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“I don’t want to hurt you, but you’ve been driving me mad, Francesca,” he hissed.

“You’re not hurting me.”

“No?”

She shook her head.

She sensed the tension increase in his body. He began to fuck her again, his hips driving his cock like a fluid, thrusting piston this time. She bit off a scream, but it burned in her throat. She realized he’d been restraining himself before, but he fucked her thoroughly now . . . and not just thoroughly—with a skill that stunned her. His motion was subtle and raw at once, controlled yet wild. It felt as if he beat pleasure into her, stroked her flesh to flesh until she knew she’d burst into flame any moment. She began to bob her hips in a counterrhythm, small cries popping out of her throat each time they crashed together with a sharp smacking sound of skin against skin.

“Jesus,” he groaned a moment later, sounding miserable and ecstatic at once. He shifted on the chaise, and drove into her with such force that the top of her head bumped against the back cushion. She dazedly realized he’d spread his legs entirely over the chaise and that his feet were now planted on the floor. He reared over both her and the chaise lounge and thrust, teeth bared in a snarl.

“Ian, let me let go of the chair,” she begged when he crashed into her again and again and she felt another climax looming over her just as Ian did. She longed to touch him so much.

“No,” he said tensely. He pushed off his planted feet and drove into her, grunting when their bodies smacked together. A cracking sound exuded from the chaise, but thankfully the priceless piece of furniture didn’t collapse into a heap of splinters and velvet with them on top of it. Her head bumped against the cushion, her breasts bounced high with each forceful thrust of his large body, the sensation exciting and dizzying her. He lifted a hand and reached between their bodies, opening her labia wide, before he rotated his hips, grinding his balls against her exposed outer sex, circling his engorged cock subtly against her vaginal walls. “Not until you come again, lovely.”

It didn’t really feel as if she had a choice. The pressure he’d built in her was unbearable. A cry of disbelief burbled out of her throat as bliss shook her once again. He gave a savage grunt of satisfaction and began to fuck her faster than before, letting the wildness he contained so carefully overtake him.

She cried out in protest when he withdrew his cock abruptly and pressed his knees onto the chaise, straddling her. His breath sounded ragged and erratic. She stared up at him, her climax waning in his absence, bewildered by his actions. She watched in the light from the dim emergency lighting as he used his hand to pump his cock.

“Ian?”

His groan sounded like the depth of agony, the height of bliss as he began to ejaculate. An ache opened up inside her at the sight of him spending himself while separate from her. She lowered her arms slowly, feeling stunned, helpless . . . very aroused at the vision he made.

A moment later, he dropped his hand and hunkered down over her, his muscles bunched tight, gasping for breath. She’d thought he was beautiful as he reared over her, possessing her body and soul, but he was beyond that as he knelt over her, shaking and undone by his desire.

She reached for him, sliding her hands beneath his collar and stroking his powerful shoulder muscles. A shiver went through him at her touch, thrilling her.

“Why—”

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I started to worry . . . pregnant.”

“It’s okay, Ian,” she whispered. Compassion filled her at the realization of how starkly anxious he was at the smallest chance that he would have unintentionally impregnated her. She carefully moved back the open placket of his shirt and held it behind him with one hand. With her other hand at his back, she urged him down to her gently.

“Come here,” she insisted when she felt him resist. He hesitated for a moment, but then he came down over her, his solid, heavy weight pressing into her body striking her as a miracle.

“I was so primed for you. I haven’t . . . there hasn’t been anybody else for weeks now. Not typical for me. I could feel it building up inside me, and I was worried . . . the condom wasn’t enough. Stupid,” he muttered between pants.

She kissed his shoulder and stroked his broad, heaving back. Something full and inexplicable swelled in her chest at his admission that he’d abstained from his usual sexual practices.

Had she had something to do with his abstinence?

No. Surely not.

It frightened her a little, his complexities, his determined loneliness. She continued to caress him as he came back to himself, her gaze glued to the enigmatic face of their onlooker, wondering numbly all the while if Aphrodite planned to bless or curse them.

* * *

He seemed lost in some private world on the drive to the hotel, even though he sat next to her in the backseat of the limo, his arm around her, her head resting on his chest as he stroked her hair. At first, she was worried he was regretting his momentary vulnerability back there at the museum—his admission—but then she began to relax into his silence. She watched through heavy eyelids as the lights of Paris rushed by the window, recalling all the details of what had unexpectedly occurred in that salon in vivid detail.

Surely he couldn’t regret a moment of that incredible experience, could he?

The Hotel George V was just off the Champs-Élysées. To call it luxurious was a bit of an understatement, Francesca thought as she followed Ian onto the gilt elevator. She gasped when he opened the door for her and she stepped into an antique-filled living room featuring rich fabrics, a marble fireplace, and original seventeenth – and eighteenth-century artwork.