into the bedding, tilting her hips up and forward so that he slid against her, teasing her with both a threat and a promise. Again and again he simply slid against the dense, glistening curls, denying himself, denying her until she was so wet and he so hard they could not have stayed apart a moment longer, even if they had wanted to.
Eduard groaned as he buried himself inside her. He groaned and he gasped and he pressed his head into the curve of her shoulder, stunned by the tightness and the heat she wrapped around him. Ariel’s hands shook where she clutched him. She felt him plunging, stretching, pushing himself to the limit, and then more … more … until she was filled, swollen, aching with a deep, saturating pleasure.
Her cries of awe fevered his blood and his first few thrusts were fast and powerful, more for the benefit of his sanity than anything else. Her body quickened against him in response, making his every muscle strain and beg for release. But Eduard was determined. He braced himself on outstretched arms, his lips moving in a silent litany of prayers to hold on, hold on, hold back even as Ariel flung her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist, and stiffened convulsively through wave after wave of intense, protracted ecstasy.
His eyes closed, his neck arched. His breath came harsh and choppy and his body gleamed under a sheen of moisture, his muscles quivering, his whole body feeling like a raw, chafed nerve. The fierceness of his impending climax stole his breath away. He shuddered and rolled his hips faster into hers, letting the pleasure come, letting it overwhelm him, letting it burst, throbbing and flame-hot into the wild and violent friction of Ariel’s own continuing, continuous orgasm.
Flushed and panting, they rocked together in a crush of damp, steamy flesh. Ariel was numb, dazed, and still beset by the tiny, shuddering bursts of liquid heat that pulsated from his body to hers. She kept her legs locked firmly around his waist, kept her hips moving, arching gently to glean every last drop, every last shiver from his flesh. The incredible fullness diminished inside her, but he made no move to pull away, not even when he thought to ease the burden of his weight by turning onto his side. He turned, keeping her close, his hands cradling her thighs so that there could be no thinking he wanted to leave her, no allowing it if she wanted to leave him. Luxuriantly slippery inside and out, Ariel was flushed with the knowledge that she could give as much pleasure as she could take—pleasure she would have thought to be commonplace to a man of such careless might. And yet, if the fiercely possessive pressure of his hands was anything to judge by, he was just as shaken as she by the intensity of their expended passions.
Her head found a natural, comfortable pillow in the hollow of his shoulder. Her hair was stuck to the dampness on her temples and throat, and she gave a little sigh of thanks as he gathered it back into a single, thick tail that he spread beside her. It left his hands free to roam over the naked flesh of her back and shoulders, and he did so until the audible pounding of her heart slowed, and she could think and feel beyond the flush of carnal gratification.
It was a soft, fuzzy, engorged contentment that replaced the urgent restlessness of wanting. It made her very much aware of the shape and texture of their bodies, of the heat he radiated even in repose. She wished she could stay like this forever and wondered if every woman felt this way, or if it was only the foolish ones, the ones who had been too stubborn to admit this was something they could not accomplish on their own.
Ariel sighed and traced her fingertips over and around the contours of his chest. She could fire a bow, wield a sword, ride a horse, even swing a quarterstaff the equal of most men. And because she could, she had never felt any pressing need—or desire—to prove she could be just as soft and yielding as any woman. Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise had wrought a change in all that. He had shown her, precisely and exquisitely, just how much of a woman he wanted her to be, how much of a woman she could be in the arms of the