The pleasure peeled her apprehension away. He used his tongue to intensify the pleasure and she turned wild. Her cries filled the chamber and joined the pulse of his existence. He felt the pleasure make her tense as the intensity turned excruciating for them both. Her cries came faster and louder until her scream of release rang off the stones.

Barely controlling his own passion, he rose up and slid into her. She lifted her knees to absorb him until he penetrated as deeply as possible.

He withdrew and reentered slowly several times, luxuriating so much in the sensation of feeling her again that his consciousness began shattering. Then it was his turn for madness and he succumbed gladly. He thrust again and again, hard and furious, as all the waiting and wanting of the last days found expression in this claiming of her.

Despite her recent climax, she joined him. Her body rocked in rhythm to his, and her lips at his ear whispered for him to make it harder, hotter, deeper. Her urgent pleas swam in his head and destroyed his last restraints. She groaned in contentment as he took her harder yet, and her joyful cries accompanied the rise of his passion to its violent, soul-splitting peak.

For a few moments he knew nothing but a saturating peace. It created a spaceless place in which there was no strife, no anger, no death. She was with him there. Not physically, but essentially and completely.

The alluring void began slowly filling. He became aware of her body beneath his and of her heaving breaths on his shoulder. Her arms still grasped his body in a desperate embrace. He rolled to her side and pulled her into the curve of his body and drifted into a daze still suffused with the perfection.

He did not know how long they lay there. It might have been a few moments or half the night.

Finally, Nesta eased out of his arms. “I must go. It will not do to fall asleep here.”

He caught her arm. He was in no mood to consider what would and would not do. “I will wake you well before dawn.”

“Mark—”

He pulled her down beside him. “When you come to me, you will not leave my bed so quickly. That is one of my terms.”

Her sigh said he was impossible, but she did not argue. She relaxed back into their embrace.

“You called me Mark,” he said.

“Did I? Perhaps hearing David use it so much made it slip out.”

“I was called that as a boy, but not since becoming lord. My sister still uses it, as sisters will. David does too, but I think it is deliberate. I think that he likes to remind me that I was not always so important, and that he knew me when I was hotheaded and reckless.”

“You dislike the name, then. I will be careful and try not to use it again.”