Instead he knelt on one knee, put his hand over her mouth and pushed her down on the pillows.
She froze and stared at him, her heart rate jettisoning into the stratosphere. Her book fell from nerveless fingers. The thud as it landed on the floor sounded a sharp report in the silent penthouse. He took his time looking at her sprawled body, her crumpled T-shirt and cotton shorts, and the light summer blanket tangled around her slender legs. He yanked the blanket off of her.
An insane arousal stabbed her. She fisted one hand in the lapel of his suit and grabbed hold of his thick wrist with the other. The tiniest of veins at his temple beat a hectic tempo, and oh my God, she had to be one twisted pervert, because when he took hold of her T-shirt by the neck and ripped it down the front, she groaned against his palm and almost came.
He tore her shorts away too with an almost leisurely ease, while his half-hidden expression grew darkly flushed with sexual intent. She lay sprawled on the couch, naked except for the simple white wisp of panties. His head turned. She knew he was looking down the length of her. He hooked his fingers into her panties.
Maybe he meant to slow down and tease her. But she let go of his lapel and gripped his penis as it strained against the expensive trousers. Then the muscles in his arm flexed, and her panties were nothing more than ruined shreds of silk.
He yanked open his trousers as she scooted around to face him, and he gripped her by the hips to lift her up to him. It arched her spine, a strange position, so that her shoulder blades pressed against the back of the couch. She hooked her heels on the edge of the cushions, but she was completely off balance, half suspended in air as he held her entire body weight in his grip. With an exhalation that was more like a whimper, she guided the thick head of his cock into place. She was so wet, so wet.
He thrust in and in, an immense, slick invasion that didn’t stop until he was buried all the way inside. His shoulders were bowed, his white teeth clenched. His breathing sounded like bellows. He looked entirely urban and utterly barbaric at once.
Then he fucked her. Hard, slow, rhythmically, steady as a piston. No foreplay, no kissing. She watched his dangerous, half-hidden face, moving her hips to match his rhythm until she sobbed and climaxed, and then he fucked her some more, until he bowed over her and shook all over with his own spurting release. He never once said a word to her.
And she loved all of it.
It was good to love and trust someone so much you could just have sex sometimes, just mate for the sheer rutting pleasure of your bodies moving together in primitive sync.
Now in the dream, she thought back to that earlier time with a small, bittersweet smile. Now wasn’t one of those times.
She knew he was right there with her. They could talk on the phone afterward and both would remember the same things—how he suckled at her so gently, how she wound her arms around his neck and cradled his head—but there was still that dreamy, unreal edge to their lovemaking. It made her even hungrier for him in a way that had nothing to do with enchantments or beguilement, and it also made her a little sad.
She tugged at his shirt, and he obeyed her unspoken request, lifting away from her breast so that he could shrug out of it. She ran her hands over his wide, heavily muscled bronze chest as he unfastened his jeans. He rolled to his back to kick off his boots, then he shoved off the jeans, and my gods, there was so damn much of him, and he was all nude, all hers.
As he turned back to her, she put her arms around his neck to hug him tightly. She whispered, “If we climax, will it wake us up?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He flattened his big hands on her back and pressed her to him. “It could. Do you want to try?”
She twitched a shoulder. “We might as well find out. Otherwise we’ll just wonder until we try it.”
She felt him exhale in a silent laugh. “There’s a rousing endorsement for making love, if ever I heard one.”
She tapped her fingers against his bicep, the merest, gentle hint of one of her smacks. “You know what I meant,” she muttered.
“I know what you meant.”
He eased her onto her back again and came over her. The laughter died, and his expression turned serious. She parted her legs and guided his cock as he kissed her, and there was another one of her very best-loved places, as he covered and penetrated her while she raised her legs and cradled him. Their bodies were perfectly aligned in a way that said this was home.
She adored it, adored him. He leaned his weight on elbows planted on either side of her head, and he lowered his head until they were nose to nose, staring deeply into each other’s eyes as their bodies flexed together gently.
But it was all just a little too dreamy.
Her eyes filled. She said, “I still miss you.”
He stroked her temple with the back of his fingers as he kissed her. His gold gaze filled with quiet pain. “I still miss you too,” he said.
FOUR