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“But I don’t understand. I need to touch you.”

“First, I need to touch you. I want you prepared for me.”

Though she frowned her bemusement at him, she did not argue. Though she had led the encounter to this point, he now took over.

And she loved it. She didn’t know what he would do, and that only increased her pleasure. They swayed in the center of the chamber, their hands seeking, caressing. He bent her back over his arm, so that his lips and tongue could arouse her breasts. Even the ring dangling against her was an erotic sensation. She let herself lean back in his embrace, knowing he would never drop her. His lips tugged at her breasts, and when his teeth nipped her, she shuddered and sagged in his arms. One hand slid down her back and over the rounded curve of her buttocks. Her flesh tingled with the pleasure of it, especially as the tips of his fingers gently teased the cleft between them.

His hand continued its descent, tugging at her knee, lifting her leg from the floor to press himself deeper between her thighs. The length of his erection rode the depths of her as she hung in his embrace. His hardness was the most intimate caress, and he used it against her with precision, knowing where to rub himself.

His mouth moved between her nipples, suckling and licking, his big hands held her body to him, while his penis rubbed and probed. As the rising pleasure became a madness that seemed to have no end, she groaned and tried to press his entrance into her body, but he would have none of it. She lost touch with the floor, lost herself in the sensations, and then lost her last touch on reality when pleasure exploded inside her. Her body shuddered helplessly, as waves kept rising through her.

With a groan, John turned and braced her against the edge of the high bed, pulling her thighs about his waist, at last beginning his entrance into her body. She couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t stop pulling him tighter against her and the pleasure continued to throb inside her.

“Easy, sweetling,” he murmured, bending over her on the bed. “I don’t wish to hurt you. A woman’s first time⁠—”

“I don’t care,” she said, using her feet against his backside to push him into her.

His brow was wet with perspiration, his face a grimace as he held back from her, as if he knew her body better than she did.

Maybe it was so, but right now she needed to be joined with him. She ran her hands over every part of his body she could reach, arched her hips off the bed to press him deeper. He gasped when she touched his nipples, so she concentrated her efforts there, knowing how wondrous such ministrations on her body felt. His skin, at first so smooth and soft there, pebbled beneath her fingers.

At last, with a shudder, he pulled on her hips and buried himself inside her.

The pain was a momentary burn that swiftly faded beneath the thrill of knowing that, at last, she was one with the man meant to be her husband, her mate. He began to move inside her.

And pleasure, so new and wondrous, began to unfurl again, beginning at the fullness of him stretching her flesh, rubbing even more intimately against her. His skin, smooth on his chest, rough with hair on his legs where he pressed her thighs wide, made her own flesh come alive with sensation.

His feet on the floor, his body pinning her to the bed, he held himself up with his arms. His eyes were closed, his expression intense as he concentrated on their joining. She was glad to give him the pleasure he’d given her, which was even now working back into feverish intensity. She clutched his hips with her thighs, linked her feet behind his back, and let him ride her. Once again he teased and tormented her with his body, surging deep, or pulling out a second too long until the loss of him made her panic. Her craving of him was a wild thing all on its own, and she lost herself within it, mindless, knowing only the craving of pleasure that he could give her.

Twenty-Two

John was lost. Never had he let himself become a part of a woman during lovemaking, almost forgetting where she ended and he began.

But this was Elizabeth—beautiful and bold and so demanding, even though she was a virgin before tonight. The depths of her had a heat that burned him. He felt grasped by the tightness of her body, and it was bliss to pull away, then thrust deeper.

The taste of her breasts, the little cries that passion wrung from her, the slap of their bodies coming together, all conspired to send him hurtling toward his own release, though he tried to delay it.

At last, when she climaxed again, arching her hips up beneath him, with a shudder he gave himself up to the bliss of it and joined her.

They came back to themselves slowly, their skin wet with perspiration. She left one leg draped around his hip, and the casual rub of her heel against his ass was a bold reminder of the uninhibited way she had accepted the pleasures of lovemaking. He was still propped on his elbows, looking down into her face, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stay in this position much longer, braced as his feet were against the floor.

But he didn’t want to leave the comfort and pleasure of her body.

She grinned up at him, breathing hard, letting her fingers trace down his scar. He turned his head and caught the tip of one finger in his mouth.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “It is so easy to forget that there is another world outside this bedchamber,” she murmured.

“When we are married, it will be many days before I allow you to even remember that.”

She laughed, and her breasts bounced pleasantly against his chest.

With a groan, he started to lift himself away, but with her arms and legs she caught and held him tight.

“Don’t go,” she whispered.

“I won’t. Let me make us more comfortable in bed.”

Pulling from within her body seemed like the hardest thing he’d ever done, but then he swept her up in his arms, deposited her in the middle of the bed, and then climbed in beside her. He pulled her back against him and leaned into the cushions, so grateful for the warm weight of her. Her hair spilled across his chest, and he tipped her head up to kiss her lips, now red and swollen.