His sheets were gold that night. Gold satin.
They stood beside the beautiful carved bed with the finials shaped like crowns, the gold sheets turned back, lustrous and inviting in the soft low light. He kissed her for the longest time, an endless, tender, ever-deepening kiss.
As he kissed her, he touched her, caressing her bare shoulders, her back, the curve of her waist and lower. When he stroked his hands over her hips, she moaned a little, sharply aware of her nakedness beneath the long skirt of her dress.
Really, a woman’s panties didn’t cover all that much to make her feel so bare without them. But she did feel bare under her gown. Bare and revealed, somehow, though no one could see.
He lifted his mouth from hers. “Luce.”
“Um?”
“Take off your dress.”
“Yes.” She turned around and showed him her back. He pulled her zipper down. The dress fell away. She caught it, stepped out of it, tossed it toward the nearest chair.
“No panties,” he said approvingly.
She turned to face him. “I’m very obedient. When I want to be.”
His eyes burned into hers. “The rest. Take it off.”
So she did. Everything. There wasn’t that much. Her strapless bra. Her peep-toe shoes. Her vintage earrings and antique bracelet.
He took the jewelry from her, set it on the table by the bed. And then, still fully clothed except for the jacket he’d taken off when they first entered the apartment, he started touching her again. He bent and kissed her breasts as his hands went roaming.
Time fell away and her knees went all wobbly. But Dami didn’t let her fall. He scooped her up against his broad chest and then sat on the edge of the bed with her in his lap.
His skilled, knowing hands moved over her. She looked down at his long fingers against the pale flesh of her belly. Those fingers stroked lower.
And lower. He parted her. She didn’t have to be told. She eased her thighs apart.
“Wider,” he whispered, the word hot and a little bit rough. He scraped the side of her throat with his teeth.
She moaned. And she obeyed. It was only what she wanted after all. His fingers found her, delving in, moving in a rhythm her body already knew and welcomed.
“Dami,” she cried. “Yes...more...” She tipped her head back and gave him her mouth for a slow, wet, hungry kiss.
He whispered things, naughty things. Each whisper took her higher, closer to the sky, to the darkness and the wonder.
To that moment when it all burst wide open into a midnight universe scattered with a million exploding stars.
It happened so quickly: her body contracting, pulsing, a fast, hard, beautiful climax. And then he was lifting her, laying her down across the gold sheets, pushing her thighs wide again as he knelt on the rug by the bed.
She felt his breath first, there, at the core of her. Then the skilled, tender stroking of his tongue.
And then, just like that, she was going over again, falling from one peak into the next one. Rising, rising and shattering again, stronger, deeper, better than the first time, as she clutched his dark head and moaned how she wanted him, how right it was, how perfect, exactly what she’d been dreaming of.
When he pulled away and stood over her, she didn’t have the strength to hold him. She let out a little moan of satisfaction, a sigh of pleasured fulfillment. Still crosswise on the bed, her legs limp and dangling over the side, she closed her eyes and drifted on a sea of delicious afterglow.
Until he touched her again, the lightest brush of a touch, one finger tracking down from her hip bone to her thigh, to her knee, along her shin....
“Dami?” She opened her eyes to find him naked and so very fine, all broad, hard, muscled manliness, kneeling on the rug again. “Dami...” She reached for him.
He rose and leaned over her, bending close and kissing her, a quick, hard kiss. And then he lifted her, rearranging her so that she was full-length on the bed with her head on the pillows. He stretched out beside her. She buried her face against his chest, breathed in his scent of sea foam and musk and man.
And the wonder began all over again. He kissed her—arousing, hungry, lingering kisses. First on her lips and then along her throat, across her chest, her breasts, her belly. He opened his mouth on her, using his tongue and, so carefully and deliberately, his strong white teeth.
By then she was wild for him, tossing her head on the pillows, begging him, “Please, Dami, please,” as she clutched him with her hungry hands, pulling at him, yearning for the moment when she would have him within her.
He took his time about that. He drove her up to the brink again with his hands and his hot mouth—and then, just when she knew she was going over a third time that night without him inside her, he lifted up and eased his hard, hair-rough thigh between her two soft ones.
She opened her eyes and he was above her, gazing down at her, his eyes so dark, edged in deepest green.
He put one hand on either of her thighs and pushed them wide. She knew he could see everything. And that only made her hotter, made her want him more.
“Dami.” She was breathless. So hungry. Needing. Wanting. Everything. All of him, now. “Please...”
“Now, Luce?”
She looked down between them and saw that he was more than ready for her. And also that somehow he had already put on the protection she’d totally forgotten they were going to need.
“Luce.” He growled her name.
And she looked in his face again. “Um. I...”
“Now?” Softly that time. Patiently. Tenderly, too.
“Um, yes. Yes. Please. Now....”
He braced his forearms to either side of her, cradling her head between his two hands. “Look at me.”
She nodded, eager. A little bit scared, too, thinking again of the size of him.
Would there be pain? How much?
“Stay with me.” His eyes were on her. She met them, held them.
And then she felt him, nudging her where she was so wet and soft and sensitive now. The tip slid in. Wonderful. Perfect.
“More,” she said on a low moan.
He gave her exactly what she asked for, sliding in by slow degrees.
It was good. It was heaven.
And then it was too much. And then it was hurting. She gasped, “Oh! I... Wait.”
“Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.” He lowered his head, pressed his forehead to hers. “We’ll wait....”
They lay there half joined, still. Waiting. Her breath came swift and hungry; her body felt stretched, aching.
And then the ache was changing, easing into something electric and wonderful again.
She lifted her head and kissed his mouth, whispering, “Yes. Now,” against his parted lips.
“More?” It came out on a low groan.
She nodded. “More...”
And he went deeper—until she gasped again.
Instantly, he went still for her. There was only the sound of their breathing, the burning down low that once again eased and changed to a thrilling fullness.
She said it again. “More...”
He