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He slid my underwear from my hips, holding my gaze, and that alone wrecked me. His hands slid up my thighs, opening them. The room dissolved.

He kissed a line from my neck to my navel, his touch soft and patient and electric, then looked up at me once from between my legs. My head sank back, my hips already arching, anticipating him.

The first stroke of his tongue made me cry out, the need and pleasure exquisitely unbearable. He pressed my thighs, opening me wider, and learned how every swirl and drag made my breath catch, my body shudder.

My fingers closed in his hair. “Yes,” I said, without meaning to.

He gave me more of exactly what I wanted, my hips lifting, one hand finding the sheet again to twist my fingers into it.

He found the places that made me gasp and stayed there, with a rhythm that made the ceiling blur and heat flash down my legs. The pleasure climbed so fast I almost fought it, until I broke with my body clenched under him.

Trembling and breathless, I pushed weakly at his shoulder.

He kissed his way up my body, pressing himself against me.

I tugged at his jeans, greedy for him. He unbuttoned them with his mouth still on me, reluctant to leave my lips, then pulled back to slide the last of his clothes off.

When my fingers wrapped around the length of him, his eyes closed as if my hand alone might undo him.

I moved over him with a few slow, steady strokes, hungry for how heavy and hot he was in my palm, until he caught my wrist and pinned it gently by my head, his fingers lacing through mine.

The look he gave me, moments before easing inside me, disarmed me so much that for one painful moment, I couldn’t help thinking about how many other women had fallen in love with him, and of course they had, because no one said no to a man who felt like this, who was this hot and attentive and considerate. No one ran from being chosen by Damian Halcyon. He’d been the candle they sent ahead, a light for all those women memorialized on his arm to follow into the dark. The idea sat like a hand at my throat.

He saw the thought move across my face: the way I blinked and swallowed. He lowered his forehead to mine.

“Look at me,” he said, lightly pressing his palm into mine, meeting my gaze.

I furiously blinked back a single traitorous tear. I curled my fingers tighter between his.

“When I told you I love you, I meant it. I always meant it.”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.

He kissed me as he pushed inside me, until I gasped against his lips and my hand flew to his shoulder. The world narrowed to the sensation of him moving inside me, slowly at first, letting me feel every part of him as he entered me, because even hungry, he was still Damian. Still measured, still patient.

He felt so good I wanted to dissolve into him, into the heat and pleasure and need and the way he looked at me with that intimate, desperate fire.

My hips lifted, asking for more, and he answered with one steady push until he was all the way inside me, and my mouth fell open.

He learned me quickly, the steady, deliberate rhythm I craved, deep enough that he reached the center of me. The pressure that made me forget to breathe and dig my fingers into his shoulder. Every withdrawal made me ache for him to return. Every thrust filled me so completely I forgot how to guard my face.

The bed hit the wall. He paused.

“Don’t stop for the furniture,” I pleaded.

A laugh broke out of him, breathless and dark and so alive it hurt.

He placed a hand under my thigh to open me further, then pressed in again, this time stirring so much heat and bliss into my core that a blur of stars fuzzed the edges of my vision. The pleasure built faster than before, fed by his gaze locking on mine, by the sound that left his throat, rough enough to heat my blood.

He untangled his hand from mine and found the place right above where he entered me that made my toes curl and my eyes roll back.

It started low, where he filled me, and spread outward until I couldn’t separate pleasure from grief from relief. I clutched at him, at his shoulders, his back, the damp hair at his nape. He kept moving, kept touching me, kept his eyes on mine until I had no choice but to let him see that he’d completely and unforgettably ruined me.

His name broke in my mouth as my body gripped him, pulsing hard around him. The pleasure rolled through me again and again, and he held me through every second of it, thrusting slower now, deeper, his face taut with the effort not to follow too soon.

His control was almost gone. I could feel it in the strain of his arms, in the broken press of his mouth to my cheek, my jaw, my lips.

“Come,” I whispered. “I want to feel you.”