Softer, more gently now as if knowing how rare this was, Tom caressed her middle with all the skill of a musician pulling a gentle note into life. She sighed, feeling his touch crack her aura. Everywhere his fingers alighted, every stroke he made, melted through the barrier she had made to give her jolts of his passion and desire, filing her with an almost never-tasted depth of feeling.
She moaned, and he lowered his head to take her breast again. A flash of need struck through her, and blood pounding, her hands darted into his hair, pressing him into her. Spurred on, he became aggressive. The pinch of teeth was like knives in her, slicing through her defenses to lay her bare to his lust. There was no love anymore. This was raw, animal hunger, and she relished it even as she strove to mend the tears in her aura he was making. She had to keep from taking it all. She shouldn’t take anything. Even this little bit would show.
But his weight atop her was delicious, and the heat from his body drove everything else out. Mia shifted under him, tracing her hands down his back, feeling the muscle and bone, running lower as his mouth broke from her to rise and find her lips.
Her need quickened, and panting from effort, she met his eyes once, reading her desperation in her reflection in her gaze. And then he kissed her.
Once more he broke through her aura, and she moaned, clutching him and arching her back as he drove his tongue into her with an animalistic fervor. Wave after wave of strength flooded her. She simply couldn’t shield herself from this intimate contact that reached far past her aura and into her soul. She was alive, alive and scintillating. But she was taking too much, and she felt it in his faltering heartbeat.
“No,” she whispered, groaning in despair. “Tom, stop.”
He wouldn’t, sending a pulse of heat through her when his hands grew stronger on her, demanding. Fear that she couldn’t do this, fear she couldn’t wall herself from him and it would all be for naught, was a sharp goad, and with a sudden realization, she knew what she had to do.
Desperate to regain control and keep from draining him of his life force, she took his face in her hands and turned his mouth to hers. Panting from a desperate need, she held him to her, and forced a kiss. Again, his desire broke through her aura, flooding her with an almost unbearable emotion, but this time, she pushed her own desire into him—redoubled.
He gasped, his entire body shaking as it rested atop her.
Mia felt the heat of tears under her closed lids. It was hard, so hard to push what he had given her back into him. It went against every instinct she had, but clearly he felt it, and his kiss and his hands upon her grew rough, savage. He hadn’t several centuries to learn how to control such an influx of power and strength as she had.
His grip upon her waist hurt, and she did nothing as he forced her legs apart. She wanted this. Exalting in the savage response she could invoke, she gave him more, feeling it leave her in a scintillating sensation of sparkles.
A guttural sound came from him, and Mia gasped in an exquisite pain as he entered her, pushing to fill all of her in one move. She groaned, arching into him, wanting this. Wanting it so badly that she gave him even more of herself.
Wave after wave of emotion drenched her, running off her to pool in the room as if to drown her in lust. He moved against her, dominating and aggressive. Every motion was like knives in her aura, breaking it, destroying what she had built to protect him. But she gave back more than she took, and he grew wilder, more demanding. He forgot all as he sweated above her, and she moaned with every breath, feeling an end coming, the wait an exquisite pain.
And in a sudden pulse, it broke upon them. A twisted groan eased from him, and he clenched her to him as wave after wave of ecstasy fell on them. Mia’s barrier shattered. Gasping, she clutched at him, feeling his entire soul empty into her as she reached fulfillment, her body wracked with tremors as they hung unmoving in a haze of bliss.
Emotion shook the room in silent thunder only she could feel, and she almost passed out, taking breath after heaving breath until the sensation gave a final pulse and vanished.
“Tom,” she panted, feeling his breath in her hair as he lay atop her, too spent to move. “Tom, are you okay?”
He didn’t answer, and she pushed on his shoulder. “Tom?”
“I love you, Mia,” he whispered, and he sighed, his full weight coming to rest against her.
“Tom!” she exclaimed, shoving him to the back of the couch and wiggling out from under him. The air felt thick, like sunshine pooled at the bottom of a valley, eddying about her feet with the heaviness of honey. She hadn’t kept any of the emotion from the room. It was all here, cloying and thick, making her dizzy with a repressed need. But Tom…