Rising up on his arms, he moved in her. Despite his warning, it was slow and careful and beautiful. She laid her hands on his chest as a blissful contentment soaked her. Every rejoining became a luxurious ecstasy to be savored. In the fire’s light his face showed all of his hard beauty, but there was no harshness in the tight lines. His gaze took her as deliberately as his body did.

It was good. Too good. She had known pleasure before, but in Scotland love-play had been a game between friends that sated physical needs. This was different in ways that left her spirit and heart as naked as her body. Their connection was tinged with an invasive and poignant intimacy. He might have been claiming her soul as well as her body.

He stopped, joined to her, completing her in more ways than she could name. He came down, into her arms, so that his skin lined her deliciously and the connection grew closer.

He kissed her. It started gently and sweetly, but deepened quickly as their mutual desire swept in like a wind. Male power poured off him as if a dam had broken. His passion turned as hot and furious as he had warned it would be.

Her craving met his and then spun out of control. They fought a battle where they both strove for the same victory. A new delicious shivering began where he stretched her and she rocked into his hard thrusts, demanding more until the quivering filled all of her and grew unbearable. Relinquishing her hold on everything except him, she let him drive her to a crazed climax that had her clawing at his back and screaming into the silence.

Sanity returned just as his own end came. Holding her right leg over his hip he drove deeper with hard, claiming thrusts that prolonged the pleasure drenching her.

He spoke lowly in her ear, but not pretty words. He only said her name, once. But the way he said it, gently despite his violence, quietly despite the hot fury of his release, touched her so profoundly that it might have been the sweetest poetry.

CHAPTER 10

As she lay with him she felt bound by a peace and warmth as soulful as a nostalgic memory. She savored the mood, and the hard body in her arms, and the heart beating in rhythm to her own. She could not fight the saturating intimacy, did not want to, but she recognized that danger lurked within the bliss.

Pleasure had become a physical thing that she took or gave on her own terms. That she controlled. This had been very different. The power of what had happened, of just how weak it might make her, both intrigued and frightened her.

She should have been the one to run away, instead of Genith.