He pulled back, filled his sight and senses and memory with her, beyond his fantasies, lush and vital and glittering in the dimness, naked and vulnerable and the most overwhelming power he’d ever known. Her hold over him was absolute.

His love for her was as infinite.

He groaned as emotions welled inside him, debilitating and empowering, even as his body hardened beyond agony. He needed to plunge into her depths again, mingle with her body and soul.

His hand glided over her, absorbing her softness and resilience, the pleasure that hummed inside her at his touch, the craving echoing his. He caressed her from breast to the concavity of her waist, over the swell of her hips and the curve of her thigh. His hand hooked beneath her knee, opening her over him.

He savored her every jerk betraying her enjoyment, her torment, even as she still dreamed. He bent and took more suckles of the breasts that had rewhetted his appetite for life. She moaned as she spread her thighs for him, cradled him in the only place he’d ever call home, where the fluid heat of her welcome was unraveling his sanity all over again.

Her eyes half opened, heavy with sleep and lust, endless, insatiable skies. “Come inside me, Fareed…now.”

He felt he now lived to hear her say this, to know how much she needed him, to join them in unbridled intimacy and abandon, to take every liberty and give every ecstasy.

He pressed into her, reveling in the music of her gasps, the intoxication of her undulations, the urgency of the hands that clamped his head to her engorged-with-need flesh, begging him to devour her. The scent of her arousal sent blood crashing in his head, thundering in his loins.

He raised his head to take her vocal confessions, poured his own. “Every moment with you, ya roh galbi is magic. I want everything with you, every contradiction. Right now, I want to be giving and tender and I want to be greedy and ferocious, all at once.”

She clung to him, wrapped her legs around him, her lips feverish over his face and shoulders and chest. “You almost wrecked my sanity with your last session of giving tenderness. Give me greedy and ferocious, please. Please, Fareed, please!”

He’d never known there was such pride, such pleasure, as that her desire could engender. Now her urgency hit a chord of blind lust inside him, reverberated it until it snapped.

He snatched her beneath him, rose above her, his senses ricocheting within a body that felt hollowed. Every breath electrocuted him. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside his chest. He wanted to tear into her, pound her until there were no more barriers between their bodies. And she wanted him to do it, to plunder her, was shaking apart for his domination.

But he’d give her even better. He’d give it all to her.

He unlocked her convulsive limbs from around his body, ignored her cries of protest, swept her around on her stomach.

She whimpered as he held her down, captured her mound. His fingers delved between her soaking folds to her trigger. She climaxed with the first strokes, bucking and shuddering beneath him.

He showed her no mercy, fingers gliding, spreading the moistness from her core, made her shred her body and throat on pleasure.

He kept stroking her, raggedly encouraging her to have her fill of pleasure, until she slumped beneath him. Then he plunged his fingers inside her, his thumb echoing the action on the outside. She writhed under the renewed stimulation; the need for release a rising crest of incoherence. She thrust against his hand until his “Marrah kaman, ya galbi” hurled her convulsing into another orgasm.

She subsided beneath him, a mute mass of tremors. His fingers remained deep inside her, started preparing her for the next peak.

“I swear, Fareed, if you don’t take me now…I won’t let you take me for…for…” She stopped, panting.

“Not finding a suitable length of deprivation?” He chuckled, removing his hand. “Because you’ll also be depriving yourself?”

She threw him a smoldering glance over her shoulder, one that almost caused his already-overheated system to vapor lock. Then she purred, “Maybe there is another way out of this predicament.”

She thrust the perfection of her smooth, slick bottom back into his erection. Sensation ripped through him on a beast’s growl, making him lunge over her, snap his teeth into her shoulder, making her grind harder into him.

He ground back, whispered hotly in her ear, “I’m finding demonstrations far more effective than threats. Go on, give me examples of what you need me to do.”

The look she gave him this time, the sight of her as she trembled up to her knees, her waterfall of sunshine and ripe golden breasts swaying gently, blanked his sanity, almost made him slam into her. But the need to have her seek him, relinquish yet another notch of inhibition, overpowered even the insanity.

She lowered her head and upper body to the mattress. The total submission in her position, the devouring in her gaze as she rested her face against the dark sheets and silently demanded his domination, sent his breath hissing in his throat like steam, his erection filling with what felt like molten lead.

He still needed more. “A superlative demonstration. Now I need accompanying directions of what’s required of me.”

And she gave him what he needed. “I want you to bury yourself all the way inside me, holding nothing back, until you finish me, send us both into oblivion.”

The last tether of his restraint snapped so hard, he rammed into her with all the violence of its recoil, bottoming out in one thrust. A shout burned its way from both their depths.

“Nothing ever felt like this, Gwen,” he growled as he thrust deeper, harder into her, feeling as if he’d delved into an inferno of pure ecstasy. “Being inside you, this fit, this intensity, this perfection. Nothing could possibly be this pleasurable. But it is, you are, more pleasure than is possible. You sate me and craze me with insatiability. You burn me, Gwen, body and reason.”

She sobbed with every thrust. “You burn me, too…you fill me beyond my ability to withstand…or my ability to have enough. Oh, Fareed…the pain and pleasure of you…do it all to me…do it.”

Feeling his body hurtling into the danger zone, he put all his power behind each plunge. She writhed beneath him, thrusting back, letting him forge new depths inside her, panting more confessions, more proddings. Pressure built in his loins with each slide and thrust, each word, spread from the point inside her he was hitting deepest.

He rode her ever harder, insane for her release, for his.

Then like shock waves heralding a detonation too far to be felt yet, it started. Ripples spread from the outside in, pushing everything to his center, compacting where he was buried in her. He took her, in one more perfect fusion, and it came. The spike of shearing pleasure, his body all but charring with its intensity, slam after slam after slam of spreading satisfaction.

He pitched her forward, filled her with his white-hot release as they melted into one being, replete, complete.

An eternity passed before his senses rebooted. He heard a hum, felt it, pure contentment rising from her as she received his full weight over her back. It made him wish he could remain like this forever, containing her, covering her.

It was beyond incredible, what they shared. Every time had the exhilaration, the voracity, the surprise of a first time, yet had the practiced certainty of a long-established relationship.

After moments, with utmost regret, he had to obey the fact that he was twice her size and weight, and that no matter how much she insisted she craved feeling his weight, practical issues like blood circulation and breathing still existed.