She dragged his mouth to hers once more, kissing him slow and deep and thorough.

And when she released him, he said, “I desire it again.”

Her eyes went wide and her lips curved into a little O. He moved, this time spreading her thighs apart with his shoulders and lifting her to his mouth with one arm, turning her into his banquet. Loving her with his hands and mouth until she came apart in his arms, his name first a whisper and then a scream on her lips.

And when she’d collapsed once more in a heap on the bed, he pressed soft kisses to her stomach and whispered, “You, Lily. It will always be you. Everything. Always. You,” until her breathing returned to normal and he growled, “Again,” before pressing his mouth to the center of her, where she glistened, warm and pink and sated.

“Alec,” she sighed, barely able to find the words. “Please. Love. What of you?”

As though there were anything in the word that would give him more pleasure than the taste of her on his lips and the sound of her in his ears and the feel of her in his hands.

One last time.

“Once more,” he said. “Once more.” And he made love to her with slow, slick strokes, gentle and slow, honoring her. Worshipping her. Pleasuring her until she found her rhythm once more, moving in time to his strokes, to her own desire. Until she came again, hard and long and magnificent, her hands in his hair and his name on her lips.

This.

This was what he would think of when he was old.

He had destroyed her with pleasure.

She was in pieces on the bed, without ability to move or even think, when he came up to lie beside her, to hold her as she trembled, weak from his hands and mouth and words. She turned into him, his large, warm arms coming around her.

“You betrayed me,” she said to his broad chest, rubbing her cheek across the crisp hair there, unable to summon the energy to say it with more conviction. “We were to be with each other.”

“And we were.”

She shook her head. “You did not take your pleasure.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “That was the most pleasurable experience of my life, love. Sleep.” The words rumbled beneath her ear.

As though she could sleep with him there, with the hard length of him against her thigh like a promise. She was not going to sleep. Not until he had received his pleasure as openly and as thoroughly as she had.

Not until she had given it to him.

“No,” she whispered, sending her hand over the planes of his chest, enjoying the way the muscles of his torso tightened beneath her touch, and he hissed his desire. “I’ve other plans.”

“Lily,” he spoke her name in the flickering candlelight, his hand coming to hers, halting it on its path, just as her fingers found the place where soft hair grew thicker. “You don’t have to . . .”

She turned her face into the warmth of him, pressing a soft kiss to the skin on his chest. And another. And another, until his breath was coming harsher and she could feel the deep pulse of his heart beneath her lips. Only then did she slide her tongue out in a little circle, honoring him, adoring the way he drew tight like a bowstring at the touch.

She moved, her lips sliding down his body, over his torso, his free hand coming to her hair as he spoke her name low and dark and wonderful. She imagined he intended to stop her, but then she was licking over the planes of his stomach, breathing him in, and he was trembling at the touch, and—thank Heaven—forgot to stop her.

Not even when she moved her hand, sliding his away, clearing a path to the place she desperately wanted to reach. She leaned back, reveling in the size and strength of him—glorying in the fact that he was hers in that moment, as her mouth watered and her fingers itched to claim him.

And then ran her lips up the hard, straining length of him, breathing his name as he arched off the bed with a wicked curse, and she gloried in the power he had given her. The strength. The pride that this man was not only hers, but that she was about to give him all he desired.

She licked over the tip of him, the salt and sweet of him tempting her even as he groaned her name, his hands coming to her, fingers sliding into her hair—not pulling to or pushing away, but cradling her with near-unbearable gentleness.

“Once more,” she whispered his words back to him, and the groan deepened, his fingers flexing against her as she parted her lips and took him slow and deep, adoring the feel of him. The steel of him. The desire that rioted through him.

And through her, as well, as he gasped his pleasure in a wicked, tempting echo of what she had experienced only minutes earlier.

She’d never in her life wanted anything more than Alec’s pleasure, and that desire drove her further, licking and sucking and drawing him as deep as she could, playing with speed and sensation, finding the places that seemed to drive him wild and trying—desperately—to send him over the edge.

His hands tightened in her hair. “I can’t . . . Lily . . . Please . . . If you don’t . . . I won’t be able to . . .” The words were a growl, deep and fierce. “Lily.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered to the pulsing, beautiful head of him. “I don’t want you to hold back. I want you to give it to me. All of it. Let me revel in you.”

He whispered her name, dark and sinful in the little room, and Lily thrummed with power. With passion. With her own desire as she sucked deeper, licked, found a rhythm that brought them both to the edge, a string of Gaelic on his lips as he gave himself up to her, to passion, and finally, finally, with her name on his lips, to release.

She stayed with him, adoring him as he basked in his pleasure before ultimately lifting her to lay with him, pulling her into his arms, running his hands over her naked skin, whispering long strings of his lovely, lyric language against her hair, interspersing the words with soft, lingering kisses until she shivered and he pulled a blanket over them both.

“That was—”

The words were barely there—a rumble beneath her ear as much as anything else—trailing off, his thought incomplete. She smiled, kissing his chest. “I agree.”

“Lily,” he whispered, those massive hands still moving, cloaking her in warmth and love and security. “My Lily.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Yours.”

His hands stilled at the word, just barely, just enough for her to shift at the change, and he began anew, long, languid glides that tempted her with comfort she had never before experienced.