Page 319 of From Rakes to Riches

With a surge of his hips, he impaled her.

Her teeth sank into the meat of his shoulder and she gave a whimper that gutted him.

Gathering her close, he curled around her as they each shuddered and surrendered to the feel of him seated inside to the hilt.

Their breaths synchronized, as the tight clutch of her molded around him. Eventually the pulsing muscles milked at his cock, seeming to pull him even deeper, like a fist of wet silk.

He could come like this. Deep inside of her. Without moving anything.

The Fauve that he was desired just that. He could simply bathe her womb in his seed, thinking it could take root.

How could it not when he was so deliciously deep?

Never.An insidious inner voice reminded him. You promised tonever.

A hasty breath created a movement where they were joined. And the noise she made stirred him.

A sigh of curious delight.

Encouraged, he rolled his hips slightly and she responded each time with tiny sounds in her throat. Little mewls, like that a kitten would make.

His kitten.

Mon chaton.

Then she said the most dangerous words one could utter to a man like him.

“More. I want more.”

It was all he needed.

He gave it to her, in long, deliberate—if careful—thrusts. He fed her his length once. And again. And again. Wedging himself impossibly deeper each time.

Her arms clutched at him, her lush mouth opening in a silent quest for a kiss, but he denied her.

He had to watch, to see the play of emotion run across her face. To observe what he wrought inside of her. Theastonishment and the acceptance. The heat and the hunger. The shuddering surrender.

Raphael knew the moment she’d become a prisoner to her pleasure. It pulled her away from him. Unfocused her eyes and brought her entire concentration inward. He knew what his languorous strokes built, that the angle of their hips created friction not only inside but against the engorged knot of sensation that was the button to every woman’s desire.

Sweat bloomed between them, creating a damp, erotic slide of flesh against flesh. It was as if they had fused into one, that he’d become buried so deep inside her body, that he might have reason to hope to lodge himself in her heart, as well.

Their limbs tangled in untidy knots, mirroring his emotions.

Perhaps if he entwined them so thoroughly, there would be no unraveling them.

This.

This was the danger of addiction.

When something took you away from yourself. When it became as essential as air or water. Oblivion merged into sensation and colors fused into high-relief and time lost all meaning. Perhaps the future was a memory. Or the past was a lie.

Or there was only this.

This moment. This joy. This act. This emotion.

This woman.

He’d not expected her to come again. Not her first time.