He kissed her. So softly, so gently, a whisper slide of his lips over hers. So tenderly that tears rushed the corners of her eyes.
“Lorcan,” she murmured thickly.
Gently she slid her palms over the vast, hard-as-armor terrain of his back, finding the ridges, the scars, the bumps of his spine.
And then he took his lips away from hers.
Trailed them along her throat.
Lingered, briefly, to draw her nipples into his mouth and suck. She cried out.
He smoothed his hands over her belly, and placed a kiss in the center of it.
He spread her thighs with his hands.
And ducked his head between.
And when the hot, satin sinew of his tongue stroked her for the first time a ragged animal groan tore from her.
And there he feasted. A diabolically skillful, stroking rhythm, a collusion between his skillful tongue, his breath, and his clever fingers drove her to the writhing brink of madness.
So much unimaginable pleasure surely could not be survived.
As if from a distance she heard her own voice half sobbing. Begging incoherently. She undulated beneath him, her fingers clawing the counterpane into furrows.
“Lorcan... help me... it’s too good...oh God... oh my God...”
And her body snapped upward like the string of a bow drawn back and a scream tore from her throat and she was among the stars.
He left his hand against her to savor the violent pulsing of her release, like a triumphant conqueror. He rose up on his knees, and she gazed up at him as he parted her thighs.
And then he rose up again, and he guided his cock into her.
The shock of him filling her made her head go back on a gasp.
He kissed her, softly.
She swept his hair from his brow, savoring the wondrously strange feeling of being filled by him. Joined with him.
“Daphne... lass... I do not want to hurt you... I shall try to be gentle. I fear I cannot go slow. I have wanted you more than I have wanted my next breath.”
She drew her hand along his throat, to his chest, to where his heart thundered.
“I trust you. I want you, too.”
She clung to his shoulders, slid her hands down to his hips, to the indents of muscle at his buttocks, and she arched to meet each dive of his hips. To take him deeply. To be as much a part of him as she possibly could, for this moment in time. For a time, they moved like this, almost languidly. And in the amber light of her lamp she could see his clear eyes go dark, and then remote, she watched his release comeup on him, and felt within her that same building need, until she was frantic with it. Begging.
“Lorcan... Lorcan I...” Her voice, hoarse.“Please...”
And then their bodies were colliding, and their mingled breathing like a storm in which they were trapped.
He roared her name. She clung to him while he shook.
She lay sated, thoroughly loved, deflowered and ravished, and she seemed to him pale and fragile as a lace glove in his arms. His heart felt too large for his chest. He would kill for her without question.
And he would have to let her go.
But not tonight.
