Leaving her at peace.
But not him.
Blindly, she reached for him, and he came to her. Spreading her thighs wide, settling between, his heavy body angled over hers as he reached down between them, opened her, and pressed in.
Her hands clenched on his upper arms in mindless anticipation of pain. She started to tense against his invasion-wanted to, but her lax muscles refused to cooperate.
He didn’t go any farther, but settled more fully atop her; she felt his hand smooth back her hair, then cradle her face. “Not this time, mon ange.”
Then he kissed her. Filled her mouth, distracted her for the instant in which his spine flexed, and he thrust powerfully into her. Not quick and hard as she’d expected, but slowly, steadily-inexorably. Even as the reality of what he was doing impinged, that he was stretching her, filling her, and wasn’t going to stop-that she didn’t, even then, want him to stop-she was held captive.
By him. By the sheer sensual pleasure of the feel of him, hard, rigid, hot as forged steel, heavy and foreign yet immeasurably welcome as he slid farther, deeper, pressing so slowly into her despite the muscles that jumped in his arms, despite the cording of the tendons in his neck as he fought against the demons she’d met years before.
She felt her body give and take him in, and gloried in the slick, silken glide. She felt him sink home, filling her impossibly full, felt the engorged head of his staff abut her womb.
Charles inwardly gasped, held still, then felt her, very gently, tentatively, contract around him, and nearly lost what little control he still possessed. Her sheath was scalding hot, tight as the proverbial nun’s, and he’d stretched her fully, intentionally seizing the single moment of sanity remaining to him to sink into her to the hilt.
It was a moment he’d promised himself, not consciously but in his wildest dreams, for the past decade. Now it was here, and felt even better than his fervid imagination had painted it.
She was relaxed, heated and open beneath him, the cradle of her sleek body soft and accepting, but with that tempting feminine strength still lurking, investing her spine and the taut muscles of her thighs and the hands that moved lightly on his shoulders.
He wanted, ached, needed to engage with that feminine counter to his own driving need, but he had to hold back, hold still, for just a minute more…
With a supreme effort, he pulled back from the kiss and lifted his head enough to look into her face. “Are you all right?”
Her lids lifted just a fraction; her eyes met his.
Then her lips slowly curved, and his control quaked.
“Yes.” She raised her head and closed the gap between their lips. Kissed him like the siren she truly was.
Drew back to whisper against his lips. “Now ride me. Please.”
“With pleasure.” The words were so guttural, it was just as well he’d spoken in English. He caught her eyes. “But only if you ride with me.”
Her lids lifted more, her eyes widened.
He didn’t wait for her to ask, but kissed her, and showed her.
Showed her how much more there was to experience. To enjoy. Better than any other, he knew what would draw her, entice her, and bind her to him. He deployed every ounce of his expertise to ensure he captured her, that at this level at least, the success of his wooing of her was a foregone conclusion.
In other areas he might have a harder time, but in this, he’d always had her measure, even though he hadn’t, long ago, had his own.
Even now, she surprised him; after that initial hesitation, she accepted his invitation wholeheartedly. She followed where he led, met and matched him, too quickly learned the knack of using her body to caress his and drive him wild.
And wilder.
It was a shuddering shock to realize that control had slipped away from both of them. That something stronger, more vibrant and powerful had slid in and filled the void. That it was that instinct, wild and unfathomable, intense and true, that drove them, that fueled the passion with which their bodies slickly joined.
That pushed them both on, through soul-deep kisses and shared gasping breaths, through the repetitive rocking of their joining, to that exquisite peak of sensation beyond which sweet oblivion lay.
They reached the peak, first she, then he, her release sweeping through her and triggering his. Hands locking, fingers linking, they gasped and clutched tight as their senses soared through the flames, then fell away.
Into that landscape where souls communed and hearts beat as one.
On the plane where that wild instinct reigned.
He couldn’t think of any words in English or French to adequately describe what he felt in the moment when, rousing, he lifted from her, came down beside her, and, sated and replete, she curled into his arms.
Hardly daring to believe that he’d cleared what had loomed as a major hurdle so easily, he slowly, carefully, closed his arms around her, settled them both in the rumpled sheets, and pulled the covers over them.
Too precious to break, he let the moment lengthen, breathed deeply, and let it, and all it implied, sink to his bones.
No homecoming had ever been so sweet.
So intense, so passionate. So much what he’d needed.
He acknowledged that last, understood what it meant, tried not to dwell on it. Pressing a kiss to the silky veil of her hair just above her temple, he sank into the bed and relaxed.
Penny wasn’t sure if she’d fallen asleep, or…been elsewhere. Rocketed into another sphere of existence by all she’d felt, all he’d shown her. Rather than awaking in the normal way, her senses returned bit by bit, coalescing and realigning to finally function again.
The first fact they reported, the most overwhelming, was the blissful sense of aftermath that coursed through her veins, through her flesh, to her bones. Every corner of her being, physical and mental, seemed to glow with glorious delight, with a golden satiation, a far more powerful cousin of the sensation she’d touched in passing before.
To use his words, it seemed there was heaven, and Heaven.
Lips curving, under cover of her lashes, she glanced at him, at what she could see without shifting. The candles were only half-burned; they shed a warm steady light across the bed. He’d pulled the covers to below her shoulder, halfway up his chest. Beneath the sheet, her arm lay across him, her hand lightly gripping his side; her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder. She felt more comfortable than she could remember ever feeling.
Her body thrummed, the hardness, power, and sheer masculine strength of his imprinted like some elemental memory on her senses. On her very female senses. With him, she knew what she was, could be all she was; she could deal with him confident in herself, and him. He’d always been the same, male to her female in some preordained way neither he nor she had ever questioned. She wasn’t about to start questioning now.
Shifting her head, she moved her hand and spread it over his heart. It thudded sure and strong beneath her palm. The crinkly dusting of black hair that laced across his chest, then arrowed to his groin, was a tactile fascination. She played, and knew he watched.
She didn’t stop, but pushed the covers down to his waist, baring his chest-and her own, but as to that she no longer cared. His body had always fascinated her, an illicit desire, one she’d denied, then suppressed for years. She didn’t need to suppress it now; spreading her hands, she gave it full rein.
And he let her. Remained supine in her bed and let her trace the broad, heavy muscles of his chest, run her palms over the curves of his shoulders and upper arms, then draw her fingers down to outline his ribs.