pleasure they shared was incredible, but nothing seemed enough to demonstrate the true lengths she’d go to for this man. Her man.
“First,” she whimpered, coiling her legs around his as his mouth descended her body in a wild exploration. “Please.”
Understanding her need, she hoped because his matched it, Turner stopped kissing her and rose to meet her eye. There it was. The love. The adoration. Everything he couldn’t say shone down on her in that heated, worshiping gaze.
In all those weeks they’d been intimate before Holden’s bounty, their rules had forbidden them from talking about what they felt and what they could be. Back then, Turner had been busy enough that he may not have had time to think about it or he’d been able to distract himself from what was going on between them. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been happening while he wasn’t watching.
“You’re doing it to me,” she said, stroking his face.
One side of his mouth lifted. “I love you, Candy-Cane.”
Being alone, in bed, surrounded by the intimacy of low light, beneath a canopy of glorious stars, the moment couldn’t get more perfect for declaring the truth they’d never really had the time to absorb.
“I love you too.”
The twitch of his lip was all the acknowledgement she needed. Hearing the words had to mean so much to him. When he’d arrived on the estate, Poppy had tried to build a wall, to do what she thought was best for him and his family. Despite his confidence, it must have hurt him that she didn’t immediately acknowledge the truth of her own feelings.
He’d once told her that he’d been alone for fifteen years. Even surrounded by his family, some part of him had always been isolated. That was the part he was sharing with her. For a man like Turner, it wasn’t easy to show vulnerability or even admit that he had any.
Bathed in his esteem, Poppy’s skin prickled. The depth of that gaze, how it traveled across her features, absorbing her, memorizing her, touching every part of her. Poppy could feel him inside her in the most intimate way. Although her desire was still hot in her belly and she yearned to be joined with him, a pang of disappointment struck when he blinked and shifted to align their bodies.
He could make love to her with his eyes any time, they’d come to that secret, private place to do something so much more physical.
All negative emotion was chased away when he pushed into her. Filling her up, he aroused all the desperate anticipation that had plagued her. They were making love for the first time since admitting their love. For the first time as a couple. As a pair with a future. She’d never be without him again, never be alone, never have to face anything without his support.
They moved together as they always had, yet it felt different. Poppy needed him more than she ever had. Wanted him more. The importance of the heated friction of their bodies took on new meaning. He was her love. Her future. Her sun. Poppy didn’t doubt, couldn’t doubt, that he felt the same about her.
“First,” she gasped as their intensity grew.
“I’ve got you.”
That whispered reassurance plunged her into the glorious abyss of orgasm. She lost all sense of time, all sense of the world and any reality other than the one she existed in with him. Poppy called out so loud that if she’d been able to find rational thought, she’d have been grateful for taking them out of the house.
The noise didn’t end there. Whimpering and moaning through the aftershocks that went on forever only to almost immediately herald an ascent toward another climax, Poppy let go of all inhibition. She released all ties to her former life, her single life, her existence before becoming his. The constraints fell away until every atom of her being, every fiber of her soul belonged to him.
On the next crescendo, she tensed in a spasm so great that she went rigid, holding onto him for every possible second, begging his body to live in hers. They were supposed to be together, supposed to be an extension of each other. Nothing was insurmountable, not so long as they were connected in love, physical and ethereal.
“Turner,” Poppy yelped, digging her nails into his shoulders when he surged up hard, spilling himself into her.
Completing each other had been the life mission for each of them. Everything made so much more sense now that Poppy