"So beautiful…" he muttered, his voice low and ragged. "I want to know you better than any human being has ever known another."
"You do. You have."
He looked at her, his eyes shining hotly, and the merest intimation of a smile touched his lips as he read the sincerity in her expression. "Have I?" he asked, and as if to prove her wrong, he touched her in ways that he never had before, discarding more of his restraint. His hands curved around her buttocks, massaging and cupping… and suddenly his fingers dipped into the crevice between them, causing her to flushscarlet and writhe away from him. "Alec," she choked in protest, startled by the intimacy, and he laughed softly, withdrawing his hands to a less disturbing place. Effortlessly his knees spread hers.
"Don't move," he whispered, stroking her hips. "Don't move at all."
"Why?" Mira breathed, but he gave no answer. His mouth brushed over her skin down to her abdomen. Every muscle in her body tightened as his tongue invaded her navel, and she tensed in response to the strange sensation. His hands tightened around her hips, keeping her still, and gradually she felt an unfamiliar pulsing pleasure as he licked and tasted the tiny orifice. "Alec, please love me," she said shakily, wanting him to stop and raise his body back over hers, and thrust into her. She was damp with perspiration, trembling with need.
"I do," he said, deliberately misunderstanding her, his heart drumming with excitement.
She swallowed hard with relief as his tongue left her navel, knowing that now she would have him, now he would join his hips to hers and quench the agonizing emptiness inside her. But instead of moving up along her body, his head went even lower, and suddenly his mouth was playing gently between her legs. She made a small surprised sound, frozen in confusion, flooded with pleasure. Blindly she reached down to the large hands that clasped her hips, and his fingers tangled with hers, and the devouring sweetness went on until she thought she would faint. Painfully aroused, shocked into silence, she made no move, no sound, no protest when the caress ended and he let his mouth drift back up her body to her throat. Her eyes met his, her gaze so dark that it looked black. Slowly she slid her arms around his neck.
"Let me take you to bed," he whispered.
She nodded, hiding her face against his neck as he lifted her up easily. The mattress gave slightly under-neath them, and he pressed her onto her back, his taut thighs wedging between hers. He took her mouth with a slow, hungry kiss, his passion honed and sharpened by her eager response. With a low, heavy thrust, he filled her until she gasped. "Mira?" he murmured, holding himself still within the throbbing snugness that surrounded him, and then he groaned as she lifted her hips against his and tried to urge him more deeply still. The scalding heat of his flesh surged into her, their bodies knitting together with stunning perfection. Urgently they moved and touched, learning the secrets that only lovers could know.
He discovered that she loved to sift her fingers through the hair on his chest, and that her legs were the perfect length to wrap around his hips. She found out that he shivered in pleasure when she scraped her nails very delicately across his back. And Alec, who never lost control, heard someone sobbing hoarsely, and realized that the abraded sounds came from his own throat. Burying his face in her hair, he felt her contract around him. She shuddered roughly, and drew a quick breath, and shuddered again, her body racked with brutal pleasure. Then he allowed himself to feel it also, the ecstasy submerging him in violent flood.
For a long time he held her without speaking, pulling her head to the hollow of his shoulder and sighing with satisfaction as she threw a slender arm over his wide brown chest. Contentedly Mira occupied herself with tracing idle patterns over his skin with her fingertips and then arranging long streamers of her hair over his chest in a silken net. Alec took her hand, kissing each fingertip before raising himself on one elbow and looking down at her. They smiled into each other's eyes. But slowly the amusement left Alec's expression, his gaze becoming grave and searching.
"How can I have lived so long without you?" he asked huskily. "How could I have ever thought that I was content? I didn't know. I didn't know that I needed you." "I couldn't live without you," she said, her eyes suddenly glittering with tears. "Not after tonight."
He touched her lips with his fingertips, silencing her. "Don't say that. Don't be afraid of the future any longer. You're mine now, and nothing could change what I feel for you. Not even you could change it, even if you tried."