Aching at his protectiveness, intoxicated by his possessiveness, she raised her head and met his wild eyes in the mirrored headboard. The sight of their replicas in the coolness of glass—how he dominated her, how she looked taken whole by him—ignited her down to her last nerve ending. And that was before his words scorched her.
“Five years, Scarlett, five interminable years, struggling with losing you. Now it’s even worse, knowing you struggled, too, suffered more.” Crying out at the desolation in his voice, she arched back into him, needing to absorb it. “But I have you back now, and you just gave me back every memory I thought I couldn’t keep. It was all real. This is real. This.”
He pressed against her harder, as if he couldn’t bear the physical boundaries separating them, his hardness digging into her yielding body. She went limp under him, showing him she wanted him to assimilate her, wanted to dissolve in him.
His eyes kept hers captive, and his hot breath scorched her face, filled her lungs. “I went insane every night, needing you like this and knowing I’d never have you again. Hunger built inside me without even hope for relief.”
The first time he’d confessed this, her mind had swerved around his words, shying away from registering them. It was too huge to contemplate that he hadn’t had any intimacies since her. This time there was no escaping his meaning. And it was still almost incomprehensible.
Tentatively, she met his gaze in the mirror. “Do you really mean you didn’t...didn’t...all this time?”
“Yes, I damn well really mean it.” He ground harder into her, liquefying her even more. “Since I was a child I achieved absolute control over my urges, to hone my skills. It made me uninterested in sex, especially since I abhorred the form available to me. The Organization provided us with other captives to vent our libidos with.”
Their eyes clung, and she knew he must wonder if she’d been one of those captives, if someone he knew had used her for that purpose.
Unable to bear it, she lowered her head to the bed, burying her face in the silk covers, tears starting to pour down her cheeks.
A trembling hand pulled her up to meet his vehement conviction. “I don’t care and neither should you. We both did so many things against our will, and we’re not responsible for any of it. It doesn’t make us less or worse. It actually makes us more and better. We’re survivors, conquerors, winners. But you... You’re perfect.”
Feeling as if her heart had expanded to fill her whole body, she twisted beneath him so hard, she made him roll off her. Then she was all over him, clinging with arms and legs and lips, tears now flowing with gratitude, with relief.
He let her deluge him for a while before taking over, groaning into her lips. “My brothers used to call me The Monk. I thought I was, until you. Then I became insatiable. After you, after I experienced true passion and ecstasy, I couldn’t settle for the sexual relief I never wanted in the first place. I wanted you. Only you. Even when I thought I’d never have you again. But now I do, and all I can think of is having you, doing everything to you, with you.”
“Everything?” She moaned, undulating against him, needing him to combust. “Like what? Show me.”
“Like this...” He flipped her onto her back, gloriously rough, dragging her top over her head and spilling her swollen breasts into the large palms they’d been made to fill. He kneaded them with a careful savagery that had her bucking beneath him, had her frantically trying to tear his clothes off his back. She needed the crush of his hunger, the oblivion of his possession.
Grasping both her hands in one, he did what she’d failed to. He shredded his shirt, flinging off its tatters. Her salivary glands stung, needing her lips and tongue all over his flesh, her teeth in it.