Jen vaguely recognized it was logic, reminding her that she hadn’t asked her questions, stated her terms or obtained her safeguards.
She let it clamor, then tuned it out. Everything it was yelling about suddenly felt irrelevant. Anything would be when you were drowning. As she was. In Numair.
And he hadn’t yet done anything but sweep her up in his arms and claim her lips. If she felt taken, possessed, devoured already, what would she feel like when he fully made love to her?
For the first time in her life, self-preservation wasn’t her foremost consideration. She wanted him more than she wanted to be safe. It was insanity and she knew it. She never knowingly did insane stuff. But for him, she’d do anything. With him, she wanted everything.
Suddenly the world gave way beneath her, and she felt she was plummeting. He’d only put her back on her feet. The only reason she didn’t heap to the ground at his feet was because he kept one muscled arm around her waist. It tightened, pulling her against him fully, her toes barely touching the ground. She was totally in his power, loving it and delighting in every hard inch of him that was imprinting her trembling flesh. She moaned when his other hand rose to cup her cheek.
“I spent all night and all day in agony. Tell me you did, too.” She could only nod, but her muteness seemed to satisfy him. “And as I suffered, I planned everything I’d do to you, all the ways I’d assuage the hunger, slowly, thoroughly.”
She was all for thoroughly. But didn’t know if she could withstand slowly. The plea to hurry and take her would have spilled from her lips if they weren’t trembling out of control with anticipation.
He made it worse, rubbing his thumb against them, his breathing becoming audible, each draw into his endless chest chafing inside her own. “I never knew wanting like this, or anything like you, existed. I thought the ferocity of my desire scared you, that it sent you running away.”
She forced words out. “It scared me how much I wanted you. I was terrified I was out of my mind.”
“You were. As I was. As I still am. As I will remain.” His thumb stilled. “Are you still afraid?”
She rubbed her lips against his hard flesh, begging him to continue. “Only that my heart might stop.”
Triumph and lust blasted her as he pressed her harder into his length. “I will stop your heart. With pleasure.”
She nodded, closed her eyes to savor the sensations that emanated from her deepest recesses. She moaned as she caught his tormenting thumb in a nip.
His sharp intake of breath sliced away more of the leashes of her inhibition. She grazed her teeth along his skin, the skin of a seasoned warrior, hardened in battle, scarred in ordeals, healed with limitless stamina and now impervious. She again wondered what kind of life he’d really led. As if tasting him would explain it to her, she suckled him, and his texture and taste only had more moist heat surging in her core.
A fiercer inhalation expanded his chest, crushing her swollen breasts against it. He rubbed against them until she felt they’d burst, the abrasion of his hardness and their clothes turning her nipples into pinpoints of agony. A scalding growl rumbled from his depths as he tugged her thigh around his hips, the hand at her waist securing her there as he ground his erection against her melting core.
She whimpered as he started thrusting against her, at the same time ravaging her neck in suckles she knew would leave their mark. Pleasure hurtled through her blood, making her lightheaded. Her knee buckled, and he picked her up, had her wrapping her other trembling leg around him, letting him have all her weight, making him crush her to him even tighter.
She felt as if her very existence depended on him, his body and breath, his hands and mouth, as he tasted her flesh and took over her will. She was no longer herself, but a mass of need open t
o him, his to exploit and plunder. There was nothing more to hear but his voracious growls and her thundering blood as he stroked her up and down his body, had her ride his erection through their clothing.
The throbbing between her legs escalated into pounding, and she cried out his name. His torment only increased until she nipped at his lip in her desperation.
“You’ve got it all wrong.” His bass tone made her eyes snap open. “I’m the one who’s going to feast on you tonight, wring your magnificent body of every pleasure it’s capable of experiencing.”
She nodded, her breathing becoming ragged, her lungs starting to burn. She’d agree to anything he wanted to do to her.
He rested his forehead against hers. “This is unparalleled. Agonizing but sublime.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Nothing she’d ever experienced had prepared her for this. For him. She was disintegrating with need, yet she knew this protracted inflammation of their senses would make his eventual lovemaking far more satisfying than a frenzied coupling would have been.
He separated from her, making her cry out again with his loss, but he did so only to press her against the wall. He slid down her body, then, in torturous slowness, rubbed up over her again as he bunched her stretchy dress on the way up. His visual embrace was only interrupted for the seconds it took to sweep the garment over her head.
He set every inch his lips and hands touched on fire before going to her bra’s clasp, snapping it undone. She gasped as its constriction eased, then louder at the spike of ferocity in his gaze as he monitored her reaction. He drew more gasps as he caressed her bra loose, then in one silky sweep, he freed her from its bond.
Suddenly, shyness hit her out of nowhere. This man she’d met only last night was here, in her home, just inside her door, and he had her almost naked as he stood fully clothed. It was crazy. It was insanely arousing. And it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And the most overwhelming.
Before she could snap her arms over her nakedness, he dropped to his knees.
Seeing him kneeling before her, looking up at her with what looked like wonder, her lips dropped open with unbearable stimulation, but no words came out.
It was him who talked. “I thought I knew what I’d find beneath that dress you hid behind. I was wrong. You’re a goddess, Jenan.”