His mouth was hot and wet and demanding, leaving flames dancing under the skin of her aching breasts, leaving dampness the air cooled to create a startling contrast, heightening the sensation of fire and burning heat. A heat that was alive, that beat in her veins in a compulsive tattoo, escalating with every heartbeat, spreading beneath her skin and greedily, hungrily, demanding more. More from her. More from him.

She could barely breathe, but oh, she could feel. Every touch, every lick of desire’s fiery lash, every knowing touch he pressed on her.

With lips and tongue he tortured the throbbing peak of one breast; the second his hand possessed, kneading, tweaking, blatantly claiming. Between her thighs, his other hand worked, long fingers buried in the slickness he’d drawn forth, forcefully penetrating, pressing deep.

And it wasn’t enough; she dropped her head back with a gasp that was half sob, sank her nails into his back in an incoherent plea.

He reacted, rose beneath her and flipped her over, reburied his hand between her thighs as he leaned over her and took her mouth. In a kiss so devastating it stole the last of her breath, so desperate it echoed her own desire, so driven it reassured her as nothing else could-he was with her, wanting her, needing her and all that was to come every bit as much as she.

With him, she’d never felt alone in her need, never vulnerable because of it. It was and always had been something that affected them both-a madness they both endured, and both had to slake.

He pressed her into the bed, his long hard body settling partially over hers. She expected him to spread her thighs with his, expected him to enter her; she was already tensing, memories hovering at the edge of her mind, when he tore his mouth from hers, and she realized he had other plans.

His lips briefly traced her throat, then slid lower to once again torment her breasts. To feed, it seemed, the urgency that racked her, that seemed to well up and spill through her, speeding her heartbeat until the thudding compulsion thundered through her veins, tightening her nerves…

She arched beneath him, why she didn’t know, her hands desperately clutching his shoulders, sliding into his hair as he left her breasts and moved lower. To press hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses over her midriff, over her waist, down across the taut, quivering skin of her stomach.

He grasped her knee, opened her wide.

The candles were still burning. Lungs starved, breasts rising and falling rapidly, she forced her lids up enough to look, enough to take in the harsh planes of his face, etched with blatant desire as he looked down at her.

He’d slid far enough down the bed that his shoulders were between her thighs. She waited, breath bated, for him to shift back up, to-

He bent his head and set his mouth to her. Pressed his lips to her already throbbing flesh, sucked lightly.

Shock lanced through her. Her heart stood still.

Then she felt his tongue, and she nearly died.

“Charles!” She bucked, but he held her easily. She reached down and tugged at his hair, to no avail. There was no way she could dislodge him, no way she could prevent him…from dragging her under.

His mouth moved on her, and a wave of sensation breached her guards, grabbed her, captured her. Pulled her under a roiling, tumultuous tide built of fire and flames and sharp, searing heat, of desperate intimacy and welling need.

She couldn’t breathe enough to gasp, moaned instead, and, eyes falling shut, closed her fists in his hair.

The fiery tension mounted, escalated, coiled tight. And still he pressed her, not gently but ruthlessly, relentlessly, as desperate, as driven, as she. As urgently needy. His lips moved on her, evocative, provocative, his tongue traced, caressed, then slowly swirled…probed, and entered her.

She fractured, broke apart.

He called it touching heaven; to her it was more like touching the sun. Heat flared, brighter than a starburst; tension locked her heart, her lungs, her nerves, her every awareness, held all immobile for that blessed instant before the heat imploded and shattered, sending shards of glory flying under her skin, then washing in a wave over and through her.

Leaving her at peace.

But not him.

Blindly, she reached for him, and he came to her. Spreading her thighs wide, settling between, his heavy body angled over hers as he reached down between them, opened her, and pressed in.

Her hands clenched on his upper arms in mindless anticipation of pain. She started to tense against his invasion-wanted to, but her lax muscles refused to cooperate.

He didn’t go any farther, but settled more fully atop her; she felt his hand smooth back her hair, then cradle her face. “Not this time, mon ange.”

Then he kissed her. Filled her mouth, distracted her for the instant in which his spine flexed, and he thrust powerfully into her. Not quick and hard as she’d expected, but slowly, steadily-inexorably. Even as the reality of what he was doing impinged, that he was stretching her, filling her, and wasn’t going to stop-that she didn’t, even then, want him to stop-she was held captive.

By him. By the sheer sensual pleasure of the feel of him, hard, rigid, hot as forged steel, heavy and foreign yet immeasurably welcome as he slid farther, deeper, pressing so slowly into her despite the muscles that jumped in his arms, despite the cording of the tendons in his neck as he fought against the demons she’d met years before.

She felt her body give and take him in, and gloried in the slick, silken glide. She felt him sink home, filling her impossibly full, felt the engorged head of his staff abut her womb.

Charles inwardly gasped, held still, then felt her, very gently, tentatively, contract around him, and nearly lost what little control he still possessed. Her sheath was scalding hot, tight as the proverbial nun’s, and he’d stretched her fully, intentionally seizing the single moment of sanity remaining to him to sink into her to the hilt.

It was a moment he’d promised himself, not consciously but in his wildest dreams, for the past decade. Now it was here, and felt even better than his fervid imagination had painted it.

She was relaxed, heated and open beneath him, the cradle of her sleek body soft and accepting, but with that tempting feminine strength still lurking, investing her spine and the taut muscles of her thighs and the hands that moved lightly on his shoulders.

He wanted, ached, needed to engage with that feminine counter to his own driving need, but he had to hold back, hold still, for just a minute more…

With a supreme effort, he pulled back from the kiss and lifted his head enough to look into her face. “Are you all right?”

Her lids lifted just a fraction; her eyes met his.

Then her lips slowly curved, and his control quaked.

“Yes.” She raised her head and closed the gap between their lips. Kissed him like the siren she truly was.

Drew back to whisper against his lips. “Now ride me. Please.”

“With pleasure.” The words were so guttural, it was just as well he’d spoken in English. He caught her eyes. “But only if you ride with me.”

Her lids lifted more, her eyes widened.

He didn’t wait for her to ask, but kissed her, and showed her.

Showed her how much more there was to experience. To enjoy. Better than any other, he knew what would draw her, entice her, and bind her to him. He deployed every ounce of his expertise to ensure he captured her, that at this level at least, the success of his wooing of her was a foregone conclusion.

In other areas he might have a harder time, but in this, he’d always had her measure, even though he hadn’t, long ago, had his own.

Even now, she surprised him; after that initial hesitation, she accepted his invitation wholeheartedly. She followed where he led, met and matched him, too quickly learned the knack of using her body to caress his and drive him wild.

And wilder.

It was a shuddering shock to realize that control had slipped away from both of them. That something stronger, more vibrant and powerful had slid in and filled the void. That it was that instinct, wild and unfathomable, intense and true, that drove them, that fueled the passion with which their bodies slickly joined.

That pushed them both on, through soul-deep kisses and shared gasping breaths, through the repetitive rocking of their joining, to that exquisite peak of sensation beyond which sweet oblivion lay.

They reached the peak, first she, then he, her release sweeping through her and triggering his. Hands locking, fingers linking, they gasped and clutched tight as their senses soared through the flames, then fell away.

Into that landscape where souls communed and hearts beat as one.

On the plane where that wild instinct reigned.

He couldn’t think of any words in English or French to adequately describe what he felt in the moment when, rousing, he lifted from her, came down beside her, and, sated and replete, she curled into his arms.

Hardly daring to believe that he’d cleared what had loomed as a major hurdle so easily, he slowly, carefully, closed his arms around her, settled them both in the rumpled sheets, and pulled the covers over them.

Too precious to break, he let the moment lengthen, breathed deeply, and let it, and all it implied, sink to his bones.

No homecoming had ever been so sweet.

So intense, so passionate. So much what he’d needed.

He acknowledged that last, understood what it meant, tried not to dwell on it. Pressing a kiss to the silky veil of her hair just above her temple, he sank into the bed and relaxed.

Penny wasn’t sure if she’d fallen asleep, or…been elsewhere. Rocketed into another sphere of existence by all she’d felt, all he’d shown her. Rather than awaking in the normal way, her senses returned bit by bit, coalescing and realigning to finally function again.