Page 290 of Once an Angel
to hers. His eyes sparkled as he pressed against her, sliding the very tip of himself into her, then withdrawing, taunting her with its promise. Both wonder and fear shook her as she realized his intent. When her first dark shiver of ecstasy came, this man was going to make her his own.
The flames of his fingertips licked her higher. His rigid manhood breached her again, probing gently,
then pulling back, maddening her into a frenzy with its deliberate teasing. She writhed against him. Her hands tangled in his hair. When he bent his head and took her breast into his mouth, first gently sucking, then tugging at her nipple with his teeth, Emily broke. Pleasure raked her in shuddering waves and Justin thrust up into her, hard.
Emily muffled her scream against his shoulder. The pain was no less phenomenal than the pleasure. As her untried body clamped down in protest, Justin threw back his head in masculine ecstasy and gritted
his teeth, pressing into her inch by unrelenting inch. Sweat sheened his chest.
She felt her tender flesh stretching to sheath him. Shamed by her inadequacy, her voice broke on a
groan. "I can't, Justin. Oh, God, you're too much. I can't take all of you."
Shifting her hips with his hands, he proved her wrong, driving upward until every throbbing inch of him was cloaked in the taut, velvety folds of her body. His lips caught her cry, drowning it in his own.
This wasn't the way Justin had planned it—panting, half undressed, pinioning Emily against the headboard, but when had life with Emily ever gone as planned? He fought the urge to move within her, wanting to give her body time to adjust to his invasion. His tongue soothed her swollen lips, sworled in tender apology through her mouth even as his body exulted in her exquisite gloving. A tear trickled from beneath her dark lashes.
He caught it on his tongue before it could reach her dimple. Her luminous eyes opened.
"No tears," he said softly. "You promised."
She kissed him gently, a smile trembling on her lips. "No tears," she repeated. As proof of her pledge
she braced her palm against his chest and arched her back, taking him both higher and deeper than he would have ever dreamed possible.
A guttural groan escaped him, but even through his haze of ecstasy he saw her flinch. He caught her
hips in his hands and eased her flat beneath him, determined to banish all memories of pain from her
mind or die a glorious death trying.
As Justin began to move deep within her, Emily felt her body surrendering to his sweet sorcery. He braced his weight on his hands and ground his hips against her, both consuming her and making her
whole with each silken stroke. She clung to him, unable to remember a time when he had not been
a part of her. Her hips rose to meet each of his bewitching thrusts. This sensation was different from
the earlier ecstasy he had given her, fuller, darker somehow, and fraught with all the perils of surrender. Small, helpless noises escaped her throat until finally, drugged with pleasure, she could do nothing but
lie beneath his powerful body, spread for the slaking of his desire.
"Emily," he muttered in evocation against her lips. "My sweet, sweet Emily."
He reached between them and touched her then. The gentlest touch of his fingertips set off a quaking tremor. Just when she thought he couldn't get any bigger or harder, he did, and the tremor became a shuddering explosion. Their lips crashed, fusing in the desperate need to silence their screams as all the passion he'd kept locked inside came roaring from his loins, spilling hot within her.
Groaning, Justin collapsed against her and buried his face in her curls, breathing hard. She rubbed her
lips against his stubbled cheek, tasting the salty wetness, and knew that this night they had both broken their vow.
* * *
Tingling ribbons of sunlight caressed the exhausted muscles of Justin's back. He was drowsing in the warm sand beneath a cobalt sky, lulled by the whisper of the waves against the shore. The sand was powder-fine and soft, so soft he could feel himself sinking painlessly into its feathery depths. He drew
in a lungful of its fragrance—a musky vanilla like the purest and most potent of aphrodisiacs.
He rolled to his back and stretched, savoring the ache of his sated muscles. He didn't want to open his eyes. He wanted to sleep for another week. Warmth bathed his face.
Where was he? he wondered. Where were the heavy bed curtains that smothered the light and kept the fresh air at bay? He forced his eyes open to find himself gazing up at the scalloped half-tester over Emily's bed.
