Page 41 of Tusk Love

So she arched up, hooking one leg over his waist, and the tip of him began to sink in—

Oskar let out an undignified yelp, canting his hips away from hers, one hand pressing into her belly to hold her still. “Slowly,Gwen,” he said through gritted teeth. “Nice and easy. It’s your first time.”

Guinevere wasn’t so sure that she liked the sound of that. There was so much of the world that she had yet to discover. So much yet to see. And so little time. She began to protest, but Oskar shut her up with another fierce kiss. She returned it, happily looping her arms around his neck, relaxing, giving him free rein to position all the pertinent bits down there if it wassoimportant…

And then he was wrenching his mouth from hers and gripping her shoulder almost hard enough to bruise, pushingforwardandinside,and it felt odd, it truly did, far bigger than fingers, opening her up. His dark brows knitting together in utmost concentration, he reached down and thumbed at her pearl, his tongue flicking out to lave her nipple at the same time. She keened, her inner walls releasing another wave of wet, admitting more of him inside her. There was a twinge of pain that made her tense, and he went statue-still at once, his topaz eyes searching her face.

“I’m all right,” she assured him. “You may, ah,proceed.”

He didn’t look like he believed her, but he gave a shallow, experimental thrust. It felt sort of nice. Another thrust and her mouth fell open, her eyelids fluttering. He buried his face in the side of her neck as he rocked into her. “Shit,” he groaned. “You feel amazing.Gods.”

His praise went down like finest ambrosia. Encouraged, she mimicked the rolling motions of his hips with her own, and suddenly he was so deep inside her that she all but arched off the mattress, stretched and filled beyond what she had thought possible. Whatever pain she might have felt, though, was quickly washed away when Oskar gathered her close, raining sloppy kisses all over her face and throat. Hisnext thrust was the most forceful one yet, knocking a sound that was nearly a sob out of her lungs.

“Oskar,” she said plaintively, “I’m so full, please, you’re so—it’s so much—”

He froze again, twitching inside her. “I’ll stop,” he gritted out, as breathless as she felt. His expression was utterly wrecked, strands of dark hair falling across his flushed, sweat-dampened face. “Let me just—”

He withdrew, so carefully that it almost broke her heart. Wildfire slipped into the fractures, and she dug blunt nails into his shoulders, keeping him halfway in. Keeping him there, with her.

“I didn’t say that it wastoomuch,” Guinevere rasped. “I didn’t say to stop.”

Oskar’s topaz eyes blazed with relief. He pressed his forehead to hers, muttering something that sounded like both a prayer and a curse against her cheek.

Then he slammed back in.

Guinevere saw stars. She truly did. They streaked across her vision and fell into the flames that sang inside her. She gave herself over to the oldest song in the universe, to a rhythm that she’d been made for, to a place where no mercenaries or sinister presences or mysterious trunks existed. A place that was just her and Oskar. The bed creaked and the sheets twisted and their lips caught as they moved together, urging each other higher.

A line was crossed at some point, some boundary hurtled over, and all of his immaculate self-control snapped. He rutted into her mindlessly, until she was crying out from pleasure and raking her nails down his back, both of them lost in delirium. “Good girl,” he ground out, slick with sweat, pupils blown wide, a young god above her, his broad shoulders the roof of her world. “Taking me so well in that tight little—”

“Don’t say things like that.” Some lingering shred of primness made her interrupt in between pants. “It’s really not”—he swirled his hips against hers, the tip of him hitting a spot inside her that set off sparks—“oh,” she moaned, and then she came, spasming around histhick length. She could swear that his eyes all but rolled into the back of his head when he felt her clamp down. Tendrils of warm, radiant bliss spread through her until she was boneless, until she lay beneath him, sated and pliant, murmuring nonsensical words of encouragement while he drove into her and followed her down into delirium.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Oskar

Spilling inside Guinevere was a religious experience. Not to say that every moment prior had been anything short of sacred.

He collapsed on top ofher, his ears ringing. She prodded him in the ribs. “Oskar, you’re heavy.”

“Five minutes.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Just let me catch my breath.”

She huffed but reached up to card her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes, savoring each soothing caress.

“That was rather wonderful, wasn’t it?” Her pleased voice drifted in as though from far away, slipping comfortably through the haze of his afterglow. “They say it usually hurts the first time, and therewasa bit of discomfort, but now I can confidently state that if one’s partner is as gentle and respectful as you were—”

“Mmm.” Being gentle and respectful had damn near killed him. But he was happy that she was happy.

“You weren’t very respectful toward the end, though,” Guinevere remarked. “I’ve no issue with it, I don’t think, but it’ll take me a while to get used to that kind of love-talk. You may try it again in the future.”

He dozed off to the dulcet singsong of her chatter, his face nestled in the valley between her breasts. When he woke up, the fire was burning lower in its hearth and the sky beyond the lone window was pitch-black.

Guinevere regarded him with violet eyes at half-mast, a smile lurking at the corners of her lips. “Ihaveheard that men tend to fall asleep right after.”

“Sorry.” Oskar rolled over but took her with him, so that she was now the one pillowed onhischest. “I guess I’m a typical man in this regard.”

“Nothing about you is typical,” she told him softly, and his heart might have skipped a beat right then and there, but he’d be damned if he would admit it. The room smelled like sex, and her silver hair was delectably rumpled, falling in waves over satiny brown skin that glowed in the firelight. Ah, but he could get used to this.

They ate their sandwiches in bed, not bothering to put clothes back on. She licked a stray drop of mustard off his chin with an impish giggle, and he forgot himself long enough to smile at her. Eventually he poked his head out the door and asked a passing chambermaid to draw a hot bath, and he and Guinevere spent an idyllic—if comical—thirty minutes squeezed into the too-small slipper tub, washing each other.

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