Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage(89)

“You don’t know what it’s been like,” he grumbled.

She had an idea. Her body was barely hers, responding to the feel of him so strongly that just the thick stretch of him inside her and the faint friction of their tiniest movement was setting off another detonation. It would have been humiliating if it wasn’t so amazingly, sweetly incredible.

“Oh, God, Gideon. I’m sorry,” she moaned and scratched at his rib cage as she tilted her hips for more pressure and shuddered into ecstasy beneath his weight.

“Oh, babe,” he said consolingly against her lips, rocking lightly to increase the sensations, forcing and prolonging her climax. “You missed this, too.”

She shattered, unable to stop herself gasping in joy

“Don’t be arrogant,” she warned a minute later, turning her face to the side in discomfiture as she tried to catch her breath.

“I’m not, I swear I’m not.” His breath was hot on her ear before his tongue painted wet patterns on her nape.

“You don’t seem quite as swept away as I am,” she said pointedly, pressing against the wall of his chest.

“I’m barely hanging on. Can’t you feel me shaking? If I was naked, I’d have been lost on the first thrust. Being inside you is so good, babe. I never want to leave. It’s always like this, like I’m in heaven.”

Her heart seemed to flower open to him and her hands moved on him of their own volition, absorbing that he was, indeed, trembling with strain.

“I thought I was the one shivering,” she confessed softly.

“I live for this, Adara. The feel of you under me, the way you smell, the heat and the insane pleasure of feeling you around me.” He pressed deep as he spoke, sparking a flare of need in her for another and another of those fiercely possessive thrusts.

“Don’t stop,” she begged. “It feels too good.”

With an avid groan, he took her mouth in a deep soul kiss and thrust in a purposeful, primal rhythm. The sensations were nearly too much for her, but she couldn’t let him go, couldn’t give it up. Her legs locked around him and her heels urged him to heavier, harder slams of his hips into hers. This wasn’t a man initiating a virgin; it was too halves trying to meld into a whole. The sensations were acute and glorious and feral.

And when the culmination arrived, it was a simultaneous crescendo that burst from the energy between them, surrounding and sealing them in a halo of shimmering joy as they clung tightly to the only thing left in the universe. Each other.

* * *

Gideon left Adara at a complete and utter loss. She always left the bed first, hitting the shower so she could recover her defenses after letting them fall away during sex. Lovemaking always made her feel vulnerable, and after acting so greedily and helpless to her desire for him, she needed alone time more than ever. She’d never felt so peeled down to the core in her life

But Gideon disappeared into the bathroom, stealing her favorite line of escape. She sat up, thinking to dress, but then go where?

The toilet flushed and she flicked the corner of the duvet over her nudity, not sure where to look when he came out of the bathroom. He struck a pose in the doorway with elbows braced and a near belligerence in his naked stance.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, unnerved by his intense stare.

“Nothing. You?” He seemed almost confrontational and it got her back up.

“No. Of course not.” Except that she’d pretty much exploded in his arms and didn’t know how to handle facing down this tough guy who didn’t seem to have a shred of tenderness in him anymore. She slid a foot to the edge of the bed. “I’ll, um, just have a quick shower—”

“Why?” he challenged. “You just had one.”

True, but where else did one ever have complete privacy except the bathroom? She’d figured that one out in grade school. It was one of her coping strategies to this day. She set her chin, trying to think up a suitable way to insist.

“I hate it when you run away after sex,” he said, coming toward the bed in a stealthy, pantherlike stride. “Unless you’re inviting me to join you in the shower, stay exactly where you are.”

Her heart skipped, reacting to both his looming presence and the shock of his words.

“You’re the one who started it, running out like you had a train to catch the first night of our honeymoon. I thought that’s how we did this,” she defended, going hot with indignation. “When we’re done, we’re done.”

“Our first night was your first time. If I hadn’t left you, I’d have made love to you all night and I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I already had.” He leaned over her as he spoke, forcing her onto her back.