“See,” I giggle, turning to him and slapping his chest, feeling the muscles, the heat, him. “I’m rubbing off on you. Pretty soon you’ll have all the fantasy lingo down.”

He smirks and then – in a flash, he’s so freaking fast – he picks me up and scoops me into his arms. I squeal in delight when I feel one arm under my knees and the other behind my head, cradling me.

He leans down and crushes his lips into mine, kissing me firmly, savagely, as though he wants me to know that this is the moment.

The moment I become his.

Forever.

I want it more passionately than I’ve ever wanted anything.

He breaks off the kiss and carries me over the threshold – the perfect husband, I think – and then through the living room and down a hallway lined with sconce lights.

A soft yellow glow follows us to the bedroom, which Dom opens with an irrepressible shoe-kick. The door swings open, revealing a four poster bed and at least a thousand candles.

On every surface – the Regency style drawers, the end tables with their carved metal stems – candles flicker and cast their light into the room. I close my eyes and take a deep breath of the vanilla scent, losing myself in it for a moment.

“I love this smell,” I whisper.

Dom sets me down on the bed and softly closes the door behind us, trapping us in this world of whispering candlelight.

“I know,” he says deeply.

“What, how?” I ask, turning to him.

He stands like a silver suit of armor in the light of the candles, every part of him catching the light, his jaw cutting it, his eyes glimmering, his iron peppered hair shining like a diamond. I feel my body getting tingly and tight and close, as though it’s ready to erupt, my womb screaming, my desire relishing.

“You posted about it on your blog,” he says.

“Wait a sec …” I stand and move toward him, achingly conscious of the way his gaze tracks my movements. “You read my blog?”

“I did,” he says. “Dallas’s Dawdles. I don’t know if the title fits you. To dawdle is to move slowly, and you, Firecracker, you’re anything but slow.”

“With you, maybe,” I whimper when he loops his arm around my waist, softly sliding his hand down over my ass cheeks, crumpling my dress against me. “But usually I’m a pretty indecisive person. It’s only with you – with us – that I’ve felt anything like urgency.”

“Is that what you feel?” he snarls, his hand tingling against my bare thigh. He creates a path of sultry sensation as he grinds his palm up toward my ass cheeks, and then starts to rub and massage, claiming my flesh with powerful hand movements. “Urgent? Like you can’t wait to give yourself to me?”

I nod, eyelids flickering as a moan escapes my lips, a moan that seems to cause the candlelit shadows on the wall to shift knowingly.

“Say it,” he commands.

“I can’t wait to give myself to you,” I gasp.

He pushes aside my underwear and inches closer to my center, but underneath, from behind me, leaning forward so that he can wedge his palm in between my thighs and tickle my hole from behind.

“Bend forward,” he snarls. “Push your ass out. Let me feel how wet your juicy perfect pussy is. Tell me who your virginity belongs to, Dallas.”

“You,” I moan, doing as he says, arching my back and feeling my self-consciousness sluice away under the magic of the moment. “My pussy belongs to you.”

“Fuck,” he growls, his middle finger brushing up against my clit.

Bent forward, my face is buried in his shirt now. I bite down and feel his rock hard pectoral muscles, burning hot against my lips and teeth, a tinge of sweat, a hint of my man.

Oh, God, he’s mine just as much as I’m his.

Then he straightens and then lifts me as though I’m lighter than air. His eyes, producing tingles of their own, as he stares at me with such intensity and carries me to the bed. He places me down and then reaches up, unbuttoning his shirt, showing me more and more of his light-dappled chest.

“Take off your clothes,” he says, voice firm, a tremor beneath it telling me how hungry he is. “I want us to do it like animals. Completely naked. I want to watch you undress because it fucking shows how badly you want it, too. No nerves now, Dallas. No second-guessing. This is it, the reason we’re even on this fucking planet. Our existence has always lead to this moment, to me and you, my woman, and now I’m going to claim your juicy creamy pussy for the first time. And it will always belong to me after that, to lick, nibble, rub, and fuck until you squirt all over me. Understood?”