He unpopped the button. Excruciatingly slow.
Her impatience spiked. Two could play at that game.
She unclipped the front of her bra, but held it closed.
He growled.
She smiled.
And then he shoved the material down his densely corded legs.
Oh, wow.
Lord, she'd forgotten how big the man was. Thane-naked in all his rock-hard, battle-honed glory, frosted by moonlight-was a mind-bending orgasmic pleasure all on its own.
'You like, angel?'
'I absolutely love,' she breathed. 'Far more than any angel ever should.'
His dark eyes zeroed in on the lacy confection veiling her breasts, which were rising and falling under her laboured breathing, and he dropped back to the chair and unwrapped her as if she were a precious, delectable gift, slowly tugging the lace free. Then with splayed hands he smoothed down her midriff, watching, enraptured, as her flesh shimmied and pimpled in delight.
He'd always used to look at her that way. Fascinated. Glorying in what he could do to her. Just as his restraint had always evaporated when he reached the satin that shrouded the tight curve of her femininity, sending her torn panties somewhere over his left shoulder.
'This is better,' he rasped thickly, leaning down, closing in, teasing his tongue along her bottom lip. 'Much better.'
Possessive and heated and bruising in his intensity, he ravished her mouth, her throat, winding his way down to where he moulded her breast and thumbed her tight nipple. And when his tongue glossed over the plum-coloured peak her sex clenched around thin air, desperate for him to fill the aching void she'd languished in for years.
Arousal at fever-pitch, she hooked her legs around his back and ground against the erection that lay snug over her folds, the sinuous movement pulling a deep groan from his chest and making him suck harder, drawing the tight bud into his mouth. The responding tug in her core ripped an inarticulate cry from her throat.
'Thane … '
Feverish, she felt her pulse rocketing into the stratosphere and … heck, she was seconds away from hyperventilating. Had to remind herself to breathe.
'Patience, Luciana,' he growled, coercing her legs wide, lifting one up and over the chair-arm, then the other, until she was splayed for his depraved enjoyment.
'I'm going to kiss you until you can't breathe,' he said as he nuzzled down her stomach, grazing her skin with a day's growth of stubble and glancing up to meet her eyes through the sable fringe of his lashes. 'Lick you everywhere. Touch you everywhere. And you, Luciana, are going to lie there and take it.'
Oh, yes.
He crawled backwards, like the sleek, rapacious predator he was, dipping his head to drop a hot, open-mouthed kiss to each of her inner thighs. Luciana moaned and lifted her arms above her head to grip the top rail of the chair. Knowing he was about to blow her sky-high. Just the sight of his dark head bent, the feel of his hot breath teasing her throbbing sex, already pushed her to the brink.
'Oh, God, Thane. Come on-do it, please.'
She was sure he laughed. The callous brute. Though he did make up for it by parting her and raking over her folds, lavishing her with the velvet stroke of his hot tongue. He blew against her, then lashed his tongue once more.
'You're so aroused, angel. I forgot how sweet you taste-like honey. I could eat you alive, Luciana.'
She whimpered in shameless pleasure and thrust her hips in a rhythm that matched his tongue. He found her nub unerringly, sucking it into his mouth, and the cords of erotic tension inside her pulled tighter and tighter, until she was a boneless, quivering mass of desire.
'Thane. I can't … hold … on … '
She gasped for air. Then cried out when he pushed two thick fingers deep inside her saturated channel and stroked her to a splintering crescendo so magnificent her mind blanked with sensory overload.
Every muscle in her body stiffened and seized for one, two, three beats of her heart-then she exploded. Screamed as hot, hard sexual pleasure short-circuited her every nerve, shocking her into ecstasy so powerful she levitated off the lounger … suspended on an erotic plane, eyes locked on the midnight sky, the stars glittering above her … then literally slammed back to earth.
When she roused herself from delirium he was leaning above her and her heart fisted. She adored the way his damp hair hung around his face, making him look wicked. A perfect picture of debauchery.
He licked his lips and let rip a feral growl that seemed to come from the depths of his chest. 'I'm going to take you, Luciana. Fill you up. Pour myself into you. But I'll be damned if I'll do it on a beach. I want you in my bed.'
He lifted her up effortlessly and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he strode up the deck into his bedroom, kissing her all the while, never leaving her mouth even when they tumbled onto the bed, hands everywhere as they desperately tried to touch as much of each other as they could reach.
She tore her lips from his. 'Thane, please. Don't make me wait.'
Pushing his arms beneath her shoulders, he cupped her head in his hands, pinning her completely as he trapped her in his dark hypnotic gaze. 'You're mine, Luciana. You've always been mine.'
And then he pushed inside her in one long, deliciously hard thrust.
The stupendous clash of their cries filled the air, caromed off the walls.
Lord, the relief. The screaming, delirious relief and joy and rightness. The inordinate power they created was so all-consuming she slipped into that boneless delirious state once more.
Every one of her senses was as sharp as a pin and yet the moment was dreamlike. Even the erratic rhythm of his breathing seemed in perfect tandem to the thrash of her own heart.
Thane crushed her to him, cradling her, still embedded deep, his strong, muscular body shaking, his face buried in her neck. 'Dios, Luciana. You feel so snug. So incredible … '
As if being inside her, reuniting their exquisite connection, had doused some of the urgency, deeper emotion now flooded the space between them, and Thane lifted his head and tenderly brushed her damp hair from her face, kissed her cheeks, her nose, her brow. So lovingly, so affectionately, that her heart splintered.
Too much, Luce, this is all too much. Back off or you won't survive this. Him.
No. She couldn't let go. Not yet.
His touch sculpted her behind, hooked around her thigh and urged it to curl over his hip as his pelvis locked with hers.
'That's it, angel, now let me watch you.'
He ground against her, watching, as if taking in every nuance of her feverish response, and when he hit her sweet spot she shivered and cried out, gripping his hair. He exploited it, rolling his hips, pushing his iron-hard length deep inside her, thrusting over and over until she was mindless, begging, delirious beneath him.
'Thane … '
Bliss opened up before her, fathoms deep, a chasm that would take her-body and soul. For one shimmering, breathless moment she teetered on the brink … and then she was falling, falling, tumbling, crashing as she hurtled towards ecstasy.
Thane picked up the pace, slamming into her, chasing his own nirvana, until he stiffened with a guttural cry of release, pouring himself inside her, racked with convulsions that left him weak and heavy in her arms. Trembling with the aftershocks like tiny flashes of lightning as the storm dissipated. And she loved it. Revelled in his weight, in his ragged breath whispering over the sensitive skin beneath her ear, his pounding heart against hers.
When lucidity fully returned she realised silent tears were tracking down the sides of her face. She saw again the Rhine Falls of Zurich-a stoic, bittersweet witness to her fragile joy. Because it didn't matter how tightly Thane wrapped her in his arms, as if she was all he'd ever wanted. As if she truly were his angel and they basked in the heavens. Because come the dawn all hell would break loose.
* * *
Luciana wrapped herself in a robe – – the black silk her only armour and sat at the base of the bed, leaning against the carved footboard, watching the morning sun dapple over the hard contours of the man who lay sleeping, naked, on his stomach.
He was a study in masculine perfection. So beautiful. His face reminded her with exquisite poignancy of Natanael. And for the first time she didn't look at him and feel fear or trepidation or anger or dismay. She looked at him with one crystal-clear thought. Or rather she allowed herself to.
This was the man who had given her the son she loved so much. This was the man who'd helped to create a miracle of joy and wonder and beauty.
This man was the father of her child. The very man she'd fallen in love with so long ago. And she could not, would not keep their son from that man a moment longer. No more than she could keep Thane from Natanael.
And that man would not cast her out or take Nate from her. He would protect them both always. Even through his anger and rage. And, darn it, she would be strong through this. As lion-hearted and courageous as he was.
Satin shifted across the sumptuous mattress as he stretched and smouldered in all his abeyant heat. Her gaze locked on the muscles in his back, on the flex and bunch of his ruthless power.