She came back to herself almost ready to cry, from that beautiful shattering feeling, from how exposed she had been during it, all her heart laid out there once again.
His hand cupped her face a second, stroking her curls out of her eyes, and that threat of tears eased into the security of his hand. His thumb stroked her cheek again, that way she was growing to love so much. Then he twisted away a second, tearing open the little box of condoms.
“I ripped your little Paris souvenir,” he said, as he came back over her. “I never did get along with that city.”
“Come here.” She reached for him and this time he didn’t stop her, as she gripped his bare butt. God. “Nice butt,” she said involuntarily, her fingers trying to sink in and meeting muscled resistance.
“Merde, you’re generous,” he said roughly. “You just say things. Do things. You’re just about to let me right in, aren’t you?”
She nodded, gripping his butt and pulling.
“In here.” He rubbed her still over-sensitized sex. “Where you’re all soft and vulnerable.”
She was more than a little afraid that she’d already let him into a much more vulnerable part of her than her body, but she just gripped him and arched her hips up, twisting to try to fit herself onto him since he was still bracing himself off.
“Hell.” He surged into her, hard and deep.
“Oh.” She went very still, taking deep breaths.
He did, too, braced off her, his chest moving in great pants. “Okay?”
“I think I need to just—” She shifted her hips a little, and pleasure relaxed all through her as they found their fit. “Oh. Yeah. That…yeah.”
“You let me know.” He held her eyes. It about killed her, how tense his body was and how deep his breathing, and the way he took time to make sure he was taking care of her, still. “I’ve got you, chérie.”
“Actually, that is factually incorrect.” She squeezed him as hard as she could with all her inner muscles and grinned up at him. “I’ve got you.”
His body jerked a little in her. He caught it, all his muscles rigid, still trying so hard for control. “Easy for you to be full of yourself. You already came.”
“Again I have to correct your word choice here.” She shook her head chidingly. And squeezed again. “I’m full of you.”
Breath rushed through his body, and his hips surged. “You’re still messing with me,” he said incredulously.
“I know,” she agreed mournfully. “I can’t seem to help myself.” And she winked at him. “Besides, admit it. You like it.”
“You really are going to kill me,” he muttered.
She liked killing him. She liked driving him crazy. It made her feel giddily, hungrily powerful. She gripped him hard, pulling herself into his body, pressing her lips into his shoulder, kissing and nipping. The roses on his skin had entirely faded. He’d showered when he changed into that tux, hadn’t he? But even though he came from a fragrance family, it hadn’t occurred to him to put on any scent, to be anyone but him. His life was the fragrance.
“You know what I would like?” she whispered fiercely into that strong joining of his neck and shoulder. “To make love to you when you’ve just left the rose fields, when you smell of them all over and I can follow the scent all over your body.”
His eyes closed, his expression strained, as he moved inside her in one long thrust.
“And then you could leave the scent of them all over my body,” she breathed, enraptured with this vision.
“Oh, bordel,” he said. “You’re—you—be quiet. Let me concentrate.”
“On this?” she asked innocently, arching her body and squeezing. “Or this?” She slipped under her legs to cup him.
His breath hissed. His eyes opened, and he stared down at her, as he pulled slowly almost out and slid deep again. “On all of it. On every single second.”
That intense gaze speared her, held her, almost as deeply as his body did. She stared back up at him, caught—by that sensual lower lip, by the upper one that couldn’t get the lower one to behave, by those long lashes that so passionately defied the strong, stubborn bones of his face, by those dark eyebrows drawn together. By the hard, bronze body, by the gauze that showed that he could be hurt, too, by the dark hair on his chest and the way his stomach muscles flexed with each movement of his hips. The way that movement into her body rippled out all through her. “You are so gorgeous,” she breathed wonderingly.
“Bouclettes.” His eyes tightened closed again and he turned his head away, hips surging. “Please don’t—not now.”