He felt something like a growl working through him and pushed down a sudden, violent need to devour. Instead he took her face in his hands, watching her, drinking her in even as his mouth took hers again. Watching still, for those flickers of surprise and pleasure in her eyes, as he slipped her bra aside, as he cupped her breasts in his hands, skimmed his thumbs over nipples that went hot and stiff.

Then he laid her back to capture one sensitized point with his mouth.

Her hand fisted in the spread, dragging at it as hot, liquid sensation flooded her system. A pulse was pounding between her legs, all but burning there. She heard her own moan, a wanton, throaty sound of pleasure as she wrapped around him, racked by edgy, questing needs.

"Easy." He wasn't certain if he were calming her or himself. But her restless movements beneath him had control nearly slipping out of his hands.

He rolled with her, tugging away the spread she'd tangled around them, sinking with her into the pool of pillows. He dragged at her shorts, drawing them down, away, then toyed with the last barrier, the little swatch of blush-colored lace.

"Oh my." Her hips jerked and her vision blurred. "I can't—"

"You should be dancing through the woods under a full moon." He murmured it, delighting in her body, the shape of it, the glorious response of it to every touch. He traced a scatter of freckles on her quivering belly and smiled as he shaped a star. "Should've figured it."

Then he slid a finger under the lace.

Pressure slammed into her, a smothering weight of velvet that had her fighting for one gulp of air. Heat flashed with the shock of a fireball. Her eyes went blind, the stunned cry ripped from her throat, and the pressure burst into a flare of pleasure dark as moonless midnight.

She went limp with it, the hand that had gripped his shoulder sliding bonelessly to the tangled sheets.

So hot, he thought, and his hands weren't completely steady as he drew the lace down her legs. So wet. So beautifully ready. He felt his heart slamming in his chest as her heavy eyes flickered open and that clouded gold fixed on him.

"I've never…"

"I know." He was the first, and it made him mad to have her. "Again," he murmured, and brought her close, so desperately close that her hips arched up to meet him when he came into her.

His muscles screamed, his blood seemed to snarl as he met both heat and resistance. "Hold on." He panted it, linked his hands with hers.

She felt herself reaching again, flying toward that astonishing peak. The pain was a shock, so mixed with pleasure she couldn't separate the two. Then she was opening for him, taking him into her. Mating. And there was only pleasure.