he gave her what she needed, as he always knew just when, how hard and fast. He hammered between her splayed thighs, his erection pounding inside her with the perfect cadence and force to unleash everything inside her. She shattered in his arms.
Sensations radiated from the pinpoint of insanity where he was buried deepest. Currents of release crashed through her, squeezing her intimate muscles around him, drawing out every jolt of pleasure from her every inch. She felt him everywhere, igniting her every nerve ending, invading her heart.
Knowing he’d inundated her with satisfaction, knowing she now needed his, and his total domination, he roared her name and exploded in his own climax. With one last plunge he filled her to overflowing, sharpening the throes of her release. She felt him pulse the last of his seed into her depths, completion imbuing her as she slumped over his chest...
A rumble beneath her ear jogged her back to consciousness. “Perfection, Anastasia. Every single time. And more.”
Feeling boneless, she tried to nod her spinning head in agreement as he carried her and started walking, still buried within her depths. Knowing he’d carry her to bed now, she drifted off again.
Jerking out of her sensual stupor as he laid her down, she twisted around sensuously in the cotton sheets imprinted with his scent and that of their intimacy, compensating her for his loss as he left her body to strip fully.
Coming back to her, he gave her his full weight, which she always begged him for after the storm, his heartbeat a slow thunder against her decelerating one, completing the spell.
She was drifting off when he rose off her, dragging a crisp sheet over her cooling, enervated body. She tried to rouse herself, and he spread soothing kisses over her brow.
“Sleep a while, moya dorogoya. I exhausted you and now I must refuel you.”
Knowing he’d get them breakfast, she sank back in his indulgence and the echoes of his scent and passion.
* * *
Ivan took his time preparing breakfast, to let Anastasia rest. He really shouldn’t have taken her twice in a row like that, after a night when he’d done it three times. His insatiable need for her frightened him at times. But at least it only seemed to delight her. She was always hungering for everything he could give her. And he gave her way too much at times.
He now walked back into their bedroom with a tray laden with everything she loved. His lips spread, remembering her accusing him of having a nefarious plot to fatten her up. He’d admitted he would enjoy having more of her to fill his arms, to fondle and squeeze and worship.
Not that he didn’t find her perfect no matter her weight. But it was such a relief that after weeks of escalating delight in each other’s company, her appetite had returned. She was also back to exercising and had never been more, as she’d said earlier of him, painfully, distressingly beautiful.
Placing the tray down on the bedside table, he luxuriated in watching her sleep off their latest lovemaking. Her lush body was tangled in sheets the color of her hair. Her thick lashes fanned her softly flushed cheeks, her lips swollen with his passion and her wild locks strewn over his pillow.
Suddenly, a white-hot spasm stabbed his gut as images of her bathed in her own blood and Alex’s tore into his mind. Seeing her that way now, the image of health and contentment, had emotions raging through him. Every violent emotion, sublime and searing collided inside him, buckling his knees. He sank down on the mattress, a shaking hand reaching out to touch her, to assure himself all over again that this was the reality, that he had her with him, safe and whole and happy.
Her eyes fluttered open, absolute welcome and joy filling them at once. He forced himself to breathe, struggling to banish the brutal images that assailed him regularly back into the deepest dungeon of his memory.
Stretching and yawning delightedly, she sat up, looking like a goddess of voluptuousness, her breasts full and firm, her waist nipped, her thighs long and sleek, her hair gleaming gold around her strong shoulders. His body roared all over again. He tamped it down as viciously. It was enough he’d been all over her the moment he’d found her awake, not even giving her a chance to freshen up or eat. He really had to do something about his perpetual arousal, the need to possess her as many times as she could withstand every single day. He shouldn’t unleash seven years’ worth of deprivation on her. Even if she was breathlessly willing.
But she was now getting on her hands and knees, slinking toward him like a mischievous cat, rubbing against him very much like one, before turning all human female, pressing her softness into his hardness, turning his arousal to distress.
Pushing him on his back, she lay on top of him, pressing her every hot inch to his. “It’s you I want to feast on.”
He gazed up at her, needing to tell her so much, yet still unable to, the unuttered confessions a constant burning coal in his throat. “I’ll be right here after you eat. I’ll always be there for you to take your fill of me.”
Next moment, her response made him like everything had come crashing down.
Wrapping one lock of the hair he’d grown longer as per her request, her smile inexorable seduction, she asked, “Always? Even when I go back home?”
Anastasia could no longer keep the knowledge from herself.
Not that she’d really kept it hidden. It was just she hadn’t given her all-encompassing, overwhelming emotions for Ivan a name, not since he’d come back. But it had been a constant in her life, even when she’d thought he’d left her forever.
She loved him. Had always and would always love him.
But though he behaved as if he loved her as passionately, as absolutely, and was profuse with extravagant actions and endearments, he never put his emotions into those words. So neither had she. And in spite of everything he’d done, everything they’d shared, she dreaded that he’d one day suddenly end it again.
And that wasn’t another attack of anxiety or paranoia. She had reason to think what she did. It had started that morning two weeks ago, when she’d introduced the subject of going home.
He hadn’t answered her, had done it smoothly, heaving up to engulf her in kisses and coddling, feeding her breakfast before making love to her again.
He’d expertly avoided the subject since, diverting the conversation each time she tried to take it there.
By now she knew if she left it up to him, she’d never go home.
Though he’d been struggling not to show it, he’d been on edge, anticipating that his evasive tactics would soon run out, and they’d have a confrontation. She feared that when that happened, this rarefied state they’d been living in would come to an end. And this time, he would let her go.
Just minutes ago, she’d reached critical mass. She couldn’t go one more hour without finally having this out.
Her footsteps faltered outside his office before she came into his view. He always left the door open, as if perpetually afraid she’d need him and he wouldn’t be aware of it at once.
She inhaled one last bolstering breath and walked in.
His
