He reacted in the only way he could. He waited until she released him, drew back, thrust in again, and reseized the reins.
For once, she didn’t protest. Instead, within two thrusts, she joined him, rising to the rhythm he set, eagerly following his lead, then, increasingly desperately, urging him on.
Addie wasn’t sure she hadn’t gone blind. She couldn’t seem to focus any of her senses on anything but the pounding beat of Nicholas’s body coupling with hers. In those moments, nothing existed beyond the utterly thrilling dance of thrust and retreat. The movement, the impact on her glorying senses, commanded every iota of her awareness. The compelling reality seized her wits, her entire awareness—held her very soul captive—all trapped in a web created by the elemental, striving, driving beat.
Passion, need, hunger, and desire swirled in a vortex through them.
The feel of him inside her was simply rapturous. She’d never imagined that part correctly, never had any true sense of just how deliciously delightful the act could be.
Yes, it was intimate, in a way and to an extent she instinctively felt she should be wary of, yet with Nicholas—the only gentleman she’d ever trusted—the experience was nothing short of amazing.
And unbelievably pleasurable.
She’d wanted him to show her the ways, the pathways of intimate pleasure, and he had.
Comprehensively.
She reached up and, framing his face between her palms, drew his lips to hers, and dove into a kiss and, with her lips and tongue, told him just how very grateful she was.
He groaned into the kiss, then the tempo escalated, and a wave of passion rose and swamped them.
They rode on, now clinging in desperation, clutching and holding, needing and wanting, overwhelmed by an inescapable urgency to reach the inevitable culmination.
Inside her, inside him, tension wound and gripped. Need and desire scaled new heights.
Deep in their landscape of fiery hunger, a peak of sensation beckoned, and metaphorically hand in hand, they raced toward it.
Her skin felt afire, her every sense locked on reaching the pinnacle. And then they were there, and a last powerful thrust sent her soaring.
The tension inside her shattered, and glory rained down upon her as shards of brilliant sensation streaked down her nerves and fractured her perceptions.
Pleasure, deep and profound, flooded her as, with a groan, he followed her over the precipice and into ecstasy.
Gradually, her senses returned, and she discovered she was floating on a sea of satiation. Oblivion bloomed on her horizon. It beckoned, and she surrendered and sank into glorious peace.
Propped on his elbows above her, her head caged between his forearms, with his head hanging and every muscle quivering in the aftermath of what, when all was said and done, had been a long-drawn-out engagement—admittedly, his choice, not hers—Nicholas discovered he couldn’t think.
At all.
Giving up the attempt of mustering even a single coherent thought, from under heavy lids, he examined her face.
Peace infused every perfect line. In the waning moonlight, her complexion—already perfect—seemed to glow.
He’d done his best. Indeed, in his estimation, he’d transcended all his previous efforts in this sphere.
He hoped it would be enough to ignite in her the same flame that burned so steadily within him.
The need to cleave to one woman was a new development for him, but he was too well-versed in the ways of Fate to fight it.
That she’d admitted, however obliquely, that he was the only one she’d ever considered for the honor of introducing her to passion went some way to alleviating his natural feelings of vulnerability.
How could any man not feel vulnerable when faced with the reality that his entire future happiness rested on the willingness of one specific woman to join her life with his?
He now understood far more accurately how his male relatives felt. That each continued to survive and successfully enjoy their happy marriage was reassuring.
Sufficient minutes had elapsed for him to have regained the required strength to ease from the luscious clasp of her body and lift from her.
She mumbled something and tried to hold on to him.
