He crouched in front of her, taking his time to release her stockings and slide them down endlessly long, lean legs. They were gorgeous legs, fine-boned and supple, with strong, sweeping lines. He traced the silken length with his fingertips, from narrow ankle to inner thigh. She shuddered beneath the stroke and he heard the breathless moan explode from her. It only took a moment to unfasten the garter and discard it, leaving one final barrier between them.
Instead of a blue triangle like before, this one was bronze, just a tissue-thin silk and lace bastion of modesty, begging to be breached. He pressed his mouth to the center, inhaling her, warmed by her, drinking in the perfume of her desire. Gentle, gentle, gentle, he eased the elastic from her hips and bared her. Wanted her. Needed her. Would do anything to have her.
And then he ravished her, sending her over before she could draw breath to cry out. Her back bowed in reaction at the same instant her knees buckled and he tipped her backward as she flew apart, so the silk duvet cushioned her fall. He stood for a moment, looking his fill at the woman he intended to make his.
Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks and then she lifted her gaze so it clashed with his. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything more glorious than those eyes, drenched in wary shadow and a painful want. They overwhelmed a face edged with elegance and a classic, ageless beauty. Understated, like her delicate bone structure and graceful feminine curves, a shimmer of pale light against the darkness of the duvet. She was a flawless diamond of incalculable value, eclipsed by gemstones who appeared larger and flashier, but were infinitely less precious.
And she was his.
He took her mouth in a nibbling bite. Sank inward. He couldn’t get enough of her, didn’t think he’d ever get enough. Angie shifted beneath him, her arms stroking upward along his arms, then cupping his face.
“Lucius…”
Just his name, that one word a whisper that slipped from deep inside her to deep inside him. Her fingers slid into his hair, anchoring him, and she lifted her leg, gliding it along the length of his own leg. He shuddered beneath the slow, relentless stroke. She bewitched him. Stole sense and sensibility. All he wanted was to lose himself in her, to make her his in every sense of the word. But a small alarm sounded in the back of his head, growing progressively louder with each moment that passed, until the reason finally penetrated.
“Protection.” The word escaped between kisses. “Give me a minute…”
“Hurry.” The word was both demand and plea. “Please, hurry.”
Lucius reached to one side, fumbled in the drawer of the bedside nightstand. Groped for the packet. Swore when it took three tries. Swore again when it defied his attempts to open. She dared to laugh, scooping the wrapper from his hands and somehow getting it open. And then her cool, skillful hands were on him, rolling along the length of him as she sheathed him, threatening both sanity and control.
“Better?” Angie asked.
“Hell, no.” He palmed her lovely bottom and settled between her parted legs. In one swift stroke he mated them, a joining of such utter perfection it took him a moment to speak. “There, that’s better. Infinitely better. Unimaginably better.”
With a sigh of pure pleasure, she gathered him up, wrapping those endless legs around him and twining her arms tight, tight, tight. And then she moved with him, revealing a charm and style he’d never experienced with another, blending male and female in a dance of perfect synchronicity. Mated. Branded. Joined. The words became new to him, the definition honed to a meaning that would forevermore include her at its heart. And through that mating, that branding, that joining, he absorbed her. She became part of him, melded into the very fiber of his being.
Lucius didn’t know if she understood what had happened, this claiming. Couldn’t do more than state it in a single word of utter possession. “Mine.”
“Always.”
It was enough. For now it would do. His hands swept over her, a burning desire to explore every part of her, to know it quickly and thoroughly. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t hold back long enough and even as he took her, satisfied his initial hunger, he knew it would return. That it couldn’t be sated, not tonight. Not anytime soon. One helping would never satisfy him…or her. She called to him, her voice an irresistible siren’s song that made him deaf to any and all women—those who came before and those shadows of tomorrow who would never be. On some level he sensed himself incapable of hearing them the way he heard her. Could never respond to them the way he responded to her.