“I’ve taken your choices from you at every turn. I won’t force this on you too.” He made to pull back, but she refused to let go.
“If you leave this bed, then that’s exactly what you’re doing.” He paused, staring down at her with a frown on his shadowed face, and she pressed, “I want this, Gideon. I want you. I am making this choice.”
“But you know what I have to do to survive now. How can you—”
“I can, because I know you.”
He stared down at her for so long, she thought for a moment she’d lost the battle after all.
Desperate to get through to him, she gave him back the very words he’d once spoken to her. “We’ll figure this out…together.”
The edges of his mouth curled up, reminding her of the first time she’d seen him, standing across the nightclub, leaning against the bar, staring at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
He was looking at her like that again, right now.
Slowly, he lowered his head and captured her lips, branding her very soul. His lips were so very hot. His tongue swirled into her mouth, plunging and rubbing in a sinful mimicry of the sex act.
Without breaking the kiss, he shifted above her, slipping beneath the blankets, until he lay full length against her. Gideon got rid of their clothing with one of his little vanishing tricks.
Maggie’s world narrowed. The pinpoint of her focus centered in this room, on this bed, in the intimate warmth of the two of them snuggled on their sides facing each other inside the warm cocoon of blankets. This was a world of sensation. A world of erotic, gentle caresses. Of soft sighs, and tender murmurs.
Gideon slipped a warm thigh between hers. The slightly coarse hair on his leg abraded her sensitive skin, sending delicious shivers through her. He slipped one arm beneath her neck, cradling her.
She splayed her fingers over his back, savoring the ripple of rock hard muscles and controlled strength while she tangled her free hand in his hair. When she set her fingertips to tracing the gruesome scars on his back, he tensed.
“Do they hurt?” she whispered, there in the intimacy of the bed.
“No,” he admitted, scowling.
“Then why do you tense when I touch them?”
“Because…because they’re a reminder of the beast inside me. A reminder of my fall.”
She continued to trace the scars. “That’s not how I see them.”
He frowned as he waited for her to explain, but his body was slowly relaxing into her touch.
“I see them as a symbol of your strength and the things you’ve overcome to be where you are now. Be what you are now. A being who’s made mistakes and done everything in his power to correct those mistakes. And the beast inside you, as you call it, is a part of you. You need to learn to work with the rage instead of fighting it.” She reached up, shushing him with a finger pressed to his lips. “Besides, without these scars, I wouldn’t be able to be here with you like this.”
He stared at her, long and hard. And then he smiled, a purely Gideon kind of smile.
His warm hand settled over her breast and he smoothed the rough pad of his thumb back and forth across her nipple. He stole her breath as he kissed her then, long and slow. Then he released her mouth, and Maggie gasped as his lips skated down the side of her neck. He edged down on the bed, lavishing every inch of her skin with soft caresses and erotic nibbling kisses. His hands moved to her hips, urging her over onto her back.
And when he settled his shoulders between her thighs, she sighed in pleasure. The last time he’d done this, he’d taken her with wild, reckless abandon. He’d utterly devoured her.
Now he took his time. Starting at her knees and working his way to the tiny bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs, he nipped and nibbled. He licked and sucked. He nuzzled and teased. He drew it out into infinity. He leisurely savored as she slowly lost her mind.
Only after she’d drifted in a dreamy sensual haze, did he finally climb back up her body. Gideon’s expression as he eased his rigid, thick length deep inside her, gentle but determined, was one she would hold close to her heart for the rest of her days.
And then he began to move.
They’d had sex before. She could honestly say she knew the difference now. What had happened between them before had been untamed, lust-filled, earth-shaking, mind-blowing sex.
Here and now, Gideon made love to her.
She’d never be the same again.
There would never be any going back, no changing her mind. No halves. No compromises. For better or worse, as his body rocked over hers, as he surged inside her, Gideon laid claim to more than her body. He laid claim to more than her heart. He branded himself upon her soul.
Chapter Twenty-Two