“You’re beautiful, too,” she whispered back, still hardly able to believe they were here in his bed, naked and kissing, and that he was about to make love to her. “But I need to see more of you. I need you naked, too.”

Both of them started to strip away his clothes, although by the time his shirt was off, Tatiana was so stunned by his incredible male beauty that her fingers pretty much forgot how to work and he had to take care of everything else by himself. When he finally kicked off his shoes and socks and pants and turned back to her, gloriously naked and hugely aroused with a condom already on, her mouth went dry, her eyes wide.

“Wow.” Maybe if she’d had enough brain cells left to realize the way she looked, sounded, she might have been able to stop herself from coming across like a virgin who’d never seen a naked man before. Even if that’s exactly what she was. “You’re...I...”

She couldn’t form any words that made sense, but she could go to her knees and reach for him where he was standing at the foot of the bed. Putting her hands on his shoulders, she brought them down slowly over his back, his taut muscles rippling beneath her fingertips. His skin was so warm, his shoulders and back so broad, that a little sound of pleasure left her lips right before she leaned forward to press a kiss to the hollow of his throat.

He growled her name, and before she knew it, he had her lying back on the bed again. “I need you now, damn it.”

“Yes,” she panted as she instinctively arched beneath him and tried to pull even closer. “Take me now.”

Everything had happened so fast from the moment he’d told her that one kiss would change everything...and that there would be no turning back from it. He’d been right, more right than she’d understood. Barely a heartbeat later, he shifted his hands beneath her hips and positioned her right where he needed her to be.

“You’re mine, Tatiana.”

She’d never seen his eyes look so dark or so full of desire, and knew that she was staring into a mirror of her own need for him. His jaw tightened as he brought their hips even closer together, so close that she could now feel the intense heat of his erection beginning to press against her.

Instinctively, she opened her legs for him as she echoed, “I’m yours.”

His eyes closed for a moment, his lashes dark against his cheekbones as he stopped to take such a deep breath that she swore she could feel it in her own lungs.

“Mine,” he said again.

And then, in the next breath, he was driving into her, taking everything she wanted him—and only him—to have, stretching her wider than she knew she could go, pushing deeper than she’d ever expected.

She reached for him even as her stunned gasp fell between them. The shock of taking all of him so suddenly, so fully, had her winding her arms tightly around him and burying her face against his chest.

Ian went completely still above—and inside of—her. “Tatiana?”

She tried to breathe through it, but he was just so big that even that small movement made her gasp again. And yet, it never occurred to her to let him go or to push him away. Not when giving her virginity to Ian was the best decision she’d ever made.

The soreness would pass—it already was, as her body settled into the perfection of nature—but this closeness, this intimacy, would be forever theirs.

She didn’t have any words yet, so she pressed her lips to his chest, kissing him so he’d know she was okay. But instead of holding her tighter, he shifted slightly away to look down at her.

“You’re a virgin.” He grimaced. “Damn it, you were a virgin.” She could read his confusion, and the obvious guilt on his face, as if he thought he’d done something wrong by taking what she wanted him to have. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want you to stop. Please—” She wrapped her legs even tighter around his hips so that he couldn’t move any further away from her, realizing just how quickly pain was turning to pleasure. “Please don’t stop loving me, Ian.”

“I can’t stop, damn it.” She’d worked with some of the best actors in the world, but she’d never seen so many divergent emotions cross anyone’s face. “Not now. Not now that you’re here beneath me and I’m finally inside of you.”

With every word that he ground out, she felt the joy—and pleasure—begin to build inside of her again, until she was instinctively lifting her hips closer to his so that she could feel more of the heady slide, and the wonderful stretch, of his erection.

“Oh,” she breathed as she relished every last sensation, “I love having you inside of me.”

He crushed her mouth to his again, and then there was only pleasure as he slowly slid nearly out of her, then back in. She gasped again, and when he lifted his head to stare down at her to make sure he wasn’t hurting her, she smiled—the happiest smile of her life.

“It feels good. So good.”

His groan came along with his next kiss, and he held them connected like that long enough that she could feel the rhythmic pulse of his erection against her sensitive flesh, the same beat as his heart against hers.

She didn’t know how long he kissed her like that, with their tongues tangling, their bodies pressed fully together, totally connected in every way they could be. But by the time he finally began to move his hips again it felt as if it was a dance they had practiced a thousand times before.

One to which only the two of them knew the steps.

All her life she’d been a student of sensation, so in the midst of more sensory input than she’d ever experienced before, Tatiana tried to memorize her feelings and emotions, along with the heavy press of his muscular thighs over hers, the rasp of his chest hair against her breasts, and the delicious taste of his tongue on hers. But then, he moved one of his hands between their bodies, and the sweet slide of his fingertip over her clitoris promptly stole every last thought from her brain.

“Ian.” His name was a plea on her lips as she lifted her hips to try to get closer to his hand and take him deeper all at the same time. “I need—”

“Shhh,” he soothed. “I know what you need, sweetheart.”

No one had ever looked at her the way he did then. She’d seen desire before. She’d seen affection. She’d seen admiration.

But she’d never seen such possession, as if Ian was claiming not only her body, not just her heart, but her very soul with every stroke of his fingers over her aroused flesh, with every thrust of his hard heat inside her. And no one had ever used an endearment that sounded so sweet to her ears.

She hadn’t wanted to seduce, or to trick, Ian into being with her. She’d wanted it to happen because he was all in, just the way she was. But knowing how strong his self-control was, she was certain that he couldn’t possibly have let one accidental kiss change his mind. Which meant that somewhere between yesterday morning in her kitchen and this afternoon in his office, he must have already made up his mind to have her.

And to love her the way she loved him.

“I always knew you would,” she whispered against his lips.

“All you have to do,” he said in a deep voice that warmed every inch of her, “is let me give you everything you need.”

With each sweet yet sinful word he spoke, she grew wetter, hotter, needier. Every muscle in her body was tightening down inch by inch as he took her higher and higher with every caress, every stroke. And when he urged her—Come for me again, Tatiana. Show me how good I’m making you feel. Let me feel it, too—that tightening gave way to such freedom, such flight, that his arms around her and his heavy weight above her, were the only ways she could possibly have remained connected to the physical plane.

She’d never known an orgasm could go on and on forever, starting with an explosion of bright red behind her closed eyelids, then orange and yellow, before swinging back around to another bolt of scarlet red like the finale of a fireworks show.

But just when she thought she’d already hit the highest possible peak—beyond bliss, way past ecstasy—he gripped her hips tightly and whispered her name as he grew impossibly bigger inside of her.

“Ian.” She loved the way his name felt on her lips, loved the way his body felt inside hers.

But most of all, she loved the love that she felt for him.

As he came closer and closer to his own release, his thrusts grew harder, went deeper, but Tatiana still wanted more, more, more.

She moved with him, lifting her hips into his as he slammed into her again and again, their bodies slippery with sweat. She kissed, licked, bit at his chest, his neck, his jaw, until he captured her mouth with his. And it was his kiss that sent her, awed, tumbling over the sweet edge of ecstasy again.

She’d wanted everything from Ian. His body. His pleasure. His laughter. His teasing. His love. And when he finally let loose the final reins of control and climaxed inside of her, it was knowing that he’d finally given her all of himself, without holding anything back, that was the ultimate bliss.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A virgin? How could she have been a virgin?

Ian searched his brain to think of any virgin he might have been with, but even his first time as a teenager, the girl hadn’t been inexperienced.

He had no idea how to treat a virgin, but even if he had, he and Tatiana were clearly long past that point now that he’d taken her the way he had.

Rough.