by Olivia Gates
“What misapprehensions?” he rasped.
A cast of vulnerability, of relived hurt and despair entered her eyes, made him want to tear down the whole world so that he’d never see anything like that in her eyes again.
She lowered her eyes, took that mutilating expression away. “When you didn’t try to make love to me again, I thought you didn’t want me as much as you thought you did.”
That had been her fear?
“You were right.” That brought her eyes snapping up to his, that ready pain flooding them again. So she, too, felt incomplete without him, so much so that fearing he didn’t feel the same plunged her into despair. He’d pay his very life for her to never feel that way again. And he pledged, “I want you far more than I knew I was capable of. My desire for you defines me now. It is who I am—the man who wants you.”
Her heavenly eyes flickered with an alternation of surging delight and receding dejection as she gave him back his moments-ago uncertainty. “Then…why?”
“Fool that I am, I was trying to rewind and do things in the right order. I feared sexual intimacy would overwhelm us, that other pleasures we could find together would go undiscovered. So I held back, being only a ‘great friend’ to you. At the price of pieces of my sanity.”
“And mine.”
Her confession was searing in its truth, its totality.
She wanted him. As much as he wanted her.
It was almost inconceivable.
How could he possibly deserve it?
But she did. She did. And he’d live his life from now on to deserve every spark of desire she bestowed on him, to prove to her she’d done the right thing, the best thing for her, wanting him.
This time when he fell to his knees before her, it was with the enervation of relief. He extended his hand up with the ring to her again. “Will you have mercy on me, save what’s left of mine?”
Her face quaked with a joy so fierce, he almost wept seeing it. Then she extended a trembling hand back to him.
She wanted him to put his ring on her finger, do the running. And he would, for the rest of his life, if only she’d always let him catch her.
His hand shook as he slipped the ring on her finger before smothering her in his passion and gratitude. “And to think you mistook my restraint for lack of interest, when I thought I was building up anticipation.”
She moaned a laugh. “You did. How you did. You almost kill me with how well you do everything. Will you have mercy on me now?”
Blind, out of his mind with hunger and thankfulness and the need to claim her, conquer her, surrender to her, he surged to his feet, filled his arms with her, his moon goddess, magic-and-night-and-life made woman. His woman. The woman he’d been made for.
“You’re saying yes, Selene?” he groaned against her lips in between wrenching kisses. “Yes to me, to a lifetime with me?” Her nod was frantic, her lips as rapacious, giving him back his frenzy. “Yes to anything I want to do to you now and from now on?”
This time when she nodded, her breath made a catching sound deep in her chest, feminine greed and surrender made audible.
His body jerked with a clap of thundering arousal as his hardness turned from rock to steel. He wanted her to make this sound again, and again, to make her scream and sob in a delirium of pleasure as he ravaged her, devoured her, dissolved inside her.
He slammed her harder against him, lost another notch of control as she arched into him, offering him her all. He looked down at her, peach tingeing her newly acquired tan, her pupils engulfing the twilight skies of her irises, turning them to pitch darkness. A darkness that siphoned his sanity, his separateness. He wanted to lose himself in her, never resurface, never be apart from her flesh and essence again.
“Say you’re mine, Selene.”
“I’m yours…yours, Aris.”
This. What he hadn’t known he’d been living for. His greatest triumph. The only one worth anything. Worth it all.
“Yes, Selene. Mine to worship and pleasure.” He took her from gravity, clamped the lips trembling agreement and incitement beneath his, thrust deep into the fount of her taste. He groaned in the sweetness she surrendered with such mind-destroying eagerness, to himself, to her, to the fates that had placed her, a gift he’d never thought he deserved let alone would find, in his path. “Keep saying you’re mine, Selene, make me believe it.”
She kept saying it as he swept her into the tent he hadn’t dared visualize would witness anything this sublime.
He fast-forwarded to the nine-by-nine bed he’d placed in the middle, spread with silk sheets the color of her eyes. He arranged her in its center and she unfurled around him like a wildflower.
He pulled back from her frantic grasp, the need to feast on her hammering at him. He dragged down her sky-blue dress, exposing her to the rhythm of his promises of possession, of her pleas to take all of her. He replaced the supple cloth’s cover with his lips, tongue and teeth, coating her velvet firmness in suckles and nips. Her moans guided him where to skim and tantalize, where to linger and torment, where to draw harder and devour, their heightening frenzy as they transformed to keens then labored gasps a testament to his rising skill in pleasuring her.
The accumulation of need was reaching critical levels. But he couldn’t let their first intimacy in so long, what would seal their lifelong pact, begin a lifetime of escalating pleasures, be anything less than perfect bliss for her. His pleasure, as it had when he’d first claimed her, would always stem from hers.
He had mercy on her, on himself, slid the dress all the way off, lingering on a long groan as he took her panties with it, freeing one silky leg after the other from the confines.
Then he pulled back. Looked down on his goddess.
He’d seen all of her before, before Alex, had seen her in the torture devices that were her one-piece swimsuits since. He’d thought he’d known the extent of the wonder of her.
He’d thought wrong. For here she was. Beyond his memories and observations. Ripe, strong, tailored to his every fastidious taste. This was her. His woman. And she was dying for him as he was for her, quaking with the force of her need.
“You’re far more than I remember.” He heard the awe in his voice, felt his heart shake at the pride and pleasure and lingering vulnerability in her eyes. “And how I remembered. Incredible, agape mou, mind-blowing.”
She held out her arms in demand, in supplication, and he yanked her to him, bending her across one arm. She splashed her supple arms and ebony waterfall over his flesh in abandon, arched in an erotic offering he’d sacrifice anything for.
“Ne, Selene, ne, every inch of you, give it to me, beg for it all with me, I beg you.”
She complied, at once, her voice fracturing with passion. “Take all of me, do everything to me, let me have all of you.”
“You won’t hold anything back, Selene. Never again. You’ll always let me do everything to you, with you, for you.”
She writhed her consent to his commands, opened wide for the litanies of passion he poured into her lips. Then he moved down, suckling her pulse as if he’d take her life force inside himself, mingle it with his own. He kneaded and weighed the perfect orbs of her breasts, turgid in her extreme arousal, pinched the resilience and need of her peach-colored nipples, dialing her arousal higher. Before he fractured with hunger, he swooped down and captured the buds of overpowering femininity in his mouth.
She rewarded each pull with a soft, shuddering shriek, then more as his hands glided over her abdomen, closed over the trim mound beneath.
This. Where he’d merged them, where he’d invaded her, where she’d captured him. Where he’d thrust them both over one edge after another into abysses of abandon and ecstasy. Where she’d received his seed, took his essence, purified it, transformed it into the magic of life. Where she’d given him the other half of his soul and reason for his existence, Alex.
He squeezed his eyes, her flesh. “This is my home, agape mou. My only home.”
My love. Hearing that, on her satin voice, like a prayer, an homage, was like a physical blow to his vitals. He’d hoped. Then he’d known. But to hear her say it… Too much.
He couldn’t be that blessed, could he?
He growled with unbearable stimulation, with humility, slid two fingers between the satin slickness of her exquisite folds, spreading them, getting high on the scent of her arousal, the evidence of her desire and feminine nectar.
He slipped a careful finger, then two inside her, grunted with another blast of arousal. Soaking for him, but so tight…
“Just come inside me,” she choked. “Come home, Aris… please.”
“Let me give you pleasure first, prepare you. I won’t be gentle in my possession.”
She cried out at his sensual threat, opened herself for its execution, rewarding him with a new rush of arousal over his fondling fingers. He heard himself rumbling like a leashed beast as he spread the flowing honey, his thumb finding the knot of flesh that housed her trigger. He’d barely stroked it when her cries of pleasure, of his name, stifled and she came apart in his arms.
He roared with pride as he drew out her release, rode its waves, pumping his fingers inside her clamping flesh, stroking her inside and out, loosening her, suckling her nipples until he felt her flesh rippling around his fingers again, tension reinvading her body. He spread her core, bent, gave her one long lick, the ravenous beast inside him maddened for her taste and scent.
She tried to squeeze her legs, her eyes wet and beseeching. “Aris, please, you now, you…”
“Not yet. Now I need to feed. I’ve been starving for you, agape mou. Nineteen endless months. Let me have my fill.”
She nodded mutely, her color dangerous, and spread herself wide for him.
He slid her over the sheets’ smoothness and kneeled before her again, open and willing, overpowering him with her submission. Blood was a geyser in his head, his manhood. He gritted his teeth, brought her silky, shaking limbs over his shoulders, filling his aching hands with the firmness of her velvet buttocks.
He nudged her thighs with his face, latching wide-open lips on their flesh. “Watch me worship you, agape mou, take your pleasure watching me pleasure you, own your every secret.”
She squirmed, hiccuped then nodded, sat up on her elbows, spreading her core’s lips against his.
He grunted as lust jackknifed in his system. “Beauty like this should be outlawed.” Then he plunged in.
He captured her between sucking lips and massaging teeth, circling her knot, subduing her gently as she thrashed with each corkscrewing lick and insistent pull, bringing her to the edge, listening to the music of her explicit ecstasy. He felt her flood with it, hurtling toward completion. He placed a palm on her heart until he felt it start to miss beats. Then he blew on her quivering, engorged flesh, tongue-lashed her. She shredded her throat with ecstasy, unraveled her body in a chain reaction of convulsions. And looked him in the eye all through.
That was eroticism. That was intimacy and fulfillment.
Everything with her had been that.
Now he would take her, and union with her would reinvent those concepts. He hoped she was ready for him now.
He slid up her sweat-slick body, flattening her to the mattress, soaking up her drugged look, the slackness confessing the depth of her satiation.
He branded her lips, let her taste her pleasure on his, and her hips undulated her urgency against his bursting arousal, gave him what he’d wanted earlier. The hitching, broken-from-too-much-need sounds echoing in her depths.
It had been that way during those two days of magic that had resulted in the miracle of Alex. She’d been unable to get enough of him, as he hadn’t of her.
She tore at his shirt, at his pants, her voice dark and husky. “Give me…all of you.”
He felt his last tether of sanity snapping and he took her lips in rough, moist kisses, nothing left in him but the driving need to cede all to her, bury himself inside her.
He came over her, impacted her, felt her softness cushioning his hardness. She opened her legs, enveloped him in their embrace.
He obeyed her demand, brought his shaft to her entrance, slid partway into her nectar, stimulating her more, bathing himself, struggling not to ram inside her, to ride her with all his power.
She whimpered, arched to bring him closer, and he surrendered, flexed his hips, plunged into her heat.
He went blind with the blast of pleasure.
When his sight returned, he saw her arched off the bed, sensations slashing across her face, pain among the feverish ingredients. The velvet vise enveloping him, even now, was almost too tight. Their fit was still almost impossible, and the only one that would ever be right. Yet, he’d hurt her….
“Forgive me,” he panted. “I should have been more gentle.”
Her legs yanked him tighter against her, forcing him to stroke deeper into her body, tearing a hot sharp sound from her depths. “You promised you wouldn’t be.”
He stroked inside her, still hesitating when her face contorted with that maddening amalgam of ecstasy and agony.
“Sarantos, don’t you dare hold back on me now.”
It was that Sarantos. That lash of overpowering challenge.
He thrust inside her, hard, impaled her to her womb.
“Yes.” At her welcoming cry, he thrust harder, then harder. Her body quaked with the force of his plunges, her cries sharpened with each, incoherent, yet eloquent with her need for his ferociousness. She never took her gaze away from his, let him see every sensation ripping through her. She seemed to glow with her rising pleasure, every inch of her a work of divine art the master poets and artists of ancient Greece would have failed to depict.
Her fingers bunched in his hair, bringing his lips down to drown them both in the shoreless reaches of abandon, as he rode her to the rhythm of a sea that seemed to have caught their frenzy. With the roaring building of a wave, he withdrew from her clenching depths, only to ram all the way back inside her with its crash. And she shattered around him.
The feel and sight of her ecstasy made him surge to her womb, release his seed there, images of another miracle, a tiny replica of her this time, sending him almost berserk with its poignancy.
At the first splash of his essence against her intimate flesh, her convulsions intensified, tearing his orgasm from depths even she hadn’t plumbed before. He discovered new depths inside her, too, jetted his agonizing release in endless surges, filling her, his roars harmonizing with her stifled shrieks and with the rumbles of a suddenly tempestuous sea.
He felt her melt beneath him, jerking with the aftershocks jolting through them both. He throbbed inside her, hard and maddened for more. But he had to give her respite.
He twisted, brought her draping over him. She lay inert, humming a wonderful sound, a score of bliss. He thought she slept for minutes. He studied her nuances, counted her every calming breath, and knew he’d never known contentment till now.
He was almost sorry when she stirred. He could have watched her forever. Next second, his heart was hurtling with delight that she had. She wobbled up, sending the sensual feast of her hair brushing over his chest and his heartbeats scattering all over the cloth floor of the tent.
She gave him a smile that made him feel he could fly. And that was before she slid over him, dipped her head to his pulse and drew coherence from his body with soul-stealing suckles.
Then she tore his sanity away irrevocably when she whispered, “Do you know how it feels to have you inside me? I was empty without you. Never leave me empty again, my love.”
His own confession shook out of him. “Hunger for you consumed me, too. Take me inside you always, agape mou. Never let me go.”
“Yes…Aris, never again. Let me have you now.” He reared back to obey her. She stopped him. “I want a
ll of you this time.”
He stared at her. But he thought he’d given her all of him.
She struggled up on her elbows, a goddess of sensual abandon and delirious nights, her smile a lethal mind-altering narcotic. “I want every inch of what’s mine. You are mine to do with as I please, too, aren’t you?”
And he understood. His shirt was ripped open, his pants undone only to free his arousal. Before he took her again, she wanted to take him, own him as he’d owned her.
He rose to expose himself fully to her ownership, make her an offering of his body and potency, all the while pledging, “Yours, Selene. Yours, agape mou, never anyone else’s.”
Selene lay back, struck mute, dizzy with the aftershocks of what Aris had done to her, yet ready for more. For anything.
And there he was, Aris, stripping for her, piling arousal on arousal. The sudden wildness of the sea and wind outside plunged them into a primal realm. The light flickering from the brass lamps and the tent’s flapping opening drenched the flower-filled interior in a mystical ambiance. It all synergized to echo the vigor of his vibe, the power of his sexuality and the endlessness of his stamina and magnanimity, to offset his physical wonder, worshipping the perfect sculpture, strength and grace of his body.
He came to stand over her and the sunbeams cascading from the tent’s seams caught him in their crisscrossed spotlight, illuminating slashes and slopes of dark magic across his beloved face and honed, glistening, dauntingly aroused body.
She could barely believe it. All this was hers?
Before she begged him to reassure her, he bent, groaned in her ear, “Yours, Selene. Own me.”
She flung herself at him, buried her face into his ridged abdomen, breathed and tasted him, her itching hands seeking the hot, steel length of him.
He stabbed his fingers into her hair as she opened her lips over the silky crown, lapped the addicting flow of his arousal.
He thrust himself deeper into her possession, growled his pleasure. “Hurry and take your fill of me this way, Selene. I need to take my turn in owning you, filling your needs.”