She wanted him, eyes open and seeing him. He could tell, this time it was real.

When her hand closed around his engorged phallus, a groan ripped from his throat.

“I saw you, you know,” she whispered, her eyes dilated and dark with passion. “In the Green Lady’s room. You were lying flat on your back.”

He stared at her in mute fascination, the muscles in his neck working furiously as he struggled to say something intelligible, anything, but only a husky purr came out as her hand tightened on him. So, she had watched him too? As he had spied on her every chance he got?

“You were lying there in your sleep like some Viking god, and that’s the first time I saw this.” She squeezed her hand gently for emphasis. He growled. Emboldened by his response, Adrienne pushed him back and scattered kisses across his sculpted chest. She ran her hungry tongue down over his abdomen, tasting each defined ripple in turn. She explored his powerful thighs and throbbing manhood, pausing to drop a tantalizing kiss on the velvety pink tip of the shaft a stallion would have envied.

“Did you find it passing … fair?” he croaked, “what you saw then, and see now?”

“Ummm …” She pretended to ponder his question, then licked a long, velvety stroke up his shaft from base to tip. “It’ll do in a pinch.”

He tossed his dark head back with a smile and roared. “A pinch … a pinch? I’ll show you …” His words trailed off as he pulled her roughly into his embrace. His mouth claimed hers and he rolled her onto her back.

Too late to pull back or worry about seed or children, far beyond rational thought of any kind, and adrift in a musky madness named Adrienne, the siren witch who owned him, he slid between her legs and positioned himself above her.

Just before he ceded to her beckoning heat, he said, “I have always loved you, lass.” Quietly and regally.

Tears shimmered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. He touched a glistening drop with his finger and marveled for a moment at how good it felt to have her accept him at last. Then, past waiting, he plunged into her. More tears misted her eyes at the sudden pain. Above her, barely in her, the Hawk clenched his jaw and froze. He stared down at her a speechless moment, stunned and awed.

“Please,” she urged. “Don’t stop now. Please, I want this.”

“Adrienne,” he breathed, his face dark. “Virgin,” he muttered dumbly. Ebony eyes held her gaze a breathless moment as his body lay rigid atop hers.

Then she felt an involuntary jerk rage through him and he pushed past the barrier, ripping into her with barbaric intensity. “Mine,” he swore roughly, his black eyes flashing. “Only mine. First… best… and last.” His beautiful head arched back, and she buried her hands deep in his hair. Again she felt that involuntary shudder that rocked him from head to toe.

There was momentary pain, but waves of heat quickly replaced it and the stars called her name, beckoning her to come fly. This time it was even more intense, calling from deep inside her where his hot shaft filled her all the way. An instinctive voice told her how to move, how to gain her pleasure and assure his in the same breath.

“Don’t… move,” he gritted against her ear, struggling to not spill the moment her sleek tightness encased him. He was beyond aroused, driven nearly insane by passion coupled with the knowledge that the smithy had never been where he was now. Not even the legendary Ever-hard, whoever he was. He was her first man, her first and only lover.

“I can’t help it… feels too … oh! … Delicious!” Her hands caressed his back, then her nails lightly scored the bronzed skin of his shoulders as he rocked her slowly beneath him.

“Stop moving, lass!”

“I thought I was supposed to move … too,” she mumbled, very nearly incoherently. “Please …”

“Be still. I would teach you slow first. Then the next time will be for the wild, rough love.”

“Wild, rough love now,” she demanded quite clearly, and it broke the tether that had been holding him so tautly in check. He raised her legs and drove into her, pushing the worry of her virgin sensitivity from what little of his mind remained. He came into her the way he’d wanted to from the very first moment he’d seen her—rough and claiming. Hard and demanding, with possession. Hungry and almost brutal, branding her his.

Adrienne spiraled beneath him, the tips of her fingers trailing against the stars as she fragmented into a thousand shimmering pinpoints. She felt him stiffen, then pulse heavily inside her. They exploded together in perfect rhythm, perfect harmony.