This was a step beyond where I thought I’d go, but it was exactly the one I needed most. Every touch, every kiss layered me in a shuddered pain that only Nicholas could ease. I came alive under his stare, and the sheer adrenaline of presenting myself was exhilarating and freeing.
But it wasn’t surrender.
So many times in so many ways, my body was given to Nicholas and taken as he wished. This was different. Not submission, but trust.
His lips caressed my legs, up, up, up, until I spread for him and presented the part of me craving his attention. Nicholas leaned, kissing my thighs, my mound, and then…
He kissed just below my navel.
Over the baby.
His baby. It had to be his baby.
I trembled as I took his hand, resting his palm over the softness. He cupped me, so gently and loving, as though the rub of his hands would somehow break me.
It didn’t.
It wouldn’t.
His delicate kisses lowered until the warmth of his breath along my slickening folds teased me. I arched. His tongue flicked against the swollen nub, and like an electric shock, I flinched against the powerful sensation. My body propelled forward, pressing harder against his mouth, sealing his lips over the part of me that I had forsaken.
I didn’t know how sensitive it was.
How it pulsed with heat and slickness.
I shuddered, too overwhelmed to even whisper my astonishment.
Pleasure.
Desire.
Passion.
I had forgotten them all, but Nicholas guided me through every shuddering wave. He showed me how the twist of his tongue, the press of his lips, and the flicking quickness of his attention could reignite the passion inside me.
My fingers curled into the couch. I squeezed the leather as words faded into quick gasps. My head dropped. My hips bucked.
And everything was perfect as I pressed into the heat of Nicholas’s offered mouth. The taste became a feast, and the feast an absolutely perfect exploration of me.
I wetted. I tensed. I clenched. I gasped breath after breath of cleansing heat. Sweat flushed my skin and prickled my sensitive body. The weight of his hand against my tummy rocked me, and the hot, flattened lick of his tongue vowed so much more.
I hadn’t felt like this since the last time I tangled in his arms. Our bodies had melded and our defenses dropped. Everything we ever wanted existed only within each other. We were together. We made more than love.
My hand fell to my belly, holding his palm over me.
It had to be his baby.
I meant for one touch. One kiss. One crest of pleasure. One night of memories to replace the nightmares. But I’d never have just one moment with Nicholas Bennett. If I let him, he’d offer me every moment, a life full of comfort, pleasures, and trust.
And I was so close to accepting it.
The crash of delight stunned me. I cried out his name between incomprehensible feelings and gratitude. My love for him captured with a gasp. A crushing wave silenced my thoughts and replaced them with the fuzzy, heavy agony of my body twisting itself in lust.
But even as the weight of passion rendered me weak and useless against his lapping tongue, I needed more.
Not a touch or a taste.
But all of him.
My words trembled the ache inside me, empty and wanting. He shuddered with me. Tension flexed his muscles. He might have taken me. Pinned me down. Ruined the trust as he gave into instinct.
But Nicholas was stronger than that. He told me he admired me, but I was lost without him. He wasn’t the man who imprisoned me. He was my greatest challenge. I opposed him. I conquered him. I surrendered to him.
I was meant for him.
And that’s why I couldn’t stop. We had to feel each other again.
“Just one night.” The words poured from me. I reached for him. “Just for tonight.”
“Sarah—”
I endured my blinding shudders and pulled him close, meeting his kiss with a furious intensity. I wanted him. Us. That closeness and intimacy, the understanding and the pleasure, the union and the invasion all blended into that moment of connection.
I eased him to the couch. He stretched his arms over the back of the sofa. Passive. Waiting.
This was my night to take the control I needed, explore the desire between us, and banish the last shadows clutching my heart.
I pulled the zipper on his trousers.
His cock pulsed within my hand. Thick. Hard. Amazingly warm to the touch.
I gripped him, and his ragged breath proved how much he needed to be touched as well.
Just like me.
I didn’t let his intensity frighten me. A man as strong and powerful as Nicholas Bennett allowed me to touch, savor, and explore. He controlled his urges and respected my boundaries and fears.
It was so easy to fall in love with this man. So easy to have my heart broken again and again.
So easy to let him fix me.
So hard to let him go.
I settled over his lap. He didn’t touch me, and I was grateful. His hardness strained in my hand, and a single pump of my fist drew a groan from his self-imposed silence.
“Just one night,” I whispered.
“I’d prevent the sun from rising to stay with you.”
And he could. Nicholas Bennett stretched a moment into eternity, a forever that comforted me in pleasure and need. The heat of his cock pulsed against my soft petals.
I allowed myself one hesitant breath.
I sunk upon him, gasping as the thickness pushed through me. Our bodies met, completely, bounded together in slick heat and tight possession.
Full, but not invaded.
Claimed, but not lost.
Taken in shared passion.
I gripped his shoulders. My shivers ground my hips harder against his. Deeper and harder, hotter and wetter. Everything within me twisted and exploded. The thrust stole my breath and captured me in a web of pleasure so silken, so inescapable, I thought of nothing but striking down again and again to fulfill that desire with pure intensity.
This was all the comfort I needed. I caressed his chest. I welcomed the warmth of his lips against my breasts as I cradled him to me. His thickness pulsed in me, aching with the same broken tenderness that drove me down upon him.
Just to feel him.
“Sarah—” Nicholas’s mocha voice rumbled against my skin like another touch. “You have no idea how much I love you.”
Yes, I did. Every inch of him inside me made a promise of love and futures we hadn’t dreamed might be ours. I leaned against him to tease my chest against his, to press my tummy against hard abs.
The pleasure dizzied me. The possibility that someday, when the danger faded, a place saved for us and the baby. Drunk on hope and enthralled by him, a heat built inside me once more.
Pure fantasy or a dream come true?
Again and again, we moved together. I drove myself upon him, groaning with excitement as his cock hardened within me, twitching with thick muscle. It was hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to do anything but sink against Nicholas and be filled.
“Nick—” My fingers dug into his shoulders.
His voice strained. He clenched his jaw as I impaled myself with his offered pleasure. “I gotta—”
“Just hold me.”
And he did. He wrapped his thick arms around me, pulled me to his chest, and kissed me. A feverish, uncompromising instinct seized me, and I bound harder onto his cock to earn the grunted gratitude. His grip tightened. So did mine.
I moaned for him to share the peak with me.
In me.
“Nick, come with me,” I whispered. “Please.”
I gave him the permission though I never meant to withhold his pleasure. He did that for me, only me. To prove that his touch, his kiss, his body was meant to help me heal. I arched, crying out as I took him as deeply as I could.
And the jetted heat felt so familiar and yet so new.
No longer did he try to take me or claim me. What we had, what we created, was so much more than the moments we spent stealing pleasure to conquer the other.
We loved each other. We ached for each other.
And the pleasure rewarded our survival.