Varen thrust his hips to claim me fully, slowly spearing himself right to the hilt. "I'm sorry, sorry," he rasped. He kissed me. Gentle kisses. Butterfly kisses to take away my pain. Sealing his lips over mine to steal my huffing breath. His warm lips left mine when I hadn't spoken, barely moving beneath him. His voice was worried. "Tabitha?"

I pried open a single eye, squinting up at him. "Meh. Rather anticlimactic."

There'd been no fierce pain, no slashing agony, just a bit of a pinch. And now I lay there adjusting to this new wondrous sensation. So full. So gloriously deep.

Varen startled, then grinned.

So I did too, wide and bright. His gaze locked on my cheek and his whole body spasmed, his features scrunching up as he garbled out, "Oh my fucking gods..." He abruptly pulled out, pitching backward to flop onto the bed. And the loss of him, the strange emptiness inside, made me pout.

I pushed up by my elbows, wondering what the hells was going on with him. One of his hands squeezed his balls, while the other gripped his cock and he gave several casual strokes, puffing out, "Hells, so close." He released a hand to point at me. "Don't... I can't..."

"Don't do what?" I asked, frowning. Varen did the same as me, levering up on an elbow, and we stared at each other through the valley of our bent legs. I angled my head and my mussed hair slipped over a shoulder and grazed a stiff nipple. "What are you talking about?"

"That sexy as fuck dimple. You can't unleash that on me."

"Oh." I blinked. My dimple? "You mean this one?" I flashed a wide grin, feeling the cheek dent, and taunted him with it.

"YES. FUCKING HELLS. YES!" he boomed.

He suddenly pounced, and I was crushed beneath his weight, but it was a delicious kind of feeling being trapped underneath his brawny body. A squeak of shock burst from my throat when he unexpectedly rolled us over so I was on top.

"Ride me, Tabitha." A sting flared across my butt cheek when his large paw of a hand playfully spanked. "Fucking ride me until your sweet honey soaks my thighs and drips all over my balls."

Oh my freaking gods!

My mouth fell open. "I haven't even experienced proper missionary sex yet."

"Meh. Overrated," he shot back.

My laughter, bright and jubilant, spiraled through the shadowy room and my breasts jiggled as his large body quaked with his rich chuckle. Varen was spread out beneath me. Straight white teeth raked across his pouty bottom lip as he stared upward beneath lowered eyelids, exhilaration rife in his body. His hands smoothed up and down my thighs making want pool in my belly and need ache in my core.

I felt so tiny perched on top of his massive build, my sex spread wide and pressed against his masculinity. Tight. Hot. Throbbing. He was painfully aroused, the straining crown shining with a few pearlescent droplets that dripped onto his lower abs.

I took a moment to just soak in the moment, to trace the tattoos inked into the side of his ribs, slide my fingertips along a nasty old scar to the sharp cut of his vee to the dusty hair, soft and luxurious. I was eager to press my lips there and nuzzle him. He was a wild beast at my mercy. It was strange the kind of thrall that he allowed me to hold over him. An illusion, I knew. He was so big and strong. He could easily roll us both over and pin me beneath his weight. Handcuff my wrists with a broad hand and take me any way he wanted. Smother my weak protests with dirty kisses.

Instead, he lay there, imprisoned by my will alone.

Heat flushed my entire body as I chewed my lower lip.

Could I take him this way? Ride him?

He raised an eyebrow in eager challenge, vibrating with anticipation. The tips of my toes kneaded into the rumpled silk at the sinful smile he bestowed upon me.

His cock came alive in my hand, jerking as I wrapped my fingers around the velvet shaft, satiny stickiness coating my skin.

A grunt. A groan between gritted teeth. His fingers desperately clamped around my hips as I rose up on my knees and I angled him right at my entrance. His mouth fell open on a loud moan as I swiveled my hips to ease him just inside, enfolding him within my sex.

So good. So, so good.

I was soaking wet in my eagerness for him and he was hot and hard and thick.

It was him I watched as I impaled myself in slow degrees, letting gravity pull me down, down, down, inch by glorious inch.

His violet irises had the sheen of mercury, otherworldly in the dark of the room, and his striking features were carved with agony. I was in pain too, wanting him right back, wanting this new experience, something I'd daydreamed about for years in the solitude of the forest or in the dead of night. And now I was sharing myself, pushing his body inside of mine. I sighed at the rasping friction, this time relishing the burn, the way his girth filled and stretched me completely. This position was easier, I realized. My thighs spread over his hips widened my core, wider than when he'd been on top and speared through my virginity. Deeper too, hitting a spot deliciously deep inside when I was fully seated, my butt resting against his thighs, that had my head lolling back on a breathy moan, my hair dripping down the length of my spine.

His cock flexed and swelled and I shivered, my intimate walls clenching around him. A deep groan rumbled from his chest and it vibrated straight through my core. An earthquake of carnal craving.

His big hands gripped my hips harder when I rose and fell faster, rolling my hips at the peak, grinding down at the base of his shaft. "Yes," he muttered. "Yes, like that. More." His moaning grew louder and louder, and the sound of his pleasure, seeing it scorch across his devastatingly beautiful face, that it was me making him feel this good, had warmth swelling within my heart and tingling all the way to my fingertips.

He smoothed his hands up my middle to feather around my breasts, to massage them, to roll and pinch my nipples sending heat coiling inside my body. One of his hands drifted down, skating down my sweat-slick belly, to press a thumb to my clit. Slow circles. Blissful, mind-melting circles.

My fingers spread up over his pecs, the muscles taut beneath my hand, and I ducked down to lick his sharp nipples, to suck and bite. He shuddered and arched his chest into my touch. His head tipped back, tendons straining along his throat as he gave a lusty groan.

"Fuck me, Tabitha," Varen begged, his voice low and gravelly. "Please, fuck me."

I couldn't stop the smile. Gods he was desperate and it was adorable and sexy as hells.

Snapping my spine straight, I rode him.

Up and down I worked his impressive length, my hair flailing around my shoulders with each downward glide. A bounce of my breasts when I hit his thighs.

Dragging myself up slowly to plunge down swiftly and earn myself a shuddering groan.

Rolling my hips in an exploration of a sweetly sharp sensation that made his breaths come faster and the burning gaze he fixed on mine sear hotter.

I tipped forward, a hand splayed beside his head. My hair trickled forward to shield us with a curtain of gold from the world. My lips hovered above his, our breath mingling and swirling along each other's cheeks. I rocked, rocked, rocked, and his hands slid from my breast up to my jaw, while the other never left my clit. His fingertips brushed over my lower lip as I exhaled a whimper, our gazes never leaving one another. "That's it, Tabitha." His hand trembled as he stroked his fingers upward to push through my draping hair. "Make me yours."

Maybe that was all I needed, his voice thick with lust, smooth as honey, asking me for something I already owned. He was already mine, and I did something I'd done only once before. I reached behind me and cupped his hard, coarse balls, squeezing them gently. "Oh my fucking gods," he hissed, his back bowing, hips bucking up. He hit a spot that had a cry of startlement, of ardor, tearing from my throat. I loved it so much, I did it again, cupping and squeezing, bearing down to meet his thrust, reveling in his filthy grunt. The eruption of wickedness in his gaze when it met mine was my only warning.

Varen was a storm of movement.

A fury of erotic need.

He flipped us both over in a whirl of flesh and a flail of golden hair, and suddenly I was on my back. He rose up on his knees, wrapped his hands around my ankles to lift my butt up, and scissored my legs wide. He stared down where we were joined. His rosy lips parted, features slackening as he watched his cock plunge in and out. A slow roll of his pelvis, back and forth, smooth like ocean waves, every stroke so languid I felt every inch of friction. So slowly. Maddeningly slow. Yet the taunting rhythm whipped the embers of the climax to set my blood blazing into a fever. "You're so warm and wet and gorgeous," he husked. His gaze snapped up to mine and his lips curled with amusement, eyes darkened with threat. A twist of his pelvis at a different angle, a snapping of his hips and he drove his cock into a place that had my hands scrambling to fist the bed, a cry wrenched from my throat, my sex rippling and clamping around him. His voice was hoarse as he urged, "That's it. Fuck. Again, Tabitha, again." And I did. That exquisite pressure built as his speed picked up, his fierce thrusts twisting my aching pleasure higher.

He lowered my legs and his muscular thighs held mine open. He dipped his torso and his hard pecs crushed my breasts, his length surging deep inside. There was midnight silk beneath my back, and our flushed bodies were sweat-slick, beads trickling down my spine. We slid up against one another, panting and gasping, as I arched under him and he pressed down, rotating his hips and grinding long and low, rocking against my clit, making my eyes roll back and my body turn to liquid.

He ran an open mouth kiss up my throat, nipped my chin, and claimed my lips. He kissed me, stealing my breath and my heart. I couldn't help the smile, and his eyebrows slashed upward as he moaned helplessly, shifting his mouth to my dimple. Licked it. Sucked it. "I love, love, love this dimple."

Love.

I came out of the sex haze with a jolt.

Say it again. Say, love.

"I love these freckles," he whispered, shoving a hand through my sweat-damp hair, fingers curling around the back of my head as he peppered my nose and cheeks with tiny kisses.

Love...love...love...

"I love these rose freckles too," he said, ducking his head and looking up at me beneath his eyelashes as he kissed the rosy cluster near my nipple. There was something in his gaze, deeper than what we had been before. Maybe he was like me, just discovering that there was more to us and that what we were together was much, much richer. And though neither of us were able to confess it to the other just yet, we could in other ways, like this.

He stared intently into my eyes as he lowered his mouth to mine. "And I love these lips."

My soul sighed.

And my hands tangled in his hair.

The air shimmered around him. It was warmer in the room too, close to balmy, and the waves of warmth swirled like ghostly graceful gusts heralding an oncoming tempest. My dark magic unspooled to brush up against his, seeping outward and twining around his body like a satiny ribbon. His otherness glittered in the dark, almost indiscernible, but I could see the faint sparks of aether teased by his unconscious storm-weaving. Beautiful and wild and deadly.

When Varen's lips met mine, his gentle kiss was sweetly tender, yet energy cracked inside my mouth as if I'd been struck by a hail of electric flames. Energy razed through my flesh, my bones, my blood. Incandescent and unearthly.

My hips jerked and bucked as the scintillating electricity jolted right through me, shoving his cock inward fast and deep.

"Fuck. Oh fuck," he cried.

The slamming of our two bodies triggered my climax. I tripped over the edge and tumbled into a heady rush of intense sensation that rippled from my clit and core in a shockwave, hotter and more powerful than when I'd orgasmed beneath his tongue. It devoured every inch of me until I was gone, swept away and spinning willingly into the heart of a storm. Varen's storm. Wickedly divine and sinfully endless.

My inner walls clenched and spasmed around him and distantly I heard him moaning, half-aware of how tightly his hand clasped my body. I was lost within the orgasm, greedy for more, and I pumped my hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, dragging the orgasm out until I was a taut, limp mess beneath him, unable to do anything but feel and breathlessly utter his name, making it ring in my ears. I clung to him, drifting mindlessly in this gloriously hazy firestorm of his making, so when his mouth found mine and he whispered something into our kiss, I wasn't sure what he said.

When I returned, rising slowly out of the orgasm-daze, Varen was lost and abandoned within his own pleasure. With each pounding stroke, the next came swift and harder. Wild and deeper. Reckless with loss of rhythm. The slapping sound of sweat-slick skin filled the shadowy room above our ragged breaths as our bodies plunged together, demanding more, each of us wanting the surrender of the other.

He thrust one last time, rough and deep. His fingers dug into my hips as if I were the only person who could save him. He barked a masculine shout and it shuddered through the storm-teased room and exploded against the walls like thunder.

With a rough exhale, he collapsed on top of me, his hands twisting through my hair, and he kissed me ruthlessly as his cock swelled and pulsed and he came in sticky spasms.

For long minutes, our foreheads were tipped to each other, our bodies embracing, both of us flushed, catching our breath and grinning at one another.

He peeled himself from my body and flopped to the mattress beside me, rubbing his hands over his face and through his damp hair.

My entire body felt wrung out and weary, my limbs weak. I smacked my lips together and blew out a breath. "Oh my gods, Varen." I thought I'd said that, but it came out messily from being drunk on orgasms. "That was... It was..."

He rolled over to face me, propping the side of his face on a fist. A sheen of sweat glistened on his magnificent body and his rosy cheeks rounded with one of his delightfully boyish grins. "It was what?"

I threw my arms wide, staring up at the ceiling. "Wow." I couldn't explain it any better. Words were at a loss. "We're definitely going to be doing a lot more of that again."

He tapped my shoulder with a finger. "We've got an enormous list between the both of us we're going to tick off one at a time."

My eyes slid sideways. "Yes, we do."

Varen's laughter followed him into the bathroom when he rolled off the bed and disappeared inside its opulent depths. When he reappeared he kneeled down and cleaned between my legs with a warm cloth, grinning all the while and stealing quick kisses.

I stretched my limbs, doing a quick assessment of how I felt. Exhausted and sore between my legs, and several places on my body felt a little bruised where he'd gripped me too hard, but it was a pleasant kind of sore, a new kind of sore I'd never experienced before.

Sex.

I had sex!

Freaking finally.

Varen clambered back onto the waterbed, rocking me with his movement as he grabbed a blanket and pulled me beneath its coziness. I sighed, snuggling up to him. "I think I could quite happily sleep for a thousand years." His deep chuckle had my hair whispering around my ear.

A gentle press of his lips to my temple. "Stay with me until I fall asleep," he asked.

"Of course." I squiggled, getting comfortable and tangling my legs with his. I'd never slept in a bed with a guy before. He slung an arm around me, and I rested my head on his chest while he toyed with my hair, petting me.

"I'll see you in the morning beneath the oak tree," he said.

I guiltily chewed my lip. "Yes," I murmured back. I didn't have the heart to tell him he'd more than likely sleep through our arranged meeting time, probably sleep right through until the afternoon with the heavy dose of sleeping potion I'd given him.

I ran the tip of a finger back and forth over his smooth chest, listening to his breathing slow down and become even until his hand limply fell away from my hair.

And I stayed with him for a little while longer as he slept, reluctant to leave.

"I love you too," I whispered into the darkness.