. . . like fine china, delicate china, then he would punish her with hard kisses for being so perfect, for being everything he didn’t deserve. For the wonder she still had, the wonder she made him remember once feeling.

Being a man, he would have to know that she needed him. So he would kiss every inch of her silken skin, dragging his tongue over the peaks of her nipples. Rasping them with his unshaven jaw, till they budded hard and tight for him, teeth nipping, then he would move those kisses to the sweet feminine heat between her legs, where he would taste that taut aching bud. Slow long strokes of his tongue there.

Ever-so-delicate nips.

Then more strong strokes, faster and faster until she writhed beneath him.

But still, she wouldn’t be wild enough for him.

So he would slip his finger inside her. Find that spot, one of several special ones, that drove a woman wild. Feel her tighten convulsively around him. Feel her hunger. Then withdraw and taste her with his tongue again. Lapping. Lapping. Drowning in the sweet taste of her.

Then two fingers. Then his tongue. Until she . . .

“Please!” Chloe cried, arching her back, arching up and up, begging for his touch.

Dageus loomed above her, his hard body gilded by firelight, a sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.

“What do you want, Chloe?” His glittering gaze challenged her, dared her to want, dared her to speak of those things she’d never said aloud. Secret fantasies she sheltered in her woman’s heart. Fantasies she knew he’d be only too willing to fulfill; one and all.

“Please!” she cried, not knowing how to put it into words. “Everything!”

His nostrils flared and he inhaled sharply, and she suddenly wondered if she’d said something far more dangerous than she knew.

“Everything?” he purred. “Everything I might want? Everything I might dream of doing to you? Do you mean to gift me your innocence—without condition?”

A heartbeat passed, then two.

. . . would say that she needed him. Was willing to relinquish everything. He would turn his years of mastery—all those years he’d made heated love with a cold heart to women who’d wanted nothing from him but his body—to Chloe’s lush curves, the backs of her knees, the inside of her thighs, laving every inch with his tongue. He would untie her, roll her onto her stomach. Stretch her hands above her head, catch them in one of his, nipping the nape of her neck. He would drag his tongue down her spine, lavishing attention on his favorite spot, the slender, delicate arch where a woman’s back met her bottom, then kiss every inch of her sweet ass.

Kneeling above her, straddling her, he would nudge her soft curves with his hard cock. Feel her buck up and back . . .

“Dageus!” Chloe cried. He was behind her, hot and silky and hard against her bottom, and she felt so damned empty inside that it hurt.