Page 49 of Husband for the Holidays

To be inside me.

“What I want,ómorfi mou, is for you to want me as badly as I want you. Open your legs and let me remind you how good I can make you feel. Yes...” His breath hissed in pleasure while his wide shoulders nudged her thighs.

He did make her feel incredible. She didn’t bother with false modesty or biting back the moans he elicited from her. She let herself sink into the hot pool of wanton sensuality, giving herself over to him completely.

But just when she was nearing the peak, when she was growing blind with need, he moved his mouth to her inner thigh.

“What—?” She picked up her head, almost frantic. Did she do something wrong?

“Now you know.” His teeth scraped her thigh before he closed his lips against her leg and applied light suction, as though drawing the juice from a peach. “This is how I’ve felt for years.” He continued to trace his thumb against her aching flesh, keeping her on the precipice while avoiding the swollen knot of nerves that begged for the brush of his touch.

She panted, ready to cry she was so aroused. His soft kisses against the crease of her thigh and her belly were sweet pinpricks of torture. Then his mouth was at her breast again, sucking so strongly she curled her nails into his shoulders with urgency.

His kiss on her mouth stole everything from her. She had no defenses left. All of her was his for the taking. Forever and always.

Which he knew because the wide dome of his sex slid against the slippery, ready flesh between her thighs.

“Tell me to stop if it hurts.” He was prodding for entry.

She tossed her head, not caring if it did. There was no tension in her now. Only need.

As the pressure increased and the stretch threatened pain, she reveled in the sensation because it was him. Because this was what she wanted more than her next breath. Because he was filling her and joining with her. His hips pulsed once, twice, then slid deep enough that his pelvis was flush against hers.

She shook under the magnitude of this moment, feeling both overwhelmed and jubilant. Taken and possessed, but accepted. She was offering herself to him and he was claiming her, but she was the one holding him deep inside herself.

He was shaking with tension, she realized, and ran her hands over him because she could. His body was iron and heat and couched power, hips pinned to hers while his sex pulsed intimately inside her.

His hand cradled the side of her face. “Mine,” he claimed gruffly.

She was. She turned her face enough to open her mouth over the tip of his thumb.

His body flexed in reaction. His movement sent a small quake through her abdomen.

They both groaned and, in the next second, he shifted so he could move more freely. His flesh dragged from hers only to return with more intention. More ferocity and depth. He dropped his fist to the blanket beside her ear and she brought her knees up to bracket his ribs.

“Tell me—” He swore, teeth gritted. “Tell me if I’m too rough.”

“Don’t stop,” she cried because the friction had shot her straight back to the pinnacle and, impossibly, she was soaring past it. Higher.

Her whole body was one raw, erotic nerve. Her senses were overloaded by their combined scent and the damp brush of skin on skin. They were both breathing raggedly, releasing tight agonized noises. The bed was shaking as he moved with more speed and power. She couldn’t see. Her eyes were closed or she’d gone blind. She didn’t care. Her loins burned in the most exquisite way while his movements pushed her to the absolute edge of her endurance.

Then, for one eternal second, she felt nothing. She left this earthly existence and saw the wide expanse of heaven open before her, then she slammed back into a body that was pummeled by such waves of intense sexual pleasure she clung to him and screamed.

His hips crashed into hers again and again before he held himself deep inside her, arms straight as he released his own shout of exalted defeat.

Konstantin managed to roll off her and drag her close so she wouldn’t smother or chill, but that was all he had in him. His muscles were twitching as though he’d finished a marathon. He was still catching his breath and waiting for his heart rate to slow.

He couldn’t even open his eyes so his brain should have flatlined into unconsciousness, but his mind was racing like he’d hit a mental iceberg.

This was what he’d been afraid of. This depth of want. This need to make an irrevocable claim.

Until this moment, he had avoided articulating to himself why Eloise seemed so dangerous to him, but now he knew. The gratification of having her in his life, in his arms, in his bed put him in that horrible state of treasuring something that could be taken from him.

Why couldn’t it have just been a desire for sex? His libido was something that could be satisfied by his own fist, if necessary. Or any woman. He met willing partners all the time. He preferred to want things he could find in quantity or provide for himself. That’s why he stockpiled money and houses and estates that grew food. So he would never be without those things.

He didn’t allow himself to want abstract things that were impossible to truly own, like one specific woman. He didn’t want to have this pulse beat inside him that said,This one. Only this one will do.

Nevertheless, as she shifted and a tendril of her hair slid in a tickling ribbon against his knuckle, he turned his wrist so he could play with the fine strands, smug in his right to do so.

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