out of me in a deep and guttural sound I barely recognized I was capable of making. Every slow swipe of his tongue had my body chasing his mouth, arching my hips toward him. My hands came to his hair, grabbing. His tongue kept coming, repeatedly, maddeningly slow, like he knew I was close, but winding and winding until I couldn’t breathe. “Please.” This may have started with him begging me to be with him, but I was the one begging now.
Especially when suddenly he paused.
I looked down, blinking, and watched him suck two of his fingers into his mouth and then slip them just inside me. “Oh, shit.” My head dropped back. “Xavier. Please.”
“Comme ça?” He slid them in farther and pressed upward, and his hot mouth closed over me again.
I whimpered and arched, fire licking and flaring through my body with increasing speed, a hungry ache growing stronger.
“Oui,” he muttered against me.
The ache grew, dark, fierce, and aching, from deeper and deeper within me. I wanted this man, his body, his heart, his passion, his fears, his hurts, his temper, his frustrations. I would take it all.
“I need you inside me,” I managed, using my grip in his hair to lift his head. “Please, I need you. I’m so close. And I want, I need you with me. Don’t let me fall alone.”
He didn’t argue. He stood and undid his jean and pulled them and his underwear off. His erection bobbed stiff and huge and then he was leaning over me and crawling up my body. Hooking under my arms, he hauled me farther up the bed, and without stopping, he was suddenly over me and entering me in a long, slow, and deep thrust.
A sound ripped from his chest, joining mine, and his head flew back, exposing his throat. “Joséphine.”
I slipped my hands up his hard arms and over his shoulders and wrapped around his neck.
His eyes blinked open, and he focused on me as if through a haze.
“I’m here,” I whispered, my hand curving on his cheek. “Make love to me.”
“Always,” he said and withdrew agonizingly slowly before sliding back in. The pressure and fullness of him had me gasping. He did it again, his eyes having trouble focusing. “I love you, Josephine.” His forehead creased, sweat beading. He thrust into me again, slower, harder. And dragged out. “I love you so much. My heart began beating again from the moment I met you. Even before you knew. But this will kill me, I know it.”
My eyes burned with tears, and I stroked my thumb down toward his lips, brushing across them. “No. No it won’t. I won’t hurt you.”
“Love me, Josephine. Please.” He thrust and withdrew and thrust again. “This is me begging. Love me.” He shifted his weight to one arm and used the other to slip down my side and bring my leg up, pressing me even farther open.
I groaned. “I do. I do love you.” In seconds I was back at the edge. My muscles strained tight, my breath caught in my chest and prickles racing across my skin. “God, Xavier. You feel so good.”
He picked up speed, his arm trembling, his jaw tensed tight, his eyes flashing. Words in French I didn’t understand fell fast and desperate from his lips.
Then his body was on mine, his hips moving, his mouth devouring my lips, my chest. Somehow in my arching up, he managed to suck a nipple hard into his mouth as his pubic bone ground into me.
That was it. I snapped and soared.
His hand was across my mouth, and I screamed into it, my body convulsing and dissolving.
His hips slammed into me, taking the movement of my hips bucking involuntarily and using it to his advantage. It was brutal, almost violent. Then he froze, buried so deep, I was pinned, immobile, and probably bruised but quaking with the beauty of it. I blinked my eyes open. The hand across my mouth fell away to support him and leaving me gasping. I watched as the agony of his ecstasy ripped across his face, his head thrown back, teeth bared and tendons in his neck straining as he poured himself into me. I’d never seen anything so arousing or more beautiful. This man was mine. Mine to keep and hold and love and protect. I’d never hurt him or allow anyone to either. I’d protect his heart no matter what. Forever.
Temples wet with sweat or tears, and heart thundering, my fingers soothed up