It was everything she had expected and more. She had never been the one completely in control, had never taken with such single-mindedness, never loved a man with the entirety of her body, heart, mind, soul, the way she did Gabriel. Normally she liked to ride a man sitting straight up, but she wanted more of a connection with Gabriel, wanted her skin on his, wanted her breath intermingling with his, so she leaned forward, let their chests collide. She dropped her head by his chin and panted, the sensations acute and overwhelming and amazing. She loved the way her hair covered his, the blond and brown strands tangling together in a messy heap. Letting go of the sheet, she gripped a fistful of his hair instead, holding on as she moved faster, hips thrusting desperately as the tightness built inside her and the hard, slick slam of him into her body had her teeth tearing into her bottom lip.

It was good, so damn good, and she ground onto him, as her panting turned to moaning, which accelerated to yelling as she drowned in sensations, frantic and desperate, loving every second, but wanting more, harder. Then she paused, knew she was going over the edge, and gave one last thrust of her hips down onto him, and came with a soundless shudder.

Sara snapped her head back and rode out the waves of pleasure as she looked down at Gabriel. Something about the look on his face, the love she saw, the desperate clawing for control, the edgy darkness in his eyes, made her instinctively pull almost all the way off of him, then push down, as far as she could, and she saw and felt his own orgasm trigger. Together, it went on, and she gripped his hair and fought for breath, relaxing onto his shoulder.

They lay there, panting, her legs around him, bodies intimately connected, skin hot and flushed, her heart pounding, mind blissfully blank.

“You have no idea what you do to me,” he said, his voice low and rough, his words punctuated by his heavy breathing.

Sara couldn’t move, limp and satiated on his chest. “Oh, actually, I have a pretty good idea.”

Gabriel knew that she wasn’t going back to New Orleans with him. He felt it in the way she clung to him, the softness of her eyes, the anxiety that slowly crawled up and overtook her languid post-sex contentment.

When she said, “I don’t know how to say this . . . ,” Gabriel put his finger on her lip.

“You don’t have to say anything. I know.”

“Know what?” She had pulled off of him and slid in alongside him on the bed, her arm across his chest as she stroked his skin lightly.

“That you have to stay. I can feel your thoughts.”

“Feel my thoughts?”