At the sound of his name, Piers bolted upright and dragged the sheets across his lap. The sight of her did nothing to curb the climax gathering in the twin weights beneath his cock.
He’d have thought her a vision he conjured, a lust-shrouded fantasy. Naked. Ethereal, ephemeral. Possessed of a delicate, unearthly beauty.
If not for the insecurity flickering behind the heat in her burnt-whisky gaze.
Stymied, he closed his eyes and opened them again, just to be sure.
At the sight of her, his cock was beset by an insistent, painful throb so agonizing, he ground his teeth together.
In his fantasy, she’d been sliding her slick body down his shaft, those perfect, pert breasts swaying in a most tantalizing manner every time her hips met his.
And, miraculously, there they were. There she stood. In his bedroom. Pale and proud and nude, shivering in the breeze that fluttered at her heavy locks, making them shimmer like the tresses of some pagan goddess.
He dragged his eyes away from her pink nipples. “Alexandra. What are you—what do you—?”
“You said my name.” She swiped a nervous tongue across her lower lip, just the one, as her eyes locked on the sheet barely concealing the ridge of his erection.
He grimaced. How long had she been there? How long had she watched as he stroked himself to an illusion of her?
God, but his mind couldn’t have conjured anything close to the magnificence of reality.
“Did you say my name because … because you imagined me doing … that to you?” She nodded to his hand, now clutching the sheet to him.
Panic surged above his lust as he searched her frustratingly placid features. Was she disgusted? Aroused? Afraid?
What should he answer?
He decided upon the truth. At the very least, it would drive her back to the other side of that door. Because he could think of no reason on God’s blighted earth that she would be in here with him unless …
“No, Alexandra. No, you weren’t stroking me with your hand, not in my mind.”
“I was—you were—inside of me.”
His breath stopped. His heart stuttered, stalled, and then started again, pounding against the cage of his ribs. And still, he answered her with complete honesty. “Yes.”
She stepped closer. “I was on top of you?”
He held up his hand. “Don’t.”
Her composure flickered, unveiling a hurt.
“Alexandra,” he rushed around a hoarse throat. “If you come any closer—” Bloody hell, that sounded like a threat. “I mean … You don’t have to do this. I told you I wouldn’t touch you.”
“I know.” She stopped right in front of him, her breasts inches from his mouth. Her knees almost touching his. It was torment. Torture. It was pure, spike-riddled hell. But he kept his word, bunching his fists in the sheets.
“I want you, Piers.”
His mouth watered, his muscles gathered, and his cock gave an insistent jerk against his thigh.
A wayward strand of hair fluttered over her face, and he yearned to tuck it away, to stroke the downy softness of her cheek. “Are you sure? You have to be sure.”
“I wasn’t,” she answered, her eyes shy and gilded with so many things, not the least of which was sex. “Not until I came in here and saw you … like that.”
He swallowed a flare of embarrassment at being caught in such an honest moment of need.
It was her fingers that smoothed his errant hair back from his forehead, her touch cool on his lust-fevered skin. “All I know from before you is…” She searched for words, her eyes drifting from side to side. “Was forceful and fast.”
Some of the heat wilted out of him, replaced by a well of sorrow and anger. He thought he’d wanted to know what happened to her and how.
How wrong he’d been. The mere mention of it slayed him.
“But you were … slow, just now,” she continued. “Deliberate.” She bent to him, sliding her hand down his arm until she captured his wrist.
Mesmerized, and frankly petrified, Piers remained mute, his lids peeled wide as she guided his hand to the soft mahogany hair between her legs. She pressed his fingers there, and they easily slid between the plump folds, encountering warm, wet silk.
They each gasped, sharing a shudder of disbelief at the sparks that ignited between them.
“I want you to be the last man inside of me.” Guiding his wrist, she rolled his finger over the bud hidden between her closed folds, her gaze turning as liquid as her desire. “I want it to be you. My husband…”
He’d heard enough.
Piers lifted himself, reached for her, and dragged her down over him. This he could do. This he would do, what he’d promised from the beginning. Replace the memory of another man with nothing but soul-shattering bliss.
Alexandra didn’t realize what it had taken from her to offer this, to request it, until he’d taken the mantle of seducer from her shoulders.
Redmayne remained seated and kept the sheet over his hips as he guided her legs to split over him.
They sat like that, sharing breaths of disbelief, his eyes searching hers as though looking for a reason not to.
He found none, because she gave none.
Alexandra steadied herself on his strong shoulders as he anchored one arm behind her, wrapping her legs around him. She liked this, being above him. Looking down at the scarred and primal beast pinned beneath her. There was power here, potent and feminine. One that caused a tremor in his limbs and unfocused his gaze as though the sight of her inebriated him.
When he fused their lips, her very grip on reality shifted beneath her. Other parts of them merged, as well. Their hearts. Their souls. Perhaps their destinies.
It was she who tangled her tongue with his, tasting him, stroking in wet circles. Penetrating him.
With a low, primal growl, his hands went to work.
Though his kiss grew in ferocity, his fingers stroked her leisurely, reacquainting himself with the warm folds of her sex, spreading the wet desire he found there to the hard pearl throbbing above it. He oh-so-gently pressed the hood between his forefinger and thumb, rubbing at it with such slippery skill, a shower of sparks exploded behind her eyelids.
“Piers,” she gasped against his mouth. “I’m already … I’m going to…”
“I know.” His reply was so incredibly male. So full of ardor and arrogance, and she didn’t have the chance to be incensed by it, as he did something else eminently more infuriating.
He stopped.
His fingers left the swollen, aching bud, and reached beneath, to circle the intimate opening, abrading it softly with the work-roughened pads of his fingers.
Feminine muscles convulsed beneath his touch, clenching at him, inviting him in.
He probed at first, pulling back to watch her expression as his finger sank deep. Deep enough to fit his palm against the cradle of her thighs.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered with a broken reverence. “But I want more. I want to make you ready.”
“I am ready,” she panted, fighting the urge to squirm and writhe.
He answered her challenge by withdrawing and entering her once more, another finger joining the first.
A stretching sensation startled her, but she felt no pain as he sank in deep once again, pressing the heel of his palm against her throbbing peak.
Magic. Those magic hands.
She whispered his name. Gasped it as he created delicious friction in a soft, rhythmic motion. His fingers felt both foreign and fantastic inside of her, but it was the heel of his hand, pressed against her quivering bud, that elicited the most intense response.
With her legs split as they were, and nothing but his arm to keep her from falling, her instincts to twitch and writhe were little more than frustrated little jerks of her hips. The lurches became lithe rolls, until she rode his hand with an almost shameless need as a sweet and adamant tension gathered between her legs.
He claimed another kiss as her thighs locked and trembled, releasing another rush of moisture around his fingers as he brought her to that beautiful, straining, almost-there place.
And again, drew away.
She whimpered against his lips, bereft, her hips curling forward, searching for the magic.
“I know, darling,” he rumbled, his voice laced with a similar tenuous suffering. “Are you afraid?”
“No.” She was terrified. And tantalized. And so utterly in need of the release he could provide, she might die from wanting it.
His eyes glowed almost silver in the light as he searched hers, finding the fear she did her best to conceal.
Steadying her with gentle hands on her thighs, he reclined away from her, lying back on the bed.
The wind felt marvelous on her skin, already slicked with a sheen wrought of both apprehension and passion. It tightened her nipples and lifted her hair from the back of her neck.
“If you want me inside of you, wife, you may have me at your leisure.” His eyes glistened with a need almost fanatical. A hunger akin to worship. He prostrated himself beneath her, an offering of flesh and blood. A sacrifice and a prayer.
She stared at his magnificent body, an answering hunger surging through her.
It never occurred to her that he wouldn’t do the taking. The thrusting. That he wouldn’t pin her down.
That she could take him.
Alexandra looked down to where she straddled his thighs, where the formidable shape of his sex tented the sheet.
“I—I don’t know how to please you,” she confessed, suddenly daunted.
He gazed up at her with a patience so tender, so genuine, it released a swell of emotion inside her. “Don’t you know by now, Alexandra, that everything you do pleases me? To look at you pleases me. To touch and kiss you pleases me. The scent and taste and shape of you is the greatest pleasure I’ve ever known. Anything you do beyond that…”
His words died on an indrawn hiss as she reached between them and uncovered him, curling her fingers around the jutting base of his erection. It was warmer than she imagined. Hotter, even, than his fevered body.
Transfixed, she drew her hand up the column toward the engorged tip, marveling at the smoothness of the skin as it slid over unyielding steel beneath.
Big, she worried. Breathtakingly big. And yet, so unlike the weapon she’d expected to find.
How could such a blunt, silken appendage cause the sharp, tearing pain she’d experienced before?
It couldn’t, she decided. Wouldn’t. Not this time.
Piers would never hurt her.
She knew by the reverent way he whispered her name. By the careful grip he kept on her thighs. By the power over this act he’d placed entirely in her hands.
By the way he closed his eyes, attempting to hide the vulgarity of his primal desire for her.
He didn’t have to, she wanted to tell him.
She burned just as hot, somehow. He’d brought her to such a place, had found such a needful, shameless, brazen part of her that an obsessive desire for his body overwhelmed the lingering fears and doubts she might have.
Maybe it would be different if he were above her. Or behind her. If he restrained her and pulled her hair.
But like this … with his tremendous body stretched beneath her, his lust contained by iron chains held in a tremulous grip.
All she wanted was to come apart over and around him. To slake his need and fulfill his desires.
She ran an inquisitive finger over the sensitive bulb at the top of his sex, finding a curious, silken moisture of his own making.
He turned his head to the side, his chest heaving with labored breaths, his muscles locked with the herculean effort of his restraint.
It was time. Time to release them both from their chains.
She lifted herself, placing him against her opening, spreading dewy heat on the crown of his sex.
As she lowered slightly, breaching her body, neither of them breathed.
She froze. For an eternity she trembled above him, paralyzed, unable to go forward, unable to turn back. It felt … It felt …
She didn’t know how it felt. It didn’t hurt. But neither did it feel good. Or right. Not like this, with her body exposed and his face turned away.
He thought to give her autonomy. To save her from his gripping hands and his powerful lust, and astounding strength. And she’d thought she could do it herself.
They’d both been wrong.
She retreated, letting his sex fall against her thigh.
“Piers,” she gasped, hating the desperate note in her voice. “I—I need you.” Needed the comfort of his arms around her. The protection of his body against her, even if that protection was merely from her own mind. Her own memories.
He was there the moment the words left her. Right there, twining his arms around her, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath feeding her tight, struggling lungs.
“I—I need you to do it,” she confessed in a small voice.
He stilled, a mantle of veneration settling around them as he reached between their bodies and guided himself back toward her swollen, damp flesh. He prodded at her entrance, settling there before he released his organ, both his arms burrowing beneath hers to anchor at her shoulders.
“What do I do?” she pleaded.
“Hold on to me, Alexandra,” he whispered, folding her against him. “Just be here. Just be mine.” He cupped her head to his shoulder, his own face burrowing into her hair as he urged her trembling thighs to relent.
And finally, they did.
It wasn’t as though he impaled her. Not exactly. It was more like her feminine flesh molded over the turgid length of him as she melted down and around him. But only to a point. After he’d made it so far, her inner muscles seized, locking them in a sexual battle he dared not fight.
“Holy God, woman.” He wheezed as though in pain. “You’re so … tight.”
She wanted to ask him if he was all right. To soothe and strengthen him as he had done for her, but all she could do was focus on the stretching, straining pulse of her intimate flesh as it struggled to contain the length of him. She wriggled a little, hoping it would pull him deeper, only gaining perhaps another inch.
He let out a few foul curses on a long breath. “Tell me to stop,” he begged. “Don’t let me hurt you.”
“Don’t stop,” she panted, pressing her hips down, seeking the relief she knew existed at the end of this. “Just … just … please.”
He understood her plea, and his fingers curled up and around her shoulders, pulling her down to meet his hips in one strong, lithe push.
She cried out, unable to stop herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said tightly, making to retreat.
“No.” She locked arms around him, grinding her hips down against his. “Don’t. Move.” Her order was a hissed whisper, given through a throat clogged with a million opposing emotions.
He obeyed.
At first, all she could feel was him inside of her. This foreign, fierce, pulsing shaft of unyielding flesh and heat. She stayed like that for a moment, just feeling. Experiencing. Analyzing.
No pain. No tearing. Just this uncomfortable pressure at first, which rapidly gave way to an exquisite sort of fullness.
Breath began to infuse her again as she latched on to that one fact.
No pain. Just Piers.
This man, who was so much more than what was inside of her. He was the gentle breath at her ear. The smooth skin stretched over the iron cables of his shoulders and spine as she gripped him like a woman about to fall away from herself.
The tender, banked power of the arms ensconcing her in a cocoon of comfort, supporting her entire weight. The coarse hair and dense muscle of his chest, abrading her sensitive breasts as she crushed them against him.
The softer hair of his solid legs tickling at the thin, sensitive skin of her inner thigh.
He was all of these things, and so much more than she could possibly have fathomed.
Her protector. Her husband.
Her lover.
Even though every primitive instinct Piers possessed screamed at him to move. To thrust. To fuck. He fought himself with all the ferocity of an adversary.
Because the instinct to protect his woman from any and all threats had become the strongest of all.
Even if that threat was his own primal need.
Besides. He was inside of her. Finally. Locked within a body more sweet and tight and wet than even his fantasies could have devised.
It was enough.
And it would never be enough.
It was more than he dared hope for. More than he deserved, this exquisite gift of her trust.
And still he longed for more.
If it was as far as she could go tonight, he’d understand.
If she withdrew now, she’d take a bit of his soul with her.
It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, preparing to let her go should her fear overtake her.
Let me show you how sweet it can be, he silently urged. Let me claim you as mine, so you no longer belong to the past.
Slowly, in infinitesimal increments, she relaxed against him, around him, her sex becoming a sheath shaped to the length inside. Her grip slackened, her breath strengthening even as her muscles melted against his.
Her small, delicate hands began a feather-light exploration of his back, running along the columns of muscle bracketing his spine, dipping into the valley between.
Piers returned the caress, smoothing his rough hands over her shoulder blades, charting the dip of her waist, reveling in the silken cream that was her skin.
He wished he could see her face, and yet he wasn’t ready for her to look at him just yet. He treasured the breaths against his neck, the trust inherent in their pose. The intimacy.
“All right,” she whispered.
“All right,” he answered. She needn’t say more.
He arched his spine slightly back, pressing down into the mattress, easing only the base of his cock out of her before rocking forward in a smooth, gentle thrust.
The friction was negligible, but it was all they needed for an aching, remarkable pleasure to bloom between them.
She sucked in short breaths as he rocked her with slow, stinging curls of his hips, remaining deep inside of her, pressing against her womb.
He thought he might die from the pleasure of it.
Finally, she pulled back a little to look at him, her features a mixture of awe and bewilderment.
And pleasure.
More. She needed more. He could give her more.
He licked his thumb and brought it between them, to where she was so small and soft and yet spectacularly tight around him. He brushed at the crest of the distended, swollen nub at the hood of her core.
She made a sound so low and lovely in the back of her throat it might have been the purr of a lioness. Her fingers drew up the column of his neck and slid into his hair.
When he thrummed her again, she tightened her grip, allowing a soft sound of encouragement to escape her.
Reflexively, she pressed a hand to her mouth.
“No,” he said huskily, kissing her fingers without once breaking his steady, slow rhythm. “There is no need to silence your pleasure. Sing it to the night, my lovely wife. Let it know you are mine, and that I, alone, can make you feel this way.”
He licked at the seams of her fingers, and they fell away, returning to grasp at his hair.
God, he loved it when she did that. Anchored his neck so she could control their hot, slippery kiss.
A triumphant joy welled within him when her hips began a tentative dance. Flexing and rolling to the rhythm of his.
He timed the thrusts of his tongue to that of his hips, the feather-soft brushes of his thumb an off-beat percussion that set her thighs to quivering. Her eyes darkened, becoming decadent, dark pools of fathomless longing.
“Piers,” she warned, little concussive tremors building along the feminine flesh now clamped around his cock.
“Don’t wait for me,” he whispered against her mouth, laving at her with heated kisses and strong thrusts of his tongue.
In truth, he could have come the moment she’d wrapped her slim fingers around him.
But he’d be goddamned if this was over that quickly. He’d previously vowed to make her drenched and exhausted before he finished with her, and, at the moment, she was only one of those things.
Gloriously wet.
He dipped his finger lower, wickedly testing where their bodies were joined, gathering the abundant moisture there and swirling it around her throbbing hood.
Her lips tore from his as her spine arched and flexed, her head dropping back on her shoulders as a hoarse, guttural cry broke from her.
She convulsed around him, over him, her sex milking at him in voluptuous, rhythmic waves. Her unbound hair brushed the small of her back, and her clasping fingers tore at his own locks as she shivered and shuddered in a long, extravagant release.
Christ, her pleasure was the most beautiful sight on this entire fucking globe. If he never saw another exotic mountain vista, or volcanic eruption, or even the unparalleled paradise of shores both familiar and foreign. If he was cursed to stay in one place, forever in the dark, he would gladly do it if only to watch the graceful arch of her body as it locked in the throes of the bliss he could give her.
His own release pulsed into his cock, ready to rush into her, and he bit down on his tongue hard enough to make it bleed. Not yet.
Not until she begged him to stop.
Alexandra collapsed against her husband, curled around him, allowing the voluptuous pulses of liquid pleasure to drift away.
Awestruck and humbled, she marveled at the freedom and profundity of what she’d just experienced. What beauty she’d seen behind her eyelids as she’d come apart with hm inside of her. The dances of light and that electric enchantment that was part of him, part of what he did to her.
It took her only a few deep breaths to realize that he remained inside her, hard and hot as ever, his body still corded taut and features straining to remain civil, and rapidly losing the battle.
“You … you didn’t…”
Though his muscles built upon themselves beneath the weight of his self-possession, his hands were gentle as they took her face. “Are you through, Alexandra?” He forced the question through a straining throat before lowering his lips to her neck, sampling the salt and musk of her skin.
“What do you mean?”
“Let me spread you beneath me,” he requested tightly, lips drifting down her throat, and across her chest. “I need to see you. To see this.” He rocked once more into her still-quivering flesh. “I need to taste…” A hand lifted her breast, covering her nipple in the decadent, wet heat of his mouth.
The indecency of his request, along with his position, was enough to build a languid excitement within her loins.
“Yes,” she sighed, as he moved his attentions to her other breast.
Her eyes popped open as he withdrew, and she was suddenly on her back, her legs spread wide by the weight of his hands.
“My God,” he groaned. “You’re so pink and perfect.”
With an ice-blue glint in his eyes, he descended upon her, applying his tongue to her delicate flesh, flaying her open with long, flat licks until, miraculously, a new and insistent desire built within her womb. Once her hips began to lift from the bed, he concentrated his ministrations to the one place she knew would soon implode with a hot thrill of bliss.
And, once more, he pulled away just before she came, prowling up her body like the dark panther who’d stolen his beauty, or gifted it to him.
He slid into her with one fluid, beautifully deep motion, settling into another deliberate, controlled rhythm. His alert eyes searched her face, gauged her expressions.
She felt his hesitancy. His lingering restraint, and she brought her hands around his waist and lower, pressing him deeper.
“More,” she whispered, feeling him tense, seeing the question in his eyes. “More,” she repeated, lifting her hips to meet his.
His thrusts quickened, driving deeper, pressing her higher.
She loved this, the softness of the mattress at her back, the hardness of him on top of her. She felt safe. She felt … glorious. She found she could control the rhythm with her hips, lifting faster, harder, taking all of him inside, all his animalian ferocity, his noble grace.
The lust that drove him to the edge of his control.
He swelled inside of her, growing impossibly larger, finding a place within her body just as prone to pleasure as the little pearl without.
Pleasure gripped her once more, this time deeper than before, an all-encompassing pulsating riot of thrills tearing through her veins until even her fingers and toes were infused with the sparkling, shimmering whole of it.
It didn’t take her from herself. Not this time. She watched with fascinated awe as he followed her to that place. Gasping her name, groaning it, then roaring as liquid jets of his release bathed her womb.
He was the most beautiful like this, she thought. Helpless against pleasure, held in the heat and thrall of her body. His every sinew rippled with a bliss that seemed to match hers, perhaps even exceeded it as sumptuous shudders overtook his large frame before he finally gave one last, deep drive inside of her.
Rolling to the side in a controlled collapse, he brought her with him. Draping her over his chest and spreading her hair along his torso, unworried by their sweat-slicked skin or the leavings of their pleasure.
They breathed together in the silence, allowing the wind to cool their bodies as they each took a moment to contemplate the cataclysmic enormity of what had just happened between them.
After a moment, chill bumps began to ripple along her skin. Redmayne kissed her shoulder and heaved himself off the bed, dipped a cloth in the basin of clean water, and returned to minister gently to her.
That accomplished, he gathered her beneath the blankets to face him on her side, creating a cocoon with his body before drugging her with lavish kisses.
He gave her a long, searching gaze, “Alexandra, tell me honestly. Are you all r—”
“I think it’s possible that I love you.” One might think she’d gone and blurted something without thinking. But she hadn’t. Not this time. She simply didn’t want to answer the question he was about to ask. Because the answer would be both yes, and no.
He couldn’t have appeared more stunned if she’d stabbed him in the heart. “You think … it’s possible…”
She sighed, looking heavenward. They were back to the repeating again.
“I’ve never had a definition of love before.” She brushed her hand through the fine fleece of hair on his chest, finding the quick, strong beat of the organ beneath it. The one she wasn’t certain belonged to her. Or ever would. “But I think if I can’t imagine my life without you. If I feel so attached—so dedicated to you. So powerfully possessive of you. That must mean something, mustn’t it? If I trust you like this. To do this.” She let out a wry laugh. “I’ve only known you nine days. Ten come midnight. But I have ceased being able to imagine my subsequent days without you in them. Doesn’t that seem like love to you?”
“Alexandra, I…”
She placed three fingers over his lips, one against the seam of her favorite scar, silencing his reply. “You don’t have to say anything. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t. Not tonight. I just needed you to know.”
She burrowed into his body, and was heartened when he pulled her close without hesitation. A new emotion had likewise seeped into his embrace.
Possession, she liked to think.
Alexandra watched the arms of his mantel clock, content to time the rhythm of his slowing breaths. Just over an hour before she had to go.
She fought a sense of doom at the thought of leaving the safety of his arms.
The sensation of his limbs became lush and heavier upon her, twitching with dreams. A quiet, masculine snore rumbled through him. Just the one.
She smiled, glad he could sleep.
At least one of them should.