His entire body tensed at my words and he swallowed, hard. “I imagined you saying those words to me for so long it doesn’t feel real.”
“It is real. I love you.”
The look in his eyes stole the breath from my lungs.
“I love you,” he said. He pressed himself into me and it felt strange at first. He moved extremely slowly, kissing me while he did so. As if to distract me.
And I soon realized why, because suddenly there was a sharp pinch of pain. I exhaled deeply against his lips.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Keep going.” I had certainly dealt with worse than this.
“I’m trying so hard to take this slowly,” he groaned, his words ragged. I saw the sweat on his brow, the quivering tension in his muscles, the tight cording of his throat. I heard his harsh breathing, as he held back.
Taking matters into my own hands, I lifted my hips up and pushed into him, until he was fully seated inside me, cringing at the way it hurt. He groaned, “So tight, so wet, so warm,” and dropped his head on my shoulder.
My core burned, but I didn’t care. This was like a sword being slipped into a sheath. I felt completed. Full in a way I never had before.
We were one.
I did my best to relax, to breathe evenly. To let my body adjust.
He kissed my shoulder, and then he began to whisper white-hot words of desire, of love, against my skin as he set about restoking the fire within me. He told me how good I felt, what I was doing to him, how badly he wanted me. The things he said thrilled me, and every pulse point in my body throbbed. My husband knew just as many ways to please as he did to kiss, and it didn’t take long for my blood to simmer, my heart to thud, my breath to stutter.
“How does it feel?” he asked. There was so much care and concern on his face.
“It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the last time I was impaled.”
He started to laugh and I joined him. I loved the way this felt—that in the midst of all this, we could laugh and tease and have this joy. I hadn’t known it could be like this.
“I have never been this happy,” I told him.
Again, the love in his eyes overwhelmed me. “Neither have I.”
The pain had abated to the point that I was ready for more. “I have been led to believe that there is supposed to be some sort of movement involved.”
He grinned. “There is, if you want it.”
“Move, husband.”
He did, going slowly. And at first it was pain and pleasure mingled together, until the pleasure crowded everything else out.
“I told you that you’d be my undoing,” he breathed against my lips. “But I was wrong. You are my beginning. You are the making of me.”
His thick, languid thrusts made me feel like I was coming back to life again, being reborn. Touching and kissing him, moving with him, with our love bond between us, intensified everything. Every kiss and touch was imbued not only with desire but with love and connection and intimacy.
I understood why he had demanded more than just my body. With our hearts, our minds, our souls ... this was transcendent. Otherworldly.
“You are so beautiful like this,” he said roughly. “I love you so much.”
That caused an explosion of heat that radiated throughout my body until I felt like I might catch fire. All my feelings—physical, emotional—threatened to drown me.
And my whole life I’d been terrified of drowning. Had actually drowned. But this, drowning in his kisses, his touch, the pledges of his love ... it was the best thing I’d ever experienced. No matter how hard the waves crashed against me, no matter how much the riptide pulled me under, he was there. He was my safe harbor.
He took my hands and put them next to my head. Then he laced his fingers with mine, our hearts beating in one rhythm, our breath low and hot, humid. And every time he thrust, every time we moved, sparks of need flashed behind my eyes.
My nerves were on edge, my skin feverish, and all the blood in my body throbbed low and liquid. Everything was heightened and it was nearly unbearable. There had to be a limit. Some boundary where thepleasure would cease. Where the sensations would ebb. But we hadn’t reached it and all I could do was move and whimper beneath him, desperate for release.
