And Then She Fell(56)

She held his gaze steadily. He couldn’t have dragged his gaze from hers had the bed been in flames. He waited, everything he was hanging on her next words; when they came . . . his heart stood still.

“I know,” she said, her gaze wide and open and locked with his, “that for me . . . it’s you. What I’ve been waiting for is you.”

My hero is you.

Henrietta heard the words and felt their truth, absolute, immutable, irrefutable. The words and the knowledge behind them, the knowledge that was now an intrinsic part of her, pushed her to say, in a voice so sultry she barely recognized it as her own, “So . . . this, you and me, here and now—tell me how. Or, better yet, show me.”

His chest swelled as he dragged in a breath, then his grip about her waist tightened and he eased her back, down his body. Then he half sat and kissed her, touched and caressed her; his fingers tracing through the slickness at the apex of her thighs, stroking, then probing, he readied her, then he lay back again and, as she’d demanded, showed her how.

Held her while she positioned his erection at her entrance, then he simply steadied her and let her ease down at her own pace—let her discover the indescribable sensation of his flesh, hot and iron-hard, parting hers, then pressing in, forging steadily fraction by fraction into her body . . .

She closed her eyes, savoring each second, each scintillating heartbeat of sensation.

He was large.

He felt larger.

Quite unbelievably huge.

Eyes closing tighter, her heart thundering heavily, with desire a scalding whip urging her on, she caught her lower lip between her teeth and eased down a fraction more, caught her breath—had it stolen—by the mind-numbing impression of him stretching her, impaling her. . . .

His hands urged her up a touch, and she rose a fraction, then eased down again, a smidgen further this time, but . . .

She wanted more, wanted him. All of him.

Desperately.

And he wanted her in the same way; she could feel the fraught tension thrumming through his body.

Opening her eyes, she caught his, panted, her voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper, “I can’t—not like this. Just . . . do it, and take me. Make love to me.”

She didn’t have to ask twice.

Stifling a groan—he’d known trying it the first time that way hadn’t been a good idea, but she’d wanted to try, and who was he to argue, and he hadn’t wanted to deny her even that—James lifted her, rolled, and had her beneath him, thighs widespread, his hips wedged between with the throbbing head of his erection poised at her entrance, in a blink.

Braced above her, he looked down into her mesmerizing eyes, hazed with passion, with desperate desire. Despite the scalding heat of her beckoning sheath, he clung to sanity enough to grate, “Trust me. This will hurt at first, but—”

“I know!” She glared and wriggled beneath him, enough to press her slick heat over the head of his erection. “Just do—”

He thrust in and filled her, and it was the most glorious sensation he’d ever experienced. Her maidenhead ruptured and she didn’t even flinch; instead, the honeyed walls of her heated sheath clamped tight around his rigid member, the ultimate velvet vise. Lids involuntarily falling, he tipped his head back, caught his breath on a shocked hitch, and hung on to the fleeting moment as hard as he could.

But primitive instinct wouldn’t be denied, not for long; finally forced to obey its dictates, he flexed his spine, withdrew almost to the point of losing her clinging heat, then thrust in again.

Deeper, harder.

She gasped, shuddered, clung.

Then reached up with one hand, dragged his head down, found his lips with hers, kissed him voraciously, and flagrantly, brazenly, commandingly urged him on.

He surrendered—to her, to the whip of her passions and the lash of his—and withdrew again, thrust deep again, in an escalating crescendo repeating the age-old dance of retreat and possession, again, and again, until she caught the rhythm and they were riding freely.

Then wildly.

Then desperately urgently.

And ultimately beyond thought in a pounding rhythm that rocked and razed and compulsively drove them both. Clinging, gasping, utterly in thrall, they raced for the peak, the thunder in their veins escalating, the thudding of their hearts a single beat that swept them on, whipped them higher.

Until they broke through the clouds and ecstasy beckoned, as hot as the sun and more brilliant than the stars.

And fingers compulsively twining, clutching tight, together they raced for it, harder, more powerfully, until as one they reached for the glory.