"I could do this for hours." He circled my clit with his tongue, slow and deliberate. "Just lie here between your thighs and make you come over and over until you can't remember your own name."
"I need—I need you inside me—"
"Not yet." He slid one finger into me, and I clenched around it greedily. "I almost lost you tonight. I need to take my time. Need to remind myself that you're here. That you're real."
He added a second finger, curling them to find the spot that made me see stars. His tongue never stopped its relentless rhythm on my clit—circling, flicking, sucking. The dual sensation was overwhelming, pleasure building in waves that crashed higher and higher.
"Come for me," he commanded against my flesh. "Let me taste it."
The orgasm hit me like a tidal wave. I shattered, crying out his name, my body convulsing around his fingers. He worked me through it, drawing out every last tremor, until I collapsed back against the sheets, boneless and gasping.
"Beautiful," he murmured, kissing his way back up my body. "So fucking beautiful when you come."
I reached for him, pulling him up to meet my mouth. I could taste myself on his lips—salt and musk and something sweeter. The intimacy of it made my head spin.
"I love you," I said again, because I could. Because I never wanted to stop saying it.
"I love you." He positioned himself at my entrance, the head of his cock pressing against my slick folds. "Are you ready?"
"Yes. God, yes."
He pushed inside me in one slow, steady stroke.
The feeling of him filling me—after everything we'd been through, after the terror and the violence and the desperate fear—was almost too much. Tears pricked my eyes again, but these were different. These were relief and joy and a love so overwhelming I didn't know how to contain it.
"Okay?" he asked, holding himself still inside me.
"More than okay." I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. "Please, Vasily. Move."
He moved.
Long, slow strokes at first—pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in. Each thrust drove him deeper, filled me more completely, until I couldn't tell where I ended, and he began. His eyes never left mine, green burning into brown, the connection between us as intense as the physical joining.
"You feel incredible," he groaned. "So tight. So hot. Like you were made for me."
"I was." The words came out without thought, but I knew they were true. "I was made for you, Vasily. Only for you."
Something snapped in his expression—the careful control he'd been maintaining giving way to raw need. He drove into me harder, faster, his hips slamming against mine with a force that pushed me up the bed. I grabbed the headboard to brace myself, meeting each thrust with a cry of pleasure.
"That's it," he growled. "Take it. Take all of me."
"Yes—God, yes—"
He shifted his angle, and suddenly he was hitting something deep inside me that made sparks explode behind my eyes. I screamed, not caring who heard, not caring about anything except the pleasure coiling tighter and tighter in my core.
"I'm going to—I can't—"
"Come," he commanded. "Come on my cock, Gabrielle. Let me feel you."
I shattered for the second time, harder than before. My inner walls clamped down on him, pulsing rhythmically as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through me. I heard him groan—a low, animal sound—and then he was coming too, spilling inside me in hot spurts that seemed to go on forever.
He collapsed over me, catching his weight on his forearms, his face buried in my neck. We lay there, tangled together, hearts pounding in syncopation, sweat cooling on our skin.
"I love you," I whispered into his hair.
"I love you." He pressed a kiss to my throat, right over my pulse. "I will never stop loving you."
We made love twice more that night.
