Straggling for air, Serena arched against him. Her body shuddered from a hundred unexpected sensations. She was trapped in a world of silk and fire. At her every movement, the bedspread caressed her naked back and legs, whispering of dark promises. Her flesh was seared wherever he had touched, as though he'd carried the tiny gold flame of the candle in his fingers. As he wet the silk above her straining nipple with his tongue, she felt the fire leap into her. Like a voice from a distance she heard him murmuring her name, and more she couldn't understand.

As if he'd lost patience with any barrier, Justin drew the chemise down to her waist so that he could feast on her naked skin. Serena pressed him closer, her hands now as demanding as his. Though her mouth ached for the taste of him, her body thrilled to the desperate race of his lips over her skin. She knew only pleasure now, the steamy pleasure of unrelenting passion. Gone were restrictions and rules; here was the abandonment she had glimpsed briefly in a dream.

It was only now that she realized there was so much she didn't know, so much she'd never felt. Second by second there were new discoveries. As his mouth tarried just above the line of silk, she felt a hunger deeper than any she'd ever experienced. Her imagination ran wild, thoughts of him inside her, filling her, dreams of a pleasure so acute they brought a tug of pain between her thighs. Delirious, she clutched at his shoulders.

"Take me," she demanded on a ragged breath. "Justin, take me now."

But he continued driving her higher, as if he hadn't heard her plea. He drew the silk down, caressing the newly exposed flesh with his lips—over the flat, quivering stomach, over the smooth curve of hip, to the taut, arching muscles of her inner thigh.

She arched, crying out, thrown swiftly into the river of passion. He was relentless, as terrifying a lover as she had feared, as thrilling as she'd dreamed. She was all that he wanted—soft and moist and out of control. Desperate, demanding, she clutched at him, scraping his flesh with those sleek, elegant nails. He could hear her moans, her incoherent words rasping out of her throat as he drove her further and further toward madness. Her skin was damp, beaded with passion, while her hips thrust her need toward him again and again. Now she was his, mindlessly his. And he knew, somehow, that no one had ever taken her more completely. Fighting to hold the power a moment longer, he ranged himself above her. Serena gripped his hips, urging him on.

In the first touch of daylight her face was like porcelain. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted as each breath trembled through them. Half crazed with need, he vowed no man would ever see her as he saw her at that moment.