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Ariana did as he asked, gliding her fingers over his smooth, throbbing shaft, learning his size, his incredible heat. His chest heaved with the exertion of restraint, his eyes burned cobalt blue. But he made no attempt to move, submitting totally to her innocent exploration.
Ariana stroked her fingers lightly along his length, gliding up to the satin tip. She looked down in stunned wonder when her fingers grew damp, repeating the caress as if to verify his reaction.
“I … can’t… hold … back …” he got out through clenched teeth. “Your hands …” He shook his head in disbelief.
“I don’t want you to hold back,” she answered, transfixed by the miracle of life he contained. “I didn’t.”
That did it.
With a growl of severed control, Trenton caught her in his arms and toppled them both to the bed, pressing her thighs apart even as he shook his head in denial. “It’s … too … soon. Your body …”
“Wants yours,” she confessed breathlessly.
“You’re sore …” He crowded slowly into her, dragging air into his lungs with great, shaky gulps.
“Yes,” she agreed, wincing a bit, yet opening herself fully, eagerly, for his possession. “But I don’t care.”
“God …” he choked out, burying himself inside her hot, tight wetness.
Ariana wrapped her arms around his neck, lifting her legs to hug his flanks as he had taught her. There was some pain, yes, but it was eclipsed by an almost unbearable surge of passion that seized her, obliterated all else from her mind.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” Trenton grated, easing himself from her velvet heat, only to push deeper, farther inside her. Part apology, part command, his words swirled through her mind, impalpably lulling as a soft summer breeze. Entrenched in sensation, Ariana barely managed to nod, silently giving Trenton his answer.
This time was stunningly brief, unchecked and unimaginable. Trenton waited only until he felt his wife dissolve around him in rhythmic spasms of completion, her cries echoing inside his head, before he lunged forward, pouring himself into her in a great pulsing release.
Still trembling with reaction, Ariana knew the moment Trenton’s anger returned, a viable entity that crept between their tightly joined bodies. His hands balled into fists, digging into the damp sheets, and he swallowed audibly, fighting some inner demon, struggling to bring himself under control. In one taut, fluid motion, he rolled away from her, lying rigidly on the far side of the bed.
The narrow space dividing their bodies was as vast as an unbridgeable chasm. Ariana closed her eyes, tears burning behind them. This was not what she’d visualized for the aftermath of their passion. This was … beyond bearing.
She turned onto her side, her back to her husband, seized by a bleakness that was worse than any she’d endured in the past. Until today she’d been a child: alone, perhaps, and insignificant. But tonight she’d shared herself wholly with this stormy, enigmatic man who was now her husband, taken him into her bed and her body.
And, in the process, into her heart.
Had it meant nothing to him? Could he so easily relinquish that miraculous sense of completion, replace it with the frigid distance that now loomed between them?
Ariana felt the bed give as Trenton swung his legs to the floor, preparing to arise.
“Trenton?” Her voice was tentative, her eyes filled with bewildered questions.
Trenton paused, his breathing uneven, his hair and forehead slick with perspiration. He stared down at her, his mouth set in grim lines. “What?”
“You’re angry. Why?”
His expression softened at the uncluttered candor of the question, the baffled distress it contained. “I’m not angry, misty angel. At least not at you. Perhaps at myself.” Almost against his will, his self-deprecating gaze swept her fragile nakedness. “I should never have allowed this to happen. I lost control.”
Ariana knew he referred to far more than their physical union. For some reason, he was angry at himself for the intensity of his own response. And she suspected that his reason involved Vanessa.
An icy chill blanketed her heart. “You have no reason to be angry at yourself,” she countered, her tone wooden. Slowly, she raised up on one elbow. “You didn’t hurt me. … Nor did you force me.”
Trenton made a move toward her, then rapidly checked himself. Rigidly, he turned away and reached for his robe.
“Don’t.” The word was out before Ariana could call it back.
His head jerked around. “Pardon me?”
The flush on Ariana’s cheeks deepened, but she took the plunge nonetheless. “Please don’t leave.”
“It’s late, Ariana. I’m going to my room so you can sleep.”
