I let my arms wrap around his neck and press myself into him. As he leans me back my legs wrap around him. I sigh when his mouth finds my neck and smile when his breathing transforms from deep to shallow. I arch as I feel his hands on the small of my back, feel my shirt bunch as he pushes it up. I love the way the sunrise reflects in his eyes. So many complex colors and shades. Some soft, some violent, all of them perfectly beautiful.

I pull his pajama bottoms from his hips, down his thighs, to his knees in an unhurried fashion before grasping the fabric with my toes and using my feet to remove the cotton from his legs. Then I lie back as he frees me from my jeans. I can feel his erection pressing against me and there’s something beautiful about that too, something both primitive and graceful about his desire as I open myself up to him and he pushes inside.

I buck my hips and let my hands run up and down his back as I lick his ear, kiss his cheek, whisper the word yes.

We’re in sync now, dancing to a melody that’s so much more tender than any we’ve ever danced to before. He kisses me again and we continue to move. Each thrust moves him a little deeper inside and I feel myself expand for him, I feel myself getting wetter. The room is growing brighter by the second as the sun rises in the sky.

I will not have this man as my enemy.

His hand slides between us as his fingers find my clit, bringing this loving ecstasy to a new height.

I will not destroy him.

“Warrior.” The word is there, mixed up in his moan as he rotates his hips against me, as he continues to toy with me, bringing goose bumps to my skin. Warrior. He says it with such affection and passion.

But for me, the word has the edge of a curse.

I raise my arms, hold his face in my hands, and as he looks into my eyes he momentarily stops, studies me as I respond with the only healing word I can think of . . .

“Lover.”

Once more Lander moans and he again goes into motion, rocking my body with his, kissing that spot on the base of my neck, the spot that makes me descend into blissful madness.

I feel myself moving to the brink. The sweet tension inside my body is being pulled so taut I know it’s about to break, and when it does, when I finally call out his name, I feel the throb of him as he fills me.

Everything has changed.

chapter twenty-seven