She was the first to be naked, her petite form unmarred save for a few small bruises. Her cast had been removed, and her leg seemed whole and sound save for her slight limp. She was not like Athena, and yet…
Before he could complete the thought, her hands were upon his trousers, tugging and caressing at the same time. The torment was almost intolerable. Somehow she came to be astride him, her clever fingers teasing him free of all restraint. A whisper touch danced over his hot, aching flesh.
“Ah,” she whispered. “What a grand mount it is. Let me ride, my stallion. Let me ride as I’ve never ridden before.”
Niall stood at the center of one last moment of sanity, one final chance to take control. Must get back to Denver, the cold part of his brain muttered. If Morgan isn’t dead… if Athena …
Then rational thought ceased, because he was being enveloped in heat and warmth, and Caitlin’s mouth was on his. She rode just as she had promised, fulfilling the wildest fantasies he had ever entertained as boy or man. He thrust hard, and she fell upon him with cries and groans, her head flung back and her hair aglow as if from a thousand tiny sparks.
He came as quickly as an untried boy. Caitlin collapsed across his chest, refusing to set him free. And he found, much to his amazement, that his body was not finished with her. Not nearly finished.
She gave a little cry as he rolled her beneath him. He held himself above her, gazing into her heavy-lidded eyes.
“Do you think you’ve won?” he asked softly. “Do you think you’ve had the better of me, Caitlin?” He cupped her cheek in his palm, the first gentle caress he had given her since their joining. “No woman masters me. Not even you.”
She squirmed, the motions of her body arousing him all over again. “Niall, it isn’t what you—”
He thrust his tongue into her mouth, absorbing her protest. In a heartbeat her arms were linked behind his neck. He reached back and caught her wrists, pulled them one by one to the pillow above her head.
“Now it is my turn,” he said, and held her hands trapped with one of his while his other slid between her thighs. He sought and found the moist, sensitive part of her that had clasped him so boldly and stroked with a fingertip. She released a low, satisfying moan.
He took his time with her, as he never had with the easy women he’d known in the past—teasing, caressing, watching her face as it altered from surprise to pleasure to mindless ecstasy. So she didn’t think he could be a lover, to give as well as take?
Let her realize just how wrong she was. Keeping his own lust in check, he kissed her from forehead to the tips of her toes, lingering at her breasts, finely formed and winsome—those he’d once considered so small—and the intimate place he had made ready with his touch. She tasted of sunshine and exotic spices, simple and complex all at once.
Caitlin Hughes was no virgin. She was a sorceress of ancient carnal rites made to entrap a man—innocent and wanton, sweet and sinful, naive and wise beyond her years. Yet now she was his, and he possessed her as fully as she had seduced him. Her thighs were already parted for his entrance. As he thrust inside her, he began to understand why reasonable men would risk everything, give up the world itself, for the sake of a woman.
“Caitlin,” he whispered. “Damn you, Caitlin.”
She only locked her ankles behind his waist and pulled him deeper. This time she was the one who reached the peak first, shuddering with rhythmic pulses of abandoned joy. He followed a moment later and felt his seed pour into her body.
He should have slept then, or left the room without a backward glance as he had done with the other nameless women who had given themselves for something far more concrete than love. But Caitlin looked up at him with gentle wisdom, inviting him into a place that went beyond mere bodies and brushed the soul with velvet wings.