Sure, strong hands cupped her breasts. Then Quill’s breath swept her skin and his mouth closed on her nipple. She arched up, inarticulate sounds falling from her lips, hands clutching his shoulders.

She kept her eyes closed. Protected by blindness, she registered a demanding hardness against her thigh, felt his hands between her legs, suffered the little shivers that followed his fingers. She felt the weight of her own breasts and the fiery warmth between her legs—and gasped as strong hands pulled her thighs open. An inarticulate plea burst from her throat. And then there was no room for shame, not with the twisting flames that raced through her veins, not with the potent demand that pooled between her thighs. Without thinking, she pressed up against his fingers.

“Gabby, open your eyes.”

She kept them tightly shut, ignoring him, moving her hips and silently pleading for that delicious pressure.

“Open your eyes!” Quill was panting, his voice a growl in the back of his throat.

Finally she did. She opened her eyes to find her husband propped on his elbows over her, hair fallen over eyes black with desire. Gabby opened her mouth and swallowed. Then she instinctively pushed against him—not against fingers, but against Quill himself.

“Please.” Her voice cracked and broke in a pant.

Quill smiled a devil’s carnal smile, and Gabby didn’t care. She wanted more of him—more pressure, touch, entry.

He came to her then, came like a thief in the daytime, like a devil in the sunlight. With light shining on his face and shoulders, and their eyes open, he came into her with a surge that made design and function rationally, logically clear.

It hurt.

It hurt a lot. It must hurt for Quill too, because his face looked tormented. She would have protested, but she was pinned by his weight, by the carnal presence of him inside her. And then, as she opened her mouth, he moved, just a trifle.

He kissed her forehead, kissed her cheeks. Only when he reached her mouth did he thrust himself forward again. Gabby gasped at the flash of pain. But an elusive tingle of pleasure answered. She reached toward his mouth, found a sweet meeting that caused a trembling rise in her body. He thrust, and this time…no pain. Instead, a bolt of liquid pleasure ran through her depths, and a long shiver clutched her body.

Quill stopped yet again and made himself count silently to ten. Her body was so small; she had to grow used to him. But in the pause between seven and eight, Gabby moved in an inexperienced, awkward lunge and gasped his name in a broken pant that said nothing of pain and everything of pleasure. Quill bent his head and took her mouth, a fierce and welcome intrusion. And then he pulled back and shoved toward her center, hard, fast, over and over.