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She glanced below his waist.

“I’m not pretty. Hard and waiting for you,” he said, following her gaze. “I need to taste you, Torie. I’ve been thinking of these rose petals for months. Desperate for you.”

For months? And she was worried about embarrassment? She smiled and widened her legs.

“All right,” she agreed. “All yours.”

She melted into the sheets, melted into his expression, squeezed her eyes shut, and trusted. And waited, as if she were at the top of a steep hill in a runaway carriage.

Big hands caught her legs, gently, and pushed them even farther apart. A ravenous groan sent warm breath over her most intimate part, making her shudder.

Suddenly his tongue ran up her in a wide swipe that felt like nothing she’d ever imagined. She could never have imagined.

Of course, he talked. “You taste like flowers and the sea. So soft.” The bed rocked, and she could tell, even with her eyes closed, that he was shoving his hips against the bed because he was greedy for her, for more of her.

All the time his tongue was dancing over her folds, and then his fingers joined in, a gentle touch after a rough stroke, a sweet caress followed by a thrust of a broad finger.

If she thought she was excited before . . . She began crying out, sound breaking from her chest without volition, her eyes still squeezed shut. Dominic groaned and kept licking, muttering disjointedly that she was so sweet and tight, hardly big enough for his finger.

What did shame matter, when this man, this man, Dom, was unashamedly grinding against the mattress because her taste was driving him wild?

Finally Torie succumbed to the storm barreling toward her. It swept up from her ankles, perhaps from her toes. It turned her hot and liquid, and when it reached the place where two of his fingers were thrusting . . .

She exploded.

Helpless, crying out, shuddering. A little afraid, because surely this wasn’t natural. Normal. In the daytime? Her mind skittered again.

Dom dropped his grip on her thighs and rose over her, thrusting inside in one swoop. There was the thrust she wanted, the wildness that answered her own hunger. A broken cry in her throat, matched by his ragged groan.

For a moment, it was too much, too overwhelming. The feeling was maddening but elusive.

“I got you,” he growled, taking her mouth. “I have you, Torie.” His kiss claimed her, and she tasted him, the same man who had kissed her for months. That did it: calmed her spirit if not her thundering heart.

He slipped one hand under her hip and began thrusting in a rhythm as steady as waves coming in to shore. Her mind blurred, and everything slipped away except the shattering sensation unfurling in her body.

It wasn’t enough, not deep enough, so she arched against him—at the same moment that he ground down, shuddering, thrusting deep, emptying himself into her.

His eyes blazed into hers, and she didn’t cry out. She screamed as pleasure washed over her again.

“Are you knocked unconscious?” she asked drowsily, a moment later. His heavy body had slumped onto hers after the arms he’d braced by her ears relaxed.

He turned his head and kissed her ear. Nipped it. “Like a rabbit? I didn’t faint, but it was damn close. A man can go much longer on the second round.”

“Second round?” she echoed.

When rabbits did it, the male fell off on the ground. His mate hopped away and started chewing grass again. There was no second round.

Something stirred against her leg. “I’m going to wash you,” Dom said. “Then I’m going to lick you from your earlobe down to your tiny toes. I’m going to drive you to incoherent bliss, as is my husbandly duty.”

“Oh.” Torie thought about it. “I think I was there already. Twice.”

“Two or three more times,” Dom said, moving down so that he could press kisses on the slopes of her breasts. “The sunshine makes your breasts look as if they’re shimmering. Or perhaps that’s because I’m drunk.”

Torie was rather surprised to see her nipples respond to a delicate flick of his tongue.

“Dew-crumpled rose petals,” Dom muttered with surprising eloquence. “No, the color isn’t quite right. Strawberry pink.” He tapped her nipple, sending a zing of pleasure straight through her. “Darkening to strawberry pink.”

Torie squirmed under his investigation, filled with delight, her breath coming faster. Bedding was a messy, intimate business, but she loved it. “You did say that we are validating our wedding with bodily union,” she reminded him.