Then— ‘Cherie …’
There was a thread of strain in his voice that roused her from the sweet pleasure that was so perfectly balanced between ful-filment and further desire. She gave a slow smile, and lifted her mouth to brush his lightly. Then, with the same movement, she lifted her hips fractionally.
It was all it took. He surged within her, and as he did so, his internal caress of that most sensitive place of all fused into a single, absolute point of bliss.
She gasped aloud, and he surged again, then again. Her throat arched, and his eyes locked with hers. With absolute surety of stroke he built a pyramid of bliss within her, the soft gasping in her throat becoming almost a cry of anguish, anguish—so sweet that it was indistinguishable from the most intense pleasure.
He gave one final surge, and the incredible feeling blazed out through her body, torching it. She cried out, a sob of bliss, her eyes shutting so tightly there was nothing in the entire universe except this.
Her hands clutched him desperately, her heels digging into the bedclothes and her hips straining upwards against him to intensify the sensation that was sheeting through her. And then a new sensation impacted on her—her internal muscles were pulsing, convulsing, drawing him further, further into her, and then suddenly she felt him tense every muscle and sinew in his body, his body taut against her like an arrow in soaring flight.
He cried out, the strong muscles of his chest ridged, the cords of his throat rigid. For one timeless moment they held each other in the completion of their union, and then she could feel her body collapse in exhaustion. He closed down on her, his body warm and damp with a sheen of sweat that she realised in wonder was dewing her skin, as well. She was panting, her breath coming with unsteady inhalations against the exhausted, heavy weight of his body which she was cradling fast against her.
Wonder filled her, and an exaultation she had never known before. She felt her mouth part in a rapturous smile.
She speared her fingers into his hair—hair that was damp at the nape, tousled by her touch.
How long she lay like that, she was not sure. She was sure only that she wanted now for nothing, and that here, in this moment, was all she was and all she needed. Her eyes were closed, and she lay supine, her limbs exhausted but replete, his weight against her, his cheek against hers.
She felt him move. Softly, she felt her closed eyelids kissed.
‘Ma belle,’ he said.
Then he started to withdraw his weight—and more than his weight.
‘Do not move. I will be but a moment,’ he assured her.
Yet even that brief time apart from him left her feeling cold, abandoned, so that when he returned to her she held out her arms to him, wrapped him to her and clung to him.
‘Xavier,’ she breathed into his skin, inhaling the scent of him. Then, as her eyelids closed again, she felt drowsiness sweep over her.
Dimly, she felt the covers being drawn over her. Dimly she heard him murmur something. Dimly she registered that the lights had been extinguished, and then, still cradled against him, held in the strong circle of his arms, she went to sleep.
For a while longer Xavier lay, looking up into the darkness overhead. What had happened? He had known he had wanted Lissa—that her beauty had struck him like a coup de foudre that night at the hotel, overpowering all his logic and reason and sense, stimulating in him a desire that had swept him away. He had been known that his thwarted desire for her had been a torment, and that he had continued to want her with an intensity that had been sharpened to unbearableness by the knowledge that she was beyond his reach, reserved for Armand, his own brother. And he had known, ever since that out-of-the-blue message had sent him chasing from Paris to London to claim her, that possessing her finally, as he now had, would be a release and a satiation all the sweeter because he had not thought to have it.
But what had just happened had gone beyond that.
Why? How?
He asked the questions, but his rational mind could find no answer. No reason. He was in unknown territory, that was all he knew. A place he had not been before. He tried to put it into words. As his mind searched, as he stared up into the darkness, he could feel the soft warmth of her body curled against him.
The reality of her presence in his arms, his bed, swept over him. What did anything matter compared with that? It was all that was important—all he would allow himself.
He shifted his limbs to ease them a moment. As he did, the weight of her soft, warm body shifted, too, bearing down on him more. He heard her murmur in her sleep, her dream. She lay so peacefully in his arms. So naturally.
She felt good to hold. Good to lie with.
Good to fall asleep beside.
He felt his focus dissolve, the drowsiness of post-coital satiation wash up over him. His eyes started to feel heavy and close, his breathing slowed. Instinctively for one second his arms tightened around her, checking she was still there. He let his body relax, his mind, too.
He slept in her embrace, embracing her.
It felt very good.
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