He clamped her body to his as if by the sheer force of his embrace he could crawl inside her soul and anchor himself there for eternity.
His sex was hard, heavy, the skin stretched near to bursting. Each brush of the soft fabric of hisshumaall but destroyed him, sensitizing the tip of his sex until he feared he might come right then, just from a kiss.
She squirmed, her dangling legs moving restlessly, and the motion nearly sent him to his knees.
“Moa kiri...moamyerial myerinas... put your legs around me.” His voice came out choked, rasping. Each word forced through a throat so tight he could scarcely breathe, let alone speak.
She obeyed without a word, legs sliding around his waist, ankles clamping tight in the small of his back. Her grip was hard, fierce, and his mind went up in flames thinking about all the other ways and parts of him she could clasp so tightly.
His sex was wedged between her fully open thighs, blocked from the gates of Halla by hisshumaand the much-too-plentiful layers of her full skirts. Need and hunger pounded through him. He had to get inside her. The need was ferocious, overwhelming. A primal instinct immutably etched into every cell of his body. The same sort of primitive, relentless, mate-or-die dictate that drove so many creatures of the sea.
She whimpered and sobbed against him, arching her back, hips undulating in an instinctive rhythm that drove him even wilder for her. Her plump breasts strained against the confines of her bodice.
“I need to see you,” he rasped. Without thought, his battle claws snicked out, sliced through the ties at the front of her bodice. Fabric parted. Her breasts spilled free. Beautiful, lush, firm globes, silky skin like chocolate cream, topped by dark, tightly beaded nipples. Numahao bless him. She was exquisite. More perfect than he’d ever dreamed a woman could be. Everything about her seemed to have been fashioned specifically to drive him wild.
He reached for her, filled his palms with her breasts. “You are so beautiful,moa kiri.So soft, sweet...”
With a short, choked cry, she grabbed his wrists, tried to pull his hands away.
He caught her hands, tangled her fingers in his. “No, Gabriella, please. Let me see you. Let me touch you.” Gently, inexorably, he drew her hands out to her sides and dipped down to capture one straining nipple in his mouth. She gave a sharp cry and arched up against him.
As she did so, the fiery hot Summer Rose on her inner right wrist slid across the pale golden trident on his left.
It was like being struck by lightning.
He reared back, roaring, every muscle trembling. Her body arched, rising up from the bench as if tied to him by invisible strings. A cry ripped from her throat. Her bright blue eyes flashed purest gold.
Dilys had sailed through his share of hurricanes—some so violent the waves alone would have sent any other vessel to the bottom of the sea. He’d felt the sting of rain. The punch of wind so strong even a Calbernan could not stand against it. The electric crack of lightning that sizzled through the air and raised every hair on his body. Relentless forty-foot waves slapping at his ship like a child batting at a toy in his bath.
That raw, unbridled power was nothing compared to the force that drove through him now.
It roared through his veins, turning blood to molten lava, making him quake with deep, racking tremors. His sex went hard as stone, stretched near to bursting. Need became punishing agony, a hunger so fierce it was a living, writhing thing inside him. Had he not been straddling the bench, the enormity of what he felt would have driven him to his knees.
With a cry of surrender, he fell upon her, suckling her beautiful breasts, reaching for her tangled skirts. Trying to fight through the layers of bunched, blue fabric. Hating them. Needing to feel her skin, naked flesh to naked flesh.
“Sweet Helos!” Gabriella clutched Dilys’s head to her chest, awash in indescribable sensation. The shocking pleasure that had engulfed her when he’d laid his hands—his mouth—on her bare breasts was nothing compared to the inferno of need that consumed her now. Her arms and legs clung to him like vines. Her hips were rocking against him in a desperate rhythm. She needed. Ached. Burned. Hungered, ravenously, beyond all reason. Only Dilys Merimydion could give her what she craved.
And he was taking too long!
She dragged his head away from her breasts, snarled, “Hurry, damn you! Hurry!” Then she fused her mouth to his, feasting on him, all but attacking him. She bit his tongue, tasted the sweet, metallic savor of his blood. He groaned, slanted his head, and kissed her more deeply than ever, as if through a kiss alone he could crawl inside her and fill up that empty place screaming for succor.
Some distant, shocked part of her mind whispered,What are you doing?But her body paid it no heed. It was as if some wild, primitive force had possessed her.
And that primitive force wantedhim—Dilys Merimydion—in ways Gabriella had never even dreamed of.
A breath of cool air wafted across her backside. He’d finally fought his way through the tangle of her skirts. Her back arched as his hand curved around her buttocks.
A furious snarl rumbled in his chest as his fingers encountered yet another shield of cloth standing between his hand and her naked flesh. She felt a tug, heard the rip as linen sundered, then tore her lips from his and arched her back as broad fingers slipped across bare skin that had never known a man’s touch.
Without hesitation, those fingers dove between the rounded mounds of her buttocks, seeking and finding the softer, even more intimate skin between.
Yes! Yes!She arched her back more, thrusting her aching breasts up. His hot mouth ate a scorching path down the line of her throat, found the mounds of her exposed breasts once more, bit at the hard, aching nipples until she cried out and writhed against him. Her fingers dove into the thick, soft coils of his hair, clutching his head to her. The hand between her legs stroked her slick, overheated flesh. Each brush of fingertips against skin ratcheted up her need.
Then, abruptly, he drew back, pulling away from her breasts, stilling the fingers that had been working their delicious, feverish magic.
“No! Please,” she wept. Her hips convulsed, riding his hand, his fingers. She pushed herself against him, not knowing what she needed, but knowing that she needed it and only he could provide it. “Please!”
“My Name, Gabriella,” he said, and in his voice was a sound beyond hearing that rippled across her body, sank into her skin, vibrated across every cell of her body. “Speak my Name.”
