Nalini Singh: Craving Beauty

Then she made a sound of utter frustration and her hands clasped his erection. "Now!"

Pleasure splintered through his body as her hands held him with expertise that belied her claim of virgin­ity.

Experience he could accept, lies he despised. Growl­ing, he thrust a hand through her hair, scattering the pins to the floor and sending that black-and-gold waterfall cascading down her back. "Who else have you held in your hands?"

She scowled at him. "No one!" Then to his shock, she leaned forward and bit his lower lip, a sharp little snap that rocked him. "You have made me crazy as I warned."

It was the edgy remark that calmed the hunter. Perhaps he had pushed her to take this bold step. Hira, he was be­ginning to learn, was a very strong woman. A woman who went after what she wanted. A woman who acknowledged her mistakes and called on him to explain his own actions.

Reaching down between their bodies, he removed her hands, though she didn't go quietly. Moving them up above her head, he pinned them against the glass with one hand. She tried to escape, her eyes wild as she watched him soap up his free hand. Dropping the soap to the floor, he began to lather her breasts.

Her body shuddered. "Marc..."

"That's it, baby, say my name." He moved enough that the spray washed away the soap on her breasts. Then he leaned down and took her nipple into his mouth.

She bucked and screamed. "Marc! Please! Please!"

He wanted to give in to her, his body aching for release, but he knew the importance of seducing her prop­erly. Once he had her, he'd want to taste her passion again and again, and she had to want him just as much. He released her hands and lifted her by the hips. She wrapped her legs around him, clasping him to her and opening herself to his penetration.

"Not yet, cher ." When she parted her lips to protest, he kissed her.

Because her mouth was already open, it began as a much more carnal kiss than the one they'd shared out­side.

But despite that, he didn't ravage her. Instead, he teased her with short strokes and licks of his tongue that barely ventured beyond her lips. Her hands clenched in his hair. For a few moments she didn't respond, then her tongue shyly stroked his lower lip. He couldn't stop his body surging into her.

He was inside her before he could breathe, lodged just barely in her heat.

She tried to push forward and impale herself. He clasped her hips and kept her still, though sweat was pouring down his face, mixing with the shower spray. "Kiss me, cher. Kiss me like you want me deep inside you, touching you in a place no one else has ever breached." It was a sensual demand that pushed at her innocence but he needed her with him all the way, needed her to feel the same raging fire that was scorch­ing him. His hunger would be satisfied with nothing less than her utter and complete participation, followed by her absolute, unflinching surrender.

She gasped, tawny eyes almost swallowed by dark pupils. Then she leaned just a tiny bit forward, held his face in her hands and kissed him. It was the tenderness of her hold that rocked him. Before he could find his feet, she was obeying his order, kissing him with such passion that he felt her desire all the way to his toes, a sizzling heat that made every nerve ending he had fire in rapid sequence.

Her tongue stroked his, shy but determined. "Hus­band..."

The single trembling word shattered his control. En­twining his fingers with hers, he pressed their joined hands to the glass wall and slid another inch into her. Her whole body shook, but she didn't break eye contact.

"Ready?"

"Yes." Sensual determination was stamped in her features, her lips lush and just barely parted.

He rocked against her, giving her time to get used to this absolute intimacy. She shuddered, and the tight sheath of her body gave way. "More?" he whispered, re­leasing her hands to stroke his over her buttocks while his body held hers pinned to the wall.

It didn't surprise him that she understood. Her breasts heaving against his chest, she swallowed. "I'm sure, husband... Marc, I want you." No prevarication, no hes­itation, just the truth of her desire.

He read that truth in her exotic gaze. Though her pu­pils were hugely dilated, she was still with him, riding passion's currents. She was, he realized, his perfect match in this arena. Fire rippled through him, urging him to surge forward and brand her with his possession.

Gritting his teeth against temptation, he held her wriggling hips still and nudged another tiny bit into her.

Despite her open hunger, she was a novice at this—it was his task as her husband to prepare her, soothe her. . .and then storm her. Another tiny nudge.

He did the same again and again, moving slowly deeper until he hit the feminine barrier he'd known was waiting for him. Some wholly primitive part of him growled in approval. She was his. For always. It was right that he was the one to initiate her into this. The only one. Fighting the grip of the primitive within, he took her lips in a voracious kiss and nudged again, this time with more force. That fine barrier stretched and then broke. Hira's fingers dug into his shoulders but she didn't pull away.

Instead she returned his kiss with fierceness that de­stroyed him. Sure of his welcome, he pushed fully into her almost-shocking heat. The pleasure was indescrib­able. Lips locked with hers, he moved one hand to her bottom, squeezing and caressing as his other hand moved up to her breast. He could feel her fighting the multiple sensations, trying to control her senses.

"Let go, baby. Let go for me." His husky demand was whispered into her mouth, almost drowned out by the water.

But she'd heard. When he rolled her nipple in his fin­gers, her body jerked and then she cried out against his lips.

Her surrender was apparent in the way she clung to him as ripples of pleasure tore through her body. In the deepest, most feminine part of her, she clenched around him again and again, an intimate caress that brought him to the edge of insanity. He clung to that edge with every ounce of strength he possessed, determined to hold her safe through her first ride into the firestorm of pleasure.

Almost sobbing with the fury of her ecstasy, her legs locked tight around his hips, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him, as if she wanted to crawl into his body. It was the final straw.

He started moving faster, speeding his rhythm in a way designed to stroke her already sensitive inner tissues into shuddering abandon. He felt her shock as her body began to react again, felt her mouth open on the skin of his neck as she kissed him there, touched him, stroked her fingers into his wet hair. But she didn't back away.

Her lush body accepted the pleasure he lavished on her. It was all he'd wanted, but she gave him more. With her lips and her hands and the way she held him to her, she not only accepted but actively participated, telling him without words that his pleasure mattered to her. It was his last thought before the spiraling void he'd been circling sucked him in.

He took her over the edge with him, took her on an­other incandescent ride into a realm where pleasure was the only currency. His and hers.

Hira wasn't sure she was functioning properly. Mov­ing her head with care lest it fall off, she looked beside her to the hunter sharing the bed. Yes, she'd once thought him a civilized man, but that had been a com­plete delusion. He was about as civilized as a mountain lion. His taking of her—and it had been a taking in the most basic sense—had been domineering, controlling and very, very sexual.

This very uncivilized man thought he owned her even relaxed hi sleep. She was pinned down with the heavy arm thrown across her waist and a muscular thigh across her lower legs; now that she'd given her­self to him, he wouldn't allow her to back away from their sexual joining.