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Commanding myself to relax, I melted back into the bed, accepting him.

And he wasted no more time.

He nudged my legs open with his body, settling his weight there, his hips between my splayed thighs.

My chest rose and fell, my breath coming quicker, sending the material draped over my face fluttering. My hands flew to his biceps, fingers burrowing deep into firm muscle, overcome with the impulse to hang on to something, to anchor myself. Hanging on tohimseemed a fine notion. He could probably withstand a tempest.

He shifted, his member pulsing hot as it nestled against my sex, and I gasped. Only the linen of my nightgown impeded us. Hardly substantial.

“All will be well,” he reassured, and then frowned. “I would kiss you...”

“But you can’t,” I finished, even as my belly came alive with butterflies at the notion of that mouth on mine, mating with my lips.

Thatmouth. Wide, well-shaped, and much too soft-looking for such a hard man. I couldn’t resist.

I lifted my hand from where it clung to him and brushed my fingertips searchingly... curiously over his lips, wondering what it would be like to have his kiss. I had so little experience with kissing. Stig had been the only one.

He stilled above me, and I worried I had done something wrong. If I shouldn’t have touched him. If I should have remained motionless, a limp fish beneath him. What did I know of these matters, after all?

He turned his face then and pressed a hot open-mouthed kiss onto my palm, his tongue slowly sneaking out to taste my skin, and I forgot all about what I should or should not have done. Sparks lit up my arm at the contact.

Hell’s teeth. What is happening to me?

He reached for my other hand and pressed a fervent kiss over the bandage covering the fresh wound, still raw from the priest’s blade—and yet that did not prevent the tingles from stirring beneath the dressing. The carved X throbbed and buzzed at his caress.

“Ohh.” I sighed a breath that twisted into a gasp as he rocked his hips into me. I felt him... bigger. Harder. Alive for me. No longer indifferent to our coupling. Not as he had been when he first climbed into the bed.

He was aroused.

He finished devoting himself to my palm, pressing a last, lingering kiss to the inside of my wrist. Dropping my hand, he turned his mouth to my throat, feathering me with scalding-soft kisses that belied everything I had judged him to be: the Beast. Terrifyingly big. Ruthless. Unkind. Strong enough to break a person should he will it.

My neck arched, instinctively offering him more as I breathed in the cool moisture surrounding us like a frosted morning. And yet I was hot. So hot. Achingly hot.

He obliged, his teeth lightly scoring the taut skin before licking me, savoring me with his tongue as though I were some sweet confection.

I was possessed. My body was not mine. Something else. Burning. Scalding against him. Two fires coming together, merging into one inferno.

The heat in my chest snapped and expanded, catching ablaze,popping and racing along every pore and nerve. It was a shared fever between us. A wildfire gone unchecked.

My hands ran down the great expanse of his back, seizing him and pulling him closer, hips lifting up, grinding his hardness against me. The black opal settled and nestled heavily between my breasts, a scorching stamp, branding me.

My sex clenched. Moisture rushed between my legs, dampening my nightgown where he slid slickly against me.

“Fuck.” He grunted.

There was a flurry of wild movement. His hands. My hands. My nightgown gathered and shoved up forcefully, bunched at my hips.

A shudder racked him that vibrated into me. His lips burned at my throat.

Need pumped in me, primal, as vital as the blood swimming in my veins, as thick as the viscous air filling my lungs.

I reached between us, found him, circled his thickness with my hand, running my thumb over the plump head. He groaned.

Emboldened, I guided him to my entrance, where I most ached. “Please,” I said, the word a needy catch on the air, my voice unrecognizable.

I didn’t understand anything except this driving hunger to have him, to possess him... to be possessed.

It was wildness. A frenzy. His hard hands seized my hips, fingers digging—and at first I feared he was pushing me from him, forcing me away.