her intimately.
She came apart in his arms, trembled beneath his lips and fingertips. She cried out his name as her body shuddered around his hands and mouth. Gasping for breath, she twisted to hook her legs around his hips.
Van was smiling at her in supreme satisfaction, for he knew he had pleasured her immensely. But when she curled her hand around his aroused flesh and guided him to her, he forgot to breathe—and couldn’t remember why he needed to.
He arched instinctively toward her as his hands settled on her hips. He drove into her without restraint and watched her eyes fly wide open. He stilled when he breached the fragile barrier that assured him that he was her first experiment with intimate passion. For certain, Natalie was his first time with a woman’s first time.
The knowledge brought him to his senses long enough to call upon his nearly depleted reservoir of restraint. Despite the ardent need that demanded that he drive relentlessly into her until he found wild release, he withdrew—and it nearly killed him.
“Crow…” she murmured as she held his gaze and hooked her hands behind his head. “Don’t stop doing what you’re doing.”
“Don’t really want to, sunshine,” he replied, barely recognizing his voice, for it was hoarse with need. “Just trying to give you time to adjust to…well…to me.”
She nuzzled her forehead against his, then brushed his lips lightly with hers. “You’re sweet, but—”
Her voice dried up when he drove himself to the hilt, then retreated to plunge into her silken body again and again. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t the least bit sweet and there was nothing gentle about the ardent needs pounding through him in that desperate moment. His body had taken command and he was hopelessly out of control.
With each frantic thrust, he felt passion’s flames scorching him inside and out. Then the fires of overwhelming desire consumed him. He clutched her so tightly in his arms that he feared he’d suffocate her when he shuddered in all-consuming release.
Sweet mercy! Van thought as he gasped for breath—and found none forthcoming. But then, if he stopped breathing altogether and died in the circle of Natalie’s arms while he was buried deep inside her, he couldn’t think of a better way to go.
The realization that nothing in his vast experiences in life remotely compared to sharing Natalie’s innocent passion nearly brought him to his knees. It was unsettling, considering this was the last night they would be together. He could never recapture the incredible sensations and the previously untapped emotions she had unleashed inside him.
He’d found the passion of a lifetime, even if it could only last one night. He smiled ruefully as he rubbed his chin against the elegant curve of her neck. He remembered how Bart had questioned his rash decision to marry Natalie when he knew so little about her and hadn’t had time to confirm her story. But being this close to her, holding her possessively in his arms and knowing that nothing else compared to this moment with her seemed worth whatever repercussions he might face.
“Crow?” she murmured against his chest.
“Yes, sunshine?”
“How much will it cost me to do this again tonight?”
He chuckled as he brushed a feathery kiss against her satiny cheek. “As it happens, I’m running a two-for-the-price-of-one special this evening.”
“Well, in that case…”
When she reached down to cup him in her hand and stroke him intimately, desire exploded inside him in the blink of an eye. Van scanned the area near the riverbank to make sure they were still alone then he forgot everything he ever knew because she led him ashore to make a thorough study of him. She was careful to veer away from the marshy area where hemlock grew before she urged him onto a makeshift pallet of her discarded clothing.
It didn’t take her long to discover that every experimental touch of her hands and lips drove him one step closer to crazy. His last thought, as he drew her down on top of him then buried himself deeply in her honeyed warmth, was that his bewitching wife might still be a novice at surviving in the wilds but she excelled in passion.
And there, beneath a canopy of twinkling stars and the whisper of the breeze rustling in the leaves of overhanging trees, Donovan Crow discovered defeat for the first time in years. He had surrendered to Natalie Whoever-She-Was without putting up a fight…and he loved every erotic moment of it.
Chapter Nine
Natalie awoke