“Cole,” she begged, desperately grasping for his hair. “Please.”
Another pleased groan caused her feminine muscles to clench against the sensual promise in the sound, and she surged against his mouth. He latched on to her then, his clever tongue flicking and laving, creating sensations of overwhelming delight.
She cried hoarse relief to the canopy as wave after wave of crippling ecstasy crashed over her. Her breath came in sobs and inarticulate words. It felt like bliss flowed from his tongue into her body, bowing it with paralyzing spasms until the fingers she’d used to hold him to her now clutched at him to pull away before she expired from ecstasy.
His glossy lips lifted with wicked masculine delight as he prowled up her body. He wiped his mouth before hunkering over her, his movements impeded slightly as he carefully situated his left arm.
Imogen reached for it, and didn’t miss the hesitation that overtook his posture.
“You don’t need this,” she soothed. “Not with me.” He didn’t look at her as she unbuckled it and set it aside, though a nearly inaudible gasp escaped him as she smoothed soft fingers over the rounded skin left with similar marks her thighs suffered after she removed her garters at the end of the day.
Then he was pulling her beneath him, his strength absolute, and his alacrity remarkable.
The blunt head of his cock prodded her, finding where desire and release made her wet and open. Locking his eyes with hers, a tenderness there she’d not read before, he rolled his hips forward, feeding her inch by agonizing inch until he filled her completely.
Her body. Her heart.
Retreating, he glided inside once again, aided by her slick desire, sinking a little deeper with each gentle thrust. At last he rested, fully seated, inside of her. Heated steel sheathed by silk and velvet.
The way he looked down at her broke Imogen’s heart. It was the astounded, incredulous expression she imagined the family of Lazarus felt once he awoke from the dead. An interruption of pure grief. A revelation of something eternally lost.
A little bit worship, a little bit disbelief. A vulnerable incomprehension of happiness.
“How could I not have known?” he moaned, dropping his head from his powerful shoulders to shower her with light, reverent kisses. “How could I not have recognized you by how badly I wanted you?”
Slowly, he withdrew and pressed forward once more, their breaths mirroring one another’s in perfect synchronization. “Wanted this.” He lifted and sank with dewy, pulsing friction. “Only you. No one else ever…” He trailed away, losing the ability to form words as he became intent upon the growing ferocity of his rhythm.
Imogen relished the sensation of his hard, male body moving against her. The strength in his corded arms. The weight of his chest against her breasts. The defined curl of his abdomen with each thrust. Even the way the coarse hair of his muscled legs tickled the inside of her thighs.
He thrust deeper, ever deeper, and she lifted to meet him, chasing a thrum of sensation coiled around her spine, the promise that if she could angle just …
There. In one, long, smooth stroke he stretched her wider than she thought possible, filled her to glorious effect, and she lost herself over a precipice from which there was no return. She distantly heard him growl her name, and she tried to answer him through pleasure that shattered her into a thousand pieces.
It wasn’t until they both melted into an entwined knot of contentment that Imogen returned to herself. Overcome with emotion, she held him to her, one hand stroking over the straining muscles of his back, the other threading through the silk of his hair.
He breathed out in a sigh so long and hollow she wondered if he expelled tension and emotion kept there for three long years.
They remained joined, clinging together, no longer separated by secrets or walls. They let their hearts beat next to one another as rare sunlight broke over the city.
Finally, he stirred, pulling away, his face a mask of sorrow and shame when he gazed down at her.
“Last night…”
She pressed soft fingers against his hard lips. “We don’t have to speak of the past.”
He kissed her hand, and then covered it with his own, moving it from his lips to enlace their fingers. “I was hurt,” he conceded. “Wounded that you weren’t searching for me. That I was right in front of you for so long, alone and lost in absolute darkness, and you didn’t reach for me … I don’t blame you, understand that, I just…”
“I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to reach for you,” she said. “But I was afraid. I didn’t know how to find you. If you were still there. If you’d even want me anymore.”
He tucked a tendril of her hair away from her face, true veneration smoothing the regret she read in him. “How could anyone not want the warmth of the sun on their face after so long in the shadows?” He became serious. “You are the only light I’ve known. And I must warn you, the sun cannot shine so bright for me now that I’ve lived in darkness. You were right about so many things, but especially that.” He held his empty wrist aloft, and she covered it with her hand. “That year changed me. Carved me away from myself, until I barely even recognize the face in the mirror. I have clawed my way back to some semblance of humanity, but I fear—I know—I cannot be the man I was when we met.”
Imogen lifted her head and nuzzled at him, melting at the sibilant sound he made deep in his throat. “Then I will love the man you have become. And if you live in the shadows, I’ll find you patches of sunlight, and we’ll venture into them together when you are able.”
He clutched her to him with a desperate strength that almost hurt. “I will love you for your light, if you can love me through the dark times. And that love will be like the clear night sky when the moon is full. Not like the sun … but beautiful and bright enough to find our way.”
A tear escaped Imogen’s eye and slid between them, though this one carried happiness instead of sorrow.
She realized with a little alarm that he hadn’t yet released her, that his body remained tense with an emotion other than pleasure.
“What’s wrong?” she inquired, soothing a hand over his bunched muscles.
“When I think of the things I said, of how I took you last night…” He buried his shame in her hair. “God, I was such a beast.”
“You are such a beast,” she teased, rolling her hips beneath him and smiling when he twitched within her. “To me, you have always been a wolf.” She blew across his neck, watching the skin burst into gooseflesh and a ripple chase down the muscles of his spine, making his cock gloriously full once more. “You know the one—from all the cautionary fairy tales—who devours the hapless innocent should she venture into his lair.” She wriggled beneath him feeling naughty and happy and ready to play after so much work and fear.
“That I am, my love,” he growled, using his teeth to nibble at her ear, her neck, and then closing his lips around the bite to soothe it with his tongue. Heat rushed between her legs, carrying moisture with it.
“I could sup on you for a lifetime and never get enough,” he growled.
“Then—” She struggled between hitched breaths as he began to move. “You must devour me one bite at a time.”