“I love the drowsy look in your eyes,” Giles said, kissing her.

“I want you,” she said, surprised by the raw note in her voice.

“I’ll do my best,” Giles said. He cupped her face with his hands and kissed her hard.

Rational thought melted away because the hard, smooth length of him slid inside with no squelching noise from the condom. His harsh breathing as he sank deeper was fuel to the fire raging in her limbs.

“Is it painful, Mina?” Giles asked, his voice a full octave lower than normal.

She shook her head. “You feel large. And hot,” she added. He pushed forward, sending a bolt of lightning down her legs. Her eyes widened. “Mon Dieu!”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Giles said with a slow-burning smile.

“You’re smiling,” Yasmin said, tracing his lips with one finger.

He flexed his hips, and carnal heat exploded in her. His mouth plundered hers, and after that they didn’t discuss vocabulary. Even Giles stopped saying more than throaty curses as he braced on his elbows, breathing hard, ravishing her with thrust after thrust.

Yasmin’s mind blurred, and she let herself simply feel. No thinking. No judging. It occurred to her to curl her legs around Giles’s hips, so she did. She ran a hand down his back and then rounded his arse, her fingers trailing a caress over flexing muscles. His body jerked in reaction, and she pulled her hand away.

“I’m sorry!”

He lifted his head from her breast. “I’m yours, Mina. Yours. Touch me again. Please touch me again.”

Giles’s thrusts were slow and steady, every flex of his hips making her quiver, leaving her body taut and waiting. She wrapped her arms around him, surrendering to a stroking motion that made her cling.

With a groan, he pulled her hips up, and a strangled moan tore from her throat.

“Yes,” he breathed. With a last thrust, he sent Yasmin tumbling again into burning heat, a scream escaping her.

Afterward, they lay beside each other, Yasmin’s heart thundering in her ears. Her body pricked with sweat and heat, and yet the clearest sensation was in her hand, her left hand. Giles’s big hand was curled around hers. She could feel his strong fingers. Her whole body was thrumming with warm satisfaction, but those two interlocked hands?

They felt like safety.

She had lost her composure. She’d behaved like a strumpet. It hadn’t been disgusting. He wasn’t disgusted. The sentences filtered through her mind dazedly, slowly.

Finally Giles propped himself up and brushed damp hair off Yasmin’s forehead. “That was more than I ever could have imagined. Than I did picture.”

“You imagined making love to me?”

One side of his mouth crooked up with slumbrous amusement. “From the moment I saw you. I’m sure they have a phrase for it in French.”

“Coup de Foudre?” Yasmin asked. “A thunderbolt.”

His brow furrowed. “I must have the definition wrong.”

Could he mean “love at first sight”? Yasmin swallowed. Surely not. Giles wouldn’t lower himself to such an undisciplined emotion.