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“Me?” Her eyes searched, and he smiled gently.
“Yes, you. Despite your criminal harassment about the license,” he said, ignoring her outraged gasp, “you’ve told me more than once you don’t want a husband.”
She nodded. “I meant it, too. When I said it.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “And now?”
Her heart thundered, screaming out her answer. But her head was more cautious. If she admitted it, put it out there, there was no taking it back. He’d know how she felt. There’d be no denying it. No way to protect herself if he threw it back in her face.
But she’d never been a coward. She took a deep breath. “I want you,” she whispered.
His eyes flashed. “Be very sure. If we do this, it sticks. The marriage, me…it’s consummated, permanent, no matter what the courts say. You’ll be mine,” he said with a growl that had her toes curling. “And I don’t leave what’s mine.”
She gave him a slow smile. “Neither do I.”
He didn’t wait for her to say it again. He captured her lips with a primal growl that had her clinging to him with a desperation that should have frightened her. But it didn’t. It invigorated her. Strengthened her. This man, this mystifying, aggravating, devilishly handsome man wanted her. Claimed her. Just as she claimed him.
She should be nervous. She’d never done this before. Never really gotten close. But with his hands moving over her body, his lips drinking her in, the only thing she felt was a burning desire formore.
And he seemed more than happy to give it to her.
She tugged at her clothes. There were too many layers between them. She needed to feel his skin against her own. He seemed to know exactly what she needed, because he pulled away from her just long enough to strip her bare. And then he stood, thunderstruck, staring at her.
For a moment, that doubt creeped back in. All the cruel words that had been hurled at her over the years, the snide comments, even the well-meaning jokes. She was too tall, too big, not womanly enough, no man would want her. It all came rushing back. And she waited, her heart pounding, to see if he’d be the same.
His breath left him in a slow rush, and he stared at her with what looked like…admiration. Awe.
“Adam?” she asked, her voice quiet.
His eyes moved back to hers with a look of utter reverence. “You take my breath away.”
She swallowed against the hard lump in her throat. “Let me see you,” she said.
The slow, heated smile he gave her as he pulled off his boots and pants had parts of her tingling that she didn’t even know could tingle.
The first touch of his skin against her had her sucking in her breath. When his lips joined his hands, her soul damn near left her body. She had never imagined anything like this. Had never known anything could be like this.
She ran tentative hands over his body, exploring the hard angles and planes of him, reveling in the way he groaned beneath her touch until he captured her hands and pinned them above her head so he could return the favor. He left no part of her untouched. He worshipped every inch of her until she was writhing beneath him. When his fingers slipped inside her, testing her, stretching her, she came around them with a cry, her body trembling with the force of it.
He kissed her again as he moved over her, fitted himself against her core. She knew what to expect, though the stretching, burning pain still took her breath away. He held still, letting her become accustomed to him while his lips and hands kept up their onslaught until she was shuddering around him again, her body chasing what only he could give her.
He began to move, and she gasped, the uncomfortable stretching sensation melting into something more primal, desperate. She clung to him, their lips and tongues tangling together as his hand slipped between them and found that bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. She cried out, and he smiled against her lips.
“I got you, darlin’. I got you.”
Her hips lifted, trying to bring him closer, deeper. The building wave of electric bliss rumbled over her the way storm clouds passed over a mountain, touching everything in their wake, destroying and renewing all at once. Every stroke of his body inside hers changed another piece of her, rewrote the story she’d always thought was her destiny.
Now, there was something new in its place. Something deeper, infinitely more frightening perhaps. But something better, stronger. And irrevocably tied to him.
This time when she came, he was right there with her, their cries mingling, their limbs still tangled. They stayed that way, curled around each other, as their hearts finally slowed.
Adam kissed her temple, then her lips, his body still wrapped around hers.
For the first time in her life, she felt like she belonged to someone. She hadn’t realized how truly lonely she’d been until that moment. That despite the wonderful friends she had, there were limits to what she could share with them. Pieces of her that no one else saw thathedid. Pieces that no one else wanted to see. Buthehad.
And now he was hers. And she was his.
Chapter Twenty-Five
