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And didn’t, not for what seemed like ages.

He simply stood there, his breath caressing my skin while his intensity and desire swirled around me, a force so strong it ratcheted up expectation and left me quivering.

Then, finally, his lips brushed my ear and trailed down my neck to my right shoulder. I closed my eyes but couldn’t stop a sigh escaping. It felt like heaven.

Felt like home.

He chuckled softly and repeated the process on the left. Dear gods, he’d barely even touched me, and I was already a melting mess.

His hands slid to my waist and gently turned me. Time stretched as we stared into each other’s eyes, heat, passion, and longing burning the air around us.

Then he groaned and his lips met mine, his kiss an exploration as much as a statement, a fierce and demanding thing that left my head spinning and my body aching.

From that point on, there was no conversation and no stopping. We explored each other, caressing and teasing with lips and touch, leaving almost no part of our bodies untouched, until the need was so fierce that all I wanted, all I could think about, was him. In me, filling me, completing me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed so close it was hard to tell where his skin ended and mine began. The heat of him, the hardness of him, sent my pulse into overdrive.

“Enough,” I whispered. “I need you.Now.”

He laughed softly, his breath warm against my lips. “I do love a woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to ask for it.”

“You’re still talking.”

He laughed again and slid his hands down my back, cupping my butt, then lifting me with little effort. As I wrapped my legs around his waist, he swung around and carried me across to the table, depositing me gently before stepping between my legs.

He cupped my face and kissed me—gently, sweetly—then slid his hands down to my hips, and held me still as he slipped all the way in.

I gasped, heated from within and without, filled with the power of the man and the joyous energies of the table under my butt. I gripped his shoulders, wanting more,needingmore, and yet unwilling to break the magic of this moment.

He kissed me again, though there was nothing sweet or gentle about it this time, and then began to move. First with agonizingly glorious slowness and then with increasing urgency.

I slid my hands down his muscular back to his rump, cupping them fiercely as the force of his movements threatened to push us apart. My breasts were pressed against his chest, my nipples hard and aching. Every movement brushed them, tortured them, adding to the pleasure. I burned, tightened, until pleasure was so sharp and fierce that it felt like I would break.

Then I did break, my orgasm so fierce and intense that I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything other than be swept away. Cynwrig followed me over that edge, crying out in pleasure as his body stiffened against mine.

He rested his forehead against mine, but for several seconds, neither of us moved, our breaths mingling, harsh and rapid.

Then he sighed, kissed my forehead, and stepped back. “So much for me doing the gentlemanly thing and offering you cheese and champagne before I got down to the business of seducing you.”

“You can still offer all those things but later. One quick session of sex does not make up for the absence of it over the last five days.”

He laughed and caught my hand to steady me as I moved off the table. “Does that mean you don’t want to be fed just yet?”

I grinned. “It does, though I am of the view we should think practically and move to the shower.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I have absolutely no arguments with this view, but I do wonder why you would consider a shower more practical than a bed.”

“Because we can clean up the aftermath without actually moving.”

He laughed and tugged me over to the bookcase that contained the lever for the hidden door that led up to his bedroom and work area.

Needless to say, over the course of the next few hours, the need was well and truly assuaged.

He handed me a flute glass full of golden bubbles and said, “Many would consider it foolish to be drinking at this hour—”

“I have no idea who this ‘many’ is of which you speak, but they are wrong. There is no such thing as ‘too late’ when it comes to fine champagne.” And this certainlywasfine—creamy soft and beautifully mellow, containing none of the “abrasive” characteristics so often found in lesser quality bubbles. “Though if you don’t hurry up with that food platter, the alcohol might well go straight to my head and make me sleep.”

Especially since I’d not had any dinner.