Page 84 of At Midnight

“Okay?” she said, looking at him warily.

“No matter what happens,I have always loved you, and I always will.”

“Okay.” She looked like she understood him more.

He leaned and kissed her neck, almost behind her ear. “I will always love you.”

“And I’ll always love you,” she said.

His heart swelled, and he rolled her over to unbutton the frustrating row of tiny buttons down her back. He straddled her and moved her hair aside to mouth the back of her neck whilehe did it, working the minuscule buttons with one hand while he held himself off her with the other. “Always.”

“Always,” she mumbled into the pillow, and she arched her neck as he nipped the tendons below her hair.

He spread the white dress apart over her back and slipped his hand inside and around her waist. The silk lining caught on his knuckles where scars roughened his skin, and he liftedher to her hands and knees while he kissed her delicate skin over her spine.

In his arm, her ribs expanded as she gasped, so he slid his hand down to stroke her over her panties.

She gasped again.

He loved it when she did that.

He loved it even more when he slipped his finger inside her panties and found she was slippery and hot down there.

Her fingers contracted on the sheet, grasping.

He pushed the dress down her arms, stripped her wedding gown and panties off, and rolled her over, stroking her until she was a bare, trembling thing in his arms, and then he went to work on her with his hands, his body, and his mouth.

In minutes, he had her gasping with her fingers threading through his hair.

A few more, and she was begging him, her back arching off the bed as he fluttered histongue over her folds, not letting her come but teasing her higher and higher.

He needed her to come when he was inside her, taking her, leaving his seed in her.

So, he held her there by letting her drift down a bit before he ran his tongue more deeply into her, feeling her tension, feeling her desperation for him.

He was so hard that his dick rubbing on the sheets while he ate her was distractinghim.

Her skin was driving him crazy. Her scent, her body in his hands, and her moans jumbled up his thoughts, and all he could think of—

He crawled up her body and into her arms, settling himself between her thighs and pressing inside her heat.

—wasmine, mine, mine.

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear as he rocked inside her. “I have always loved you. I will always love you.”

Her bodyrose under his, and their breath and sweat mingled in the bed. He went slowly, feeling her body pulse around him as she gasped and clung to him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he made love to her. He cradled her close to him as he felt every inch of her satin skin against his stomach and chest, and he ground his body into hers to make her rise higher as she pushed against him, feeling him, too.

He took her harder, deeper, as she clung to him, her arms wrapped around him as his were around her.

The urgency rose in him. His body tightened, straining to pump harder into her. If he was going to die, he wished it could be now, this minute, in her arms, hearing his name from her lips, but he said, “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I will always love you. No matter what happens, I will alwayslove you.”

“Raphael, my angel,” she whispered.

The first wave of white-hot silence rolled through him, a barrage of bliss that swept him away and drowned him, and then a breath, and another, as his balls pumped his seed into her.

She was quivering, straining in his arms as she gasped, her body rigid as the ecstasy drove through her, too.

“Yes,” he whispered to her as she gasped against hisshoulder. “I’ll be your angel, and I’ll always love you.”