic images and sensual yearning, images of Damien, his hard male body moving against her softness, setting her aflame, driving her ever higher and higher until she shattered…

She woke to the feel of his vibrant heat against her. For a moment she lay there, savoring the sensation, reliving the enchantment of his lovemaking.

He had won; Damien had succeeded in persuading her to share his bed. But she couldn’t regret his victory. She could only feel a sense of wonder at the ecstasy he had brought her. Only a profound relief that she wasn’t the cold, unresponsive woman she’d always condemned herself for being. That, and a fierce gratitude for the man who had led her to that revelation. Damien had shown her a passionate side of herself she had never known existed.

After her wretched experiences in the marriage bed, perhaps it was inevitable she would succumb willingly to his practiced seduction. She had never been wooed so ardently by a man, or treated so tenderly.

But she hadn’t expected that wild hunger in herself, that fierce, sweet fire. Oddly, she felt no shame at her wantonness. But perhaps that in itself was shameful.

Shutting her eyes, Vanessa tried to summon a proper sense of contrition, but it eluded her. All she could remember was the magic of his spell, the straining thrusts of his body, and her cries of ecstasy as he brought her to fulfillment.

Aching at the memory, she sat up, holding the sheet to her breasts. Almost at once she felt Damien’s fingers brush her naked back. He must not have been asleep.

She shivered at his incredibly gentle touch. “I should go,” she murmured uncertainly.

“Why?” he asked, his voice soft, beguiling. “We have the entire night ahead of us.”

She turned to gaze down at him, his face heart-wrenchingly beautiful in the silver moonlight. He had promised to show her the mysteries of pleasure, and, heaven help her, she wanted him to. The woman in her, who had never known true passion, yearned for it now, with this man. And yet she was afraid. Afraid she would be opening herself to far greater hurt than the physical pain the carnal act of mating had once brought her.

He must have seen her hesitation, for he reached up and cupped her cheek with his palm, the gesture intimate and infinitely protective.

“Stay with me…”

His hand caressed her cheek and moved downward to the slim column of her throat. Vanessa let her head fall back, cherishing the sensuality of his touch. His hand trailed lower, to rest possessively on the curve of her breast, and she felt her heart jump against his palm. How could he arouse such deep hunger in her so swiftly? she wondered. Such fierce, tender emotion?

She made no protest when his hands twined in her hair and he drew her down to lie beside him. Willingly she pressed against his body, against his shaft that was rigid and full…