bone and muscle. She felt the flat disks of his nipples harden in response. Justin had breathed life into
the phantom who had once haunted her girlish dreams. She couldn't get enough of him. She wanted to feel the weight of him crushing her. She wanted to drink him in through her fingertips. She felt greedy
and selfish and fierce like a mewling baby tiger, blinded by the explosive light of its first sunrise. The
walls of her pride were crumbling beneath its heat.
She tugged at his hair, bringing his face to hers. Her voice broke on a whimper as she said the words she'd bitten back for so long. "Love me, Justin. Please."
He touched two fingers to her bottom lip. "You never have to beg me, Emily. Never."
Then he was sliding down on her into a darkness that heightened every sensation. His warm hands cupped her bottom, lifting and coaxing. A sudden burst of shyness made her clamp her thighs together.
He brushed his lips against her silky triangle of curls, then blew softly against the wet spot his mouth had made. His voice was a husky whisper, half command, half prayer. "Trust me."
He'd never before asked that of her. How could she deny him now? Her head fell back against the pillow and her legs went limp, giving him dominion over far more than her body. Moaning, she bunched the back of his shirt in her fists. He was her lover, both demon and angel, giving her ecstasy untold, burying his tongue in her velvety folds, flicking and stroking until her womb convulsed in an agony of pleasure. Before she could shatter the silence of the sleeping house with her cry, his lips were there, both shocking and intoxicating her with the taste of her own forbidden nectar.
The tiny hairs on the back of his hand tickled her naked belly as he tore open the buttons of his trousers. His intensity both excited and frightened her. She shuddered, realizing she was about to learn the full measure of this man's passion.
But her sweet torment at his hands had just begun. He slid his arm around her rump and lifted her to a half-sitting position against the headboard. His hands eased her thighs as far apart as they would go, exposing her fully. She felt terribly vulnerable and sinfully decadent. Even in the sheltering darkness she could feel her cheeks burn.
"Did I ever mention to you how very shy I am?" she whispered.
He touched her there, softly, eliciting a moan. "It was one of the first things I noticed about you."
"Really?"
She could hear the grin in his voice. "No."
A shudder of pleasure banished her shyness as he slid a finger from each hand up into her folds until
they found the silky little bud nestled beneath. At the same time, his thumbs began to circle the taut, distended satin of her flesh below, laving her, pearling the hot, thick honey around her melting core. Her world narrowed to pure sensation. An emptiness more gaping than any she had known yawned within her. Wild with need, she arched against him, pressing against his thumbs, wanting more, so much more.
Justin was half crazed from wanting her, but still he continued his exquisite torture. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he watched her face, entranced by the flickers of pleasure dancing across her features. She whimpered his name. Her teeth cut into the tender bud of her lower lip. Fighting for control, he clenched his jaw against the hoarse rasp of his own breathing. When he got to where he was going, he wanted her already there, waiting for him.
His deft fingers never ceased their maddening dance, not even when he rubbed the hard length of himself where his thumbs had been.
Emily gasped at the shock of it. Her eyes flew open. Justin's face, darkened by passion, was very near
to hers. His eyes sparkled as he pressed against her, sliding the very tip of himself into her, then withdrawing, taunting her with its promise. Both wonder and fear shook her as she realized his intent. When her first dark shiver of ecstasy came, this man was going to make her his own.
The flames of his fingertips licked her higher. His rigid manhood breached her again, probing gently,
then pulling back, maddening her into a frenzy with its deliberate teasing. She writhed against him. Her hands tangled in his hair. When he bent his head and took her breast into his mouth, first gently sucking, then tugging at her nipple with his teeth, Emily broke. Pleasure raked her in shuddering waves and Justin thrust up into her, hard.
Emily muffled her scream against his shoulder. The pain was no less phenomenal than the pleasure. As her untried body clamped down in protest, Justin threw back his head in masculine ecstasy and gritted
his teeth, pressing into her inch by unrelenting inch. Sweat sheened his chest.
She felt her tender flesh stretching to sheath him. Shamed by her inadequacy, her voice broke on a
groan. "I can't, Justin. Oh, God, you're too much. I can't take all of you."
Shifting her hips with his hands, he proved her wrong, driving upward until every throbbing inch of him was cloaked in the taut, velvety folds of her body. His lips caught her cry, drowning it in his own.
This wasn't the way Justin had planned it-panting, half undressed, pinioning Emily against the headboard, but when had life with Emily ever gone as planned? He fought the urge to move within her, wanting to give her body time to adjust to his invasion. His tongue soothed her swollen lips, sworled in tender apology through her mouth even as his body exulted in her exquisite gloving. A tear trickled from beneath her dark lashes.
He caught it on his tongue before it could reach her dimple. Her luminous eyes opened.
"No tears," he said softly. "You promised."
She kissed him gently, a smile trembling on her lips. "No tears," she repeated. As proof of her pledge
she braced her palm against his chest and arched her back, taking him both higher and deeper than he would have ever dreamed possible.
A guttural groan escaped him, but even through his haze of ecstasy he saw her flinch. He caught her
hips in his hands and eased her flat beneath him, determined to banish all memories of pain from her
mind or die a glorious death trying.
As Justin began to move deep within her, Emily felt her body surrendering to his sweet sorcery. He braced his weight on his hands and ground his hips against her, both consuming her and making her
whole with each silken stroke. She clung to him, unable to remember a time when he had not been
a part of her. Her hips rose to meet each of his bewitching thrusts. This sensation was different from
the earlier ecstasy he had given her, fuller, darker somehow, and fraught with all the perils of surrender. Small, helpless noises escaped her throat until finally, drugged with pleasure, she could do nothing but
lie beneath his powerful body, spread for the slaking of his desire.
"Emily," he muttered in evocation against her lips. "My sweet, sweet Emily."
He reached between them and touched her then. The gentlest touch of his fingertips set off a quaking tremor. Just when she thought he couldn't get any bigger or harder, he did, and the tremor became a shuddering explosion. Their lips crashed, fusing in the desperate need to silence their screams as all the passion he'd kept locked inside came roaring from his loins, spilling hot within her.