He thought his heart would burst through his chest. No woman had ever aroused him so outrageously. Whenever he reached for her, she evaded, then weakened him with a nip of her teeth or a featherlight caress. Agonizing. Magnificent. The breath backed up in his lungs or he might have begged for her to stop. To go on.

Helpless. She was the first ever to have made him helpless. It was a feeling that skittered through his stomach, rippled through his muscles, smoked through his brain. His skin grew damp, hot, sensitized. Wherever she touched brought a myriad of thrills. A moan wrenched out of him and he heard her low, answering laugh.

How incredible to learn that making a man shudder could be so exciting. How satisfying to discover a power that brought only pleasures. Her mind buzzed with the sense of it until she heard nothing else.

Here he belonged to her. If only here. There was no country, no duty, no traditions.

On the edge of reason, he pulled himself up. Hooking an arm around her waist, he dragged her to him, under him. Ranged above her, breath heaving, he stared down. Her chin was lifted. The dare was in her eyes.

“You’re my insanity,” he murmured, and crushed his mouth to hers.

They were sucked into the whirlwind, each not fighting to be free, but for more velocity. Once they had fenced and struck power against power. Now it was the same.

They rolled over the bed, mouth to mouth, body to body. He stripped her, but not with the care she’d come to expect. His fingers shook as he pulled the brief barrier from between them. They shook, then pressed and gripped, leaving tiny aches behind.

She moaned not from pain, but from the knowledge that his control had snapped. She’d wanted it, dreamed of what she would find behind that firmly locked door. It was on her now, like a beast breaking chains. Violent, desperate, with a primitive kind of relish. He drove her beyond the reasonable into a desire so dark, so thick, she was blind from it.

Shuddering, she crested, and while she was still breathless he pushed her up and over the peak again.

“Alexander.” She thought she’d shouted his name, but it was only a gasp. “I want you.” Her hands traveled down, grasping, and found him. “I want you inside me.”

He knew what madness was, true madness, the moment he felt her close around him. Her hips arched, setting the rhythm. He wanted to watch her face, to know when she had reached as high as it was possible to reach. But his vision was clouded.

The power took them both. When it did, he called out in French. It was the language of his heart.

Chapter 11