Emotion flashed between them, quicksilver understanding. Her vulnerability. His possessiveness.

His gaze returned to her breasts and he settled beside her. She felt his gaze, felt her flesh react-instinctively, she tensed. But he only raised a hand and, exquisitely gently, brushed the underside of her breast.

He said nothing. Nor did she. Yet he seemed to understand her sudden uncertainty, born of the previous night, a conviction that if he suckled her breast, she would lose all ability to function beyond the dictates of rampant desire. He made no move to lower his head but, instead, traced, caressed and fondled her flesh, every touch a practiced pleasure.

Gradually, she relaxed. The unexpected vulnerability eased, teased away by his caresses, by the languid sea of desire that slowly enveloped her, not with a rush but with a gentle lapping. She’d expected to feel cool. Instead, her skin had flushed, lightly fevered, not yet aflame, but the embers were glowing. With the pads of his fingers, he circled her nipples but never touched, never tweaked, and in some intuitive part of her mind, she knew.

When he next met her eyes, his were very dark; she wondered what hers were like. Whatever he read in them seemed to satisfy. He bent his head, touched his lips to hers, and murmured, “Trust me.”

His lips slid from hers to trace over her jaw, down her throat. He found the throbbing pulse at its base and licked, laved. Then he suckled there, and she felt heat flare. He pressed closer-

Her whole body reacted, arching. Fingers digging into his shoulder, she gasped.

He lifted his head.

Hands at his shoulders, she pushed. “Your chest.”

He eased back and looked down. She ran her hands down, fingers splayed, pressing her palms to the heavy muscles. “You’re so hot.”

The sudden touch, skin to skin, the abrasion of the rough hair that ran across his chest, had made her nerves jerk and spasm. Silk-soft and sensitized, her skin seemed more reactive to touch than ever before.

The effect had reached her palms. She ran them over his chest, wondering at the sensations, at the heat, the resilence of muscles under taut skin, at the raspy tickle of his hair. She discovered the flat disc of his nipple and was interested to see its tip was as tightly furled as hers.

He shifted as her finger traced. “You’ll get used to it.”

His chest? Or the heightened tactile sensitivity?

Not in the next decade. She didn’t say the words, but the thought must have flashed through her eyes.

He raised a brow at her. “Where were we?”

He lowered his head, and she gasped again, but the sensation of his chest pressed to her breasts was no longer such a shock. His mouth was warm at the base of her throat, then shifted along her collarbone, then swept over the upper curves of her breasts.

Heat flared anew, following the trail of his lips, ignited by their touch, then spreading in warm waves beneath her skin. He licked and laved until her breasts were swollen, but he consistently avoided the tightly ruched peaks. Until they pulsed with an ache she could no longer deny.

The fingers of one hand were tangled in his hair, her other hand flat against his chest, braced against the certainty of what was to come, when she felt his warm breath wash over one tight peak, then he lowered his head and took it into the scalding heat of his mouth.

She’d expected the same flash of sensation she’d felt last night, but while the jolt of pleasure was certainly there, it didn’t, this time, rip her awareness away. He suckled, and flames pulsed through her, poured down her veins, pooled deep inside, but the heat was all pleasure, and she welcomed it, drank it in, wallowed in the warmth.

He encouraged her. It was as if her body had come to sensate life, could now experience more, appreciate more. He gave her the sensation and the time to enjoy it. With a grateful murmur, she relaxed in his arms, let her body flow on the tide he conjured, and thought of how to thank him. Relaxing her hands, she sent them wandering, over the outer edges of his ears, stroking his throat, spreading out to encompass the width of his shoulders, reaching around to stroke the muscles of his back.

How long they flowed with that particular tide, she had no idea. They experimented, testing, learning, seeking each other’s pleasure, enjoying the other’s gifting. Soft murmurs, low growls of appreciation, became their currency, a flicker of lids, a clash of eyes slowly drowning, a brush of dry lips, a tangle of hot tongues.

She was hot and restless when he drew her gown from her and slipped from her arms, his mouth a brand trailing over her skin. Over her midriff, her waist. Over her flickering stomach to the thatch of curls at its base.

She caught her breath and reached for him. “No. Please.”

He raised his head, met her eyes. Over her breasts, rising and falling. Through the mad thud of her heart in her ears, she tried to think-tried to find words.

“It won’t be like last time.” His voice was so deep she could barely catch the words. “It won’t end that way.” His gaze remained locked on her eyes. “I need to taste you.”

If he’d used any other word, she might have refused him, but there was a raw hunger in his eyes that was impossible to mistake. A novel sense of power, tantalizing in its newness, its unexpectedness, flowed through her.

He closed his hand about her knee, then pushed gently-and she permitted it, let him part her thighs. She watched as he lifted over her other leg, pressing that aside, too, settling between. Then she let her head fall back, and steeled herself against madness.

But her mind wasn’t, this time, overwhelmed. She was awash with passion, fevered, floating, senses heightened yet fully aware. Her body seemed no longer hers but theirs, as was his, vessels for their mutual pleasure. It no longer felt so shocking to feel his lips touch her there, to receive his kisses, to feel the hot wetness of his tongue as he traced and stroked, as he caressed, then lightly suckled. Her heart leapt, her chest seized; she swallowed her gasp, felt the tug on her nerves, the dizzying whirl of her senses.

Then felt the lap and probe of his tongue. Every touch sent her senses spiraling, nerves tightening, skin tingling. Pleasure blossomed once more, but on a different plane, one more intimate, more… sharing.

He entered her as the word echoed in her brain. She gasped, tensed, pressed the back of one hand to her lips to smother the cry building in her throat. She felt him look up, then his fingers locked about her wrist and he tugged.

“There’s no one to hear.”

Just him. And Gyles definitely wanted to hear every little murmur, every gasp, every shredded whimper. Every scream.

He was operating wholly on instinct-an instinct he didn’t fully recognize or understand. He’d thought that, given he couldn’t-wouldn’t-give her his love, then the least he could do was love her-make love to her-as he had with no other woman. That was something he could give, something in return for what he wanted from her.

What he needed and would have from her.

Would take from her.

So he’d set himself the task of making the moment special, different, more intense. With her, not a difficult task. She was so very unlike any woman he’d known.

There was passion in her for the taking-a boundless, limitless sea of uninhibited warmth that was the ultimate prize for his baser self. The maurauding rapacious barbarian wanted nothing more than to seize and wallow-and there was a sneaking suspicion in his mind that his actions tonight were at least partly driven by the possibility that, if he dazzled her with delight, she would, later, be more amenable to letting him-the true him-wallow.

She was open and confident, and although patently innocent-witness her reaction to his chest-that had never happened to him before, and had left him curiously touched-yet she displayed an understanding, a sensual comprehension, at odds with that innocence.

After tonight, that innocence would be no more, and the odd contrast would disappear. The thought refocused his mind on the matter in hand-he looked into her eyes, then, retaining his hold on her wrist, reached with his other hand and trapped her free hand.

He drew her arms down, locked his hands about her wrists, then returned to the one and only distraction capable of slowing the marauding barbarian down.

She tasted of tart apples and some elusive spice. He heard her whimper as he licked and inwardly smiled. With his shoulders, he kept her thighs wide, wide enough for him to taste her as he wished, slowly, thoroughly.

He knew just how tight he was winding her, knew when to ease back, to lightly lap her swollen flesh until she calmed, knew when it was safe to slide into her honeyed warmth and feast.

The sounds she made were both balm and fiery prod to his ravenous rapacious self, a self only she had ever been able to provoke, but he was determined to prolong the pleasure of their joining, and not just for her.

He wanted to explore her, to discover as many of her secrets as he could, tonight. He didn’t know why, only that he was driven and the goal felt right. In this arena, amidst the satin sheets, instinct ruled, and ruled him absolutely.

With her, with the way she affected him, that was how it would always be. Different. More intense. More vibrantly alive.

With her, he was himself, all of his true self, no elegant mask, no screen veiling his desires.

She writhed in his hold. He kept her there, held her there, on the cusp of delight. He felt the quivering in her thighs, felt the tension that held her.