Immediately she threw her head back, grinding down, rising and sinking on him. She didn’t want that to end, either. She wanted to live there with him, sharing the same skin, the pleasure spilling through her like a diamond comet streaming across the night sky. Pure and perfect.

You’re so beautiful you make me cry. She whispered the truth into his mind. So intimate. She knew he saw her. Every sin. Every fantasy. Everything she was. She wanted him to know because he’d given her so much. He’d believed in her when others might have thrown her out for carrying the child of a Malinov. He had made that impossible. He had tied himself irrevocably to her, when she claimed to be the lifemate of a vampire. I’m so ashamed I didn’t know the truth. I just couldn’t believe someone like you would ever be for someone like me.

It would still take her time to believe it. She felt vulnerable and terrified at the same time. She was given a miracle. She didn’t get those. People like her were lucky to get through life with food in their bellies and a roof over their heads. She had Dragomir now, but she felt that at any moment he could be ripped away from her.

I’m not the beautiful one, Emeline. You are. I look at you and can barely breathe. He moved then, tipping her back on the couch so that she lay on the cushions, and he was over her, her legs on either side of his hips, spread wide for him. He was exquisitely gentle as he moved in her, going deep, over and over, settling them both back to a slower burn.

I need more. She felt helpless under his weight. She ran her palms down his back to his buttocks, digging her fingers in to try to force him to go faster and harder. She slid her legs around him, hooking her ankles, taking him even deeper.

He smiled down at her. Slow is good. You’ll like this.

She was so close. That force gathering in her. So tight. The tension coiled and coiled until she wanted to scream and claw at him for more. Still, looking up at him, at his face, so scarred, so beautiful, so hers. She hadn’t known she was capable of so much feeling. The strength of her emotions shook her. Scared her. No, terrified her.

Emeline had always relied on herself. She didn’t trust others easily. In her life, there had been Blaze and her father. No one else. Now, her world had narrowed to this one man. She barely knew him…

His mouth brushed kisses over her eyes. Trailed more kisses along her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth. His tongue traced her lower lip, teased at the seam, and when she parted her lips for him, he kissed her again. Over and over.

You know me, Emeline. You know me better than any woman can know a man. I give you everything. I trust when you look into my mind, that you will see the good with the bad.

He kept kissing her until she couldn’t think. Fire burned through her. His body was still in hers. He just lay over her, his hips cradled by hers, his mouth wreaking havoc with her senses, his cock a steel piston, stationary, stretching her tight muscles until she felt every breath, every beat of his heart right through his shaft.

That look doesn’t belong on your face. You have no need to fear, Emeline. You’re in good hands.

As he spoke so intimately in her mind, his hips slowly pulled back. She gasped and caught at him, trying to keep him close. He surged forward, filling her, taking her breath, blurring the edges of her mind. He knelt up slowly, his cock shifting inside of her, so that her muscles clamped down hard around him. The friction was incredible, taking away her ability to think clearly. She could only feel. Only need more. He was right, her body was in good hands. It wasn’t her body taken over by his that alarmed her. She could give him her body, and would, as many times as he wanted her. The pleasure was too intense, unlike anything she could have imagined. It was her heart in jeopardy.

Your heart is just fine, Emeline. I am its keeper. I have given you mine and trust you to take the utmost care of it. Do you think I could do less for the woman who matters more to me than life itself?

There it was. She could see into his mind, read him as easily, in that moment, as she might a book. He meant what he said. Her heart was safe. Now she just had to convince herself she was worthy of him – and that was going to be the difficult part when it had been drilled into her since childhood that she was worthless.

Feel, Emeline, don’t think.

His hips moved again and a streak of fire raced through her body, leaving her gasping. It was impossible to think when he moved, and she gave herself up to the moment, letting him sweep her into another realm.

Fire burned. Flames spread through her veins, rushing to every part of her body. He caught her hips in a firm grasp and began to move faster, harder. Just what she craved. Needed. Hungered for. That terrible coil inside her gathered tighter and tighter. His face was a mask of sensual carnality.

The tension in her built and built until she was thrashing under him, her hips rising to meet his every thrust. Her lungs burned for air. Every cell in her body was alive and focused on him, on the way their bodies came together, and that coiling tension terrified her. It had to stop.

Emeline was beautiful. Utterly beautiful. Dragomir stared down into her eyes. Dazed. Long lashes fluttering, her breasts jolting, stomach muscles rippling with every hard thrust of his cock. That raw sensuality that colored her features a soft rose. Her lips a dark red. He breathed out and watched her lungs take in that breath. That small action sent more heat flashing through him. His cock swelled. Lightning struck as her eyes dilated, sizzling through his body, a fiery whip of shocking pleasure.

Her lips parted on his name and there was another strike. Every move of her hips, the way her muscles rippled around his shaft, gripping hard with scorching heat, the friction as they came together. Her breath came in ragged pants; there was panic in the beauty of her gaze. She was skating so close to the edge but wasn’t going over, not surrendering to him, to their passion, to the inevitable loss of control.

Every move of her body produced more lightning strikes until there was no holding back. Now, sívamet. Let go and give yourself to me. Surrender, Emeline. I will never let you fall without catching you.

Her helpless gaze clung to his as he shifted his angle and rode along that sweet spot, hard, heavy strokes. Her eyes widened. She expelled her breath and he breathed in his name. Soft. Reverent. So beautiful, that whispered name. Dragomir. On her breath. In his lungs. Binding them together. All the threads between them, soul to soul, mind to mind, body to body and now breath to breath.

The music of her ragged breaths rose, a crescendo. Her body clamped down like a vise on his, surrounding him with scorching fire. So tight it was strangling him. His own breath hissed out of his lungs, a harsh accompaniment to the melody of hers. He felt a dark force gathering in him, the pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. Gathering, moving, rushing. A hot, explosive release. All the while her tight muscles clamped down, gripped and stroked. It was a kind of sweet but brutal harmony, dark and forbidden, perfect and terrible. He never wanted it to end.

Emeline clutched at Dragomir’s arms, those hard, defined muscles that seemed to be everywhere. His body didn’t have an ounce of fat. She was a mess and he was… perfect. Everything he did or said was perfection. She’d just jumped him. She’d been so out of control. She hadn’t been able to stop touching him. Stop making demands. She’d all but forced him…

Dragomir burst out laughing. He blanketed her body with his, letting her take his weight as he framed her face with both hands. He was heavy, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath, but she didn’t care. She loved him lying over top of her. She couldn’t help her reaction. His hands, holding her face with such exquisite gentleness, allowed her to look up, to meet his gaze when she really wanted to hide from sheer embarrassment.

He was beautiful. That face. All male. All perfection. She was lost without him. She knew that. She had no idea what she could bring him in return for giving her him, for his making her his choice, but she was determined to find a way to even their relationship.

“Forced me? I’m still in your mind, sívamet. You can’t think things like that with a straight face. I want you every moment of the night, or day. There is no forcing me. I will have to remember there are certain rules in place in society or I would be pushing you up against the trees outside, the front verandah, the play yard. Wherever we were walking together.”