She would have done something about it, but that would have meant releasing Erik, and she didn’t trust him not to take advantage of that. As she’d shifted position, he’d snaked a hand up and around her neck, his fingers long, forceful, and nearer her jugular than Toinette would have permitted from anyone else, particularly anyone whose nails could become claws with a thought.
With Erik, the contact sent tendrils of humming desire down through her body, hardening her nipples and spiraling inward to her sex. She made no move to shake his hand away. When he pressed her head down, crushing her mouth against his, the hint of pain only went well with the pleasure, a sharp wine with a rich meal.
Yet she had no wish to surrender. The fight was half the fun.
Toinette dug her fingers into Erik’s shoulders, hard enough for him to feel the nails even through his shirt. At the same time, she pulled back: not enough to stop kissing him—she didn’t want to dothat—but far enough to bite his lower lip. She did no damage, but she wasn’tentirelygentle either.
The sound he made was as close to a growl as human lungs could manage. Erik’s hips flexed upward, hard and sudden and involuntary, driving his erection between his stomach and Toinette’s. As the heat in her own sex spread outward, she wondered if she could drive him over the edge still clothed. The thought made her pulse with arousal—and, at the same time, chuckle low in her throat.
Erik was the one to pull back this time. “Oh no, lass,” he said hoarsely. Sweat was beginning to glisten at his temples, darkening his golden hair, and his eyes were almost all pupil, but he had enough confidence to smile up at her again. “You’re not winning this one.”
Then, with a quick twist of his arms, he rolled them both over.
Eighteen
At last Toinette was where Erik had wanted her for weeks. She writhed beneath him, full breasts heaving as she panted, hips twisting with a power that belied their slim outlines, but he had her. Unnatural strength was one thing, but strength and size still weighed in the balance, particularly in human form—and just then, neither of them wanted to be anything else.
She was no easy prey, though. Almost as soon as her back hit the ground, she was whipping a hand up toward Erik’s head. Whether she meant to claw his face, gain leverage to reverse their positions again, or just pull him down for another kiss, it didn’t matter in the end. He caught her wrist in one hand, grabbed the other, and pulled her arms up over her head.
That the new position tilted her long neck back and thrust her breasts forward hadn’t been his prime objective, but it was a very gratifying development, and one that made him even happier with the difference in their sizes. That difference let him hold Toinette’s wrists firmly captive while he palmed her breasts with his free hand, pinching the stiff nipples through the fabric of her gown as she called him obscene names in a breathless voice that only made his cock harder.
Careful not to loosen his hold, he bent his head and took one rigid peak into his mouth, lashing it with his tongue and then biting lightly. Toinette’s hoarse moan filled his ears as he moved to the other breast. Her arms went limp; if Erik had been less wary, he might have let go then, but one hand was enough to thrust beneath the ruins of her skirt.
“Best idea you’ve ever had,” he said, punctuating the words with more rough kisses to her breasts, roaming up to where her neckline bared skin. “Never wear long skirts again.”
Toinette opened her dark eyes to glare at him. “I’ll wear what I like, devil take you.” Both words and glare lacked some of the force they might have had, since her face was flushed with desire and her hands on his shoulders urged him back to his attentions.
He didn’t comply. “You’ve thetakingright, pretty girl. But you’re wrong about who’ll do it to whom.” Beneath her skirt, her thighs were sleek and strong—and she squeezed them together at the first intrusion of his hand, as proper as any novice. “Stubborn, are ye no’?”
Toinette laughed, eyes gleaming and hair spread out on the ground like a glorious cloud. “If that’s a surprise, you’re duller than I thought.”
Erik bit her neck for that—not to her displeasure, judging by the way she hissed and arched—and lunged forward, prying her legs apart with knees and hand alike. With a mortal woman, he would never have dared, would have stopped at the first sign of anything that might be taken as reluctance, but this was Toinette, fighting him only because the fight itself was worth something.
It cast her arousal in its own light too. When Erik’s fingers reached the cleft between her legs and found it wet enough to dampen her thighs, he added the sin of pride to that of lust. “Eager,” he murmured against Toinette’s neck. “You can’t tell me otherwise now.”
“Neither can you,” she said, and canted her hips so that her thigh rubbed against his cock, a slow, hard grind that had Erik seeing stars and biting his own lip for some measure of self-control.
Every instinct told him to move, to rut blindly against Toinette for the short time it would take to satisfy himself. Barely he gained mastery, long enough to undo the laces of his hose with a clumsy hand. “Hold still,” he growled.
For once, Toinette did as he told her. He thrust inside her, sudden and rough. The way she caught her breath made him pause for an instant—she was no virgin, of course, and she’d been giving every sign of enjoying their roughness, though he didn’t doubt that even she had limits—but in that instant she’d wrapped her legs around his thighs and risen up to meet him.
“Well?” she gasped, a challenge and a demand.
Erik met it eagerly, drawing back only to plunge forward with the same savage motion. This time he kissed her, delighting in the parallel heat of her mouth and body, the strength with which she responded, the sting of her nails raking down his back, and the pressure of her thighs at his waist. There was no time for subtlety, no will for restraint, only lust as elemental and unslacking as the storm had been at its height.
Even with his mouth on hers, Toinette was crying out before long, making desperate guttural noises that rose in pitch as her hips pumped frantically against Erik’s. He cupped her arse in his hands to hold her against him and drive deeper, faster, until finally Toinette bowed her back and screamed, inner muscles clenching over and over again around his cock.
Had Erik needed further sensation to find his own climax, that would have easily done it. As it was, he had only to let go for pleasure to twist its way upward from his bollocks, pulsing outward in a lightning strike of ecstasy that hit over and over again.
Slowly the world settled back into its expected form around him, and Erik looked down into Toinette’s pleasure-hazed eyes. As long as the moment had been in arriving, he couldn’t quite believe it had finally happened—and in such a way—but neither could he regret any detail.
* * *
“Do you think they heard us?” Erik asked, glancing over one naked shoulder toward the path that led to the beach.
Toinette stopped combing pine needles out of her hair and shrugged a nonchalance she wanted to feel. “Doubt it,” she said, and meantthat. “You didn’t hear us when we were fighting the plants, and we were louder.”
“You were further away.”
