against the onslaught.
He closed his eyes and thought, yes! I can shut it all out. I can dive into the carnal delight of French kissing, I can shape my hands over these curves and immerse myself in the pleasure of all the scents and textures of a woman’s body. I can absorb the throaty sounds of a woman’s enjoyment and I can stand the roar of need in my ears.
I can handle the rush of lust because that’s all it is. Only sex.
His hand shaped one breast, his thumb rasped across the nipple and she sucked a breath from his mouth, an act so intimate he felt its effect raw and deep in his gut. He jammed his eyes closed tighter and breathed more deeply, until the indelibly delicious scent of her skin filled his lungs and his veins.
“What the hell did you bathe in?” he breathed huskily near her ear.
“Cinnamon and honey-milk.”
And he gave a half-grunt of laughter because that’s what he’d been about to ask. Honey-milk. She tasted so sweet, her skin was so soft and pliant. Unthinking he opened his eyes and saw her roll her head back against the sheets, her dark curls a wild and wanton spread against the white.
“That’s what the bottle said.” She blinked slowly. “Do you want to taste me?”
“Later,” he growled because even the thought of going down on her damn near brought him undone. He could feel a rawness gathering inside, a desperation he didn’t want to contain.
Her mouth tilted into a sultry smile. “I can hardly wait.”
“Right now,” he said, repositioning himself to settle thickly between her thighs, “It’s this way.”
“Okay,” she whispered on a broken murmur of breath.
Okay. That’s all this would be, he told himself as he deliberately drew out that initial slide of entry. This would be okay. Not wonderful. Not wild and untamed. Not earth-shattering or mind-altering. Just okay. All he had to do was take it easy, maintain control, keep his focus on the wall or the pillows or on visualizing the twisted thread of his restraint. He wouldn’t look into her eyes, he wouldn’t indulge in sweet words or tender kisses, and he wouldn’t think about the incredible moist pleasure of her body molding to accommodate his penetration.
Slowly. Take it slowly.
Sweat broke out along his back and on his forehead as he stopped himself giving in to what his body craved. To just plunge into her, hard, fast, wild. He sucked in air through his teeth, stared harder at the beige wall, and then he felt the tremulous touch of her hand on his face.
“If you’re worrying about the ‘too much’ comment, then don’t.”
For a moment he forgot himself and looked down, right into her eyes. Not teasing like her husky-voiced comment, but serious, intent, burning. He drew back slightly and then let himself go in one long hard drive that took him all the way inside and he couldn’t contain the long, deep sound of satisfaction that rose from his throat.
Sweet, oh God she was sweet.
Tomas couldn’t stand it—not the enraptured look on her face or the softening of her lips or the do-that-again challenge in her eyes. He had to look away, refocus. To remind himself that she wasn’t sweet. Sex was sweet. Being enclosed in that velvet female sheathing, the silky slide as he withdrew and drove back again, the hot friction of flesh against flesh, of male against female. This sex was so sweet because it had been so long and he’d almost forgotten the intensity of the pleasure. It was okay to enjoy it, to let himself go a little, to ease back so he could touch her breasts and flatten his hand against her belly and imagine that this was about making a child.
Only sex. And if it succeeded, never again.
Conversely his mind railed and bucked against that possibility. This was so good he wanted to do it again and again and again. Abruptly he pulled back, almost all the way out, then thrust himself in to the hilt. Too good to contemplate never doing again and that was all right, too, he justified, because tonight he could do it again and again. He could because it was necessary to make the child he needed.
It wasn’t about this rapidly escalating rapture, not about the gut-wrenching explosion of pleasure when his hand slid lower and thumbed her slick plump heart until she came apart in a shuddering cry that kept on going and going as he changed angles and drove into her until his own climax roared through him like a cyclone, rough and whirling and eddying through his rigid frame with uncontrollable force.
He could justify that he couldn’t disconnect immediately, not while his heart thundered and his blood roared and his mind clamored with the image of his seed spilling deeply into her fertile core.
For a minute his whole being succumbed to the intensity of that image and he slumped forward, his nose buried in that sweet hot spot where her neck joined with her shoulder. Their heartbeats raced one against the other and he knew he should move but he couldn’t, not until she took a slow, shuddering breath that echoed right through him. They were that close.
Too close, and when her mouth touched the side of his face with the kind of tender intimacy he’d vowed to avoid, he suddenly found his strength. He was on his feet and into the bathroom before her kiss had cooled on his cheek. Shower controls turned to maximum, he stepped under the torrent and let the cold water savage him for a count of ten. Then he spread his legs and planted his arms against the cold tiles and let the water pound out the torpor of sexual satiation.
Somewhere at the back of his mind he imagined it might also pound away a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Not with the sex—jeez, but that had been unbelievably satisfying. No, it was something deeper, probably tied up with those earlier chills of fear, but even after ten minutes or so of water-torture he couldn’t put a finger on the cause.
And he couldn’t stand here any longer, not without turning blue. Adjusting the temperature mix, he rolled back his head and let the warmth hit him full in the face. Then he raked his wet hair back from his face, turned off the taps and reached for a towel.
Bare-assed, he padded back to the bedroom, his muscles tightening reflexively with every step. She’d turned the lights out, he realized, but enough light filtered in from the city outside for him to make out the figure curled up on the bed. Motionless. Asleep.
He exhaled a long, audible breath. No need for post-coital conversation or cuddling. She’d left plenty of the bed for him, enough of a buffer zone that he could crawl in under the covers and spread out in his usual fashion without any contact. That didn’t help him relax. As the minutes passed he grew tenser, more wide-awake and so attuned to the silence that he swore he could hear each ticking minute on the noiseless bedside clock.
Possibly because he was concentrating so hard on anything besides the soft sound of Angie’s breathing.
Damn her, how could she be so relaxed? Had what they’d done been so exhausting…or so meaningless that she could roll over and go to sleep within minutes? He turned restlessly and shucked off the eiderdown quilt. So, okay, he’d been gone more than a few minutes, but still…
Did she think that was it? One time lucky? And what about her earlier invitation. Do you want to taste me?
His body reacted instantly, extravagantly, as if she’d whispered the incendiary words into his ear right then. Turning impatiently on his side didn’t help. Not when he could see the rise and fall of her breasts under the pure white sheet. I can hardly wait, she’d said.
Well, hell, he’d waited long enough. They only had this one night. What a waste to spend it watching her sleep when he was obviously up for making certain.
It was okay to smooth her hair away from her throat and taste her there, he figured. It was okay to kiss his way over her shoulder and whisper “wake up, Angie” when she stirred restlessly and rolled onto her side. Fine to kiss his way down the length of her naked spine and to learn the multitude of curves and valleys that made up her generous body. And when she stretched sleepily and pressed back into him with a lazy sigh,