Cybele lay draped over Rodrigo, shell-shocked by the transfiguring experience.
Every nerve crackled with Rodrigo-induced soreness and satiation and a profundity of bliss, amazement and disbelief.
She’d been a virgin. Wow.
And what he’d done to her. A few million wows.
The wows in fact rivaled the number of his billions since he’d given her all that pleasure when she’d simultaneously been writhing with the pain of his possession. But the very concept of having him inside her body, of being joined to him in such intimacy, at last, had swamped the pain, turned it into pleasure so excruciating she thought she had died in his arms for moments there.
Love welled inside her as she recalled him looking down at her in such adorable contrition and stupefaction. The latter must have been because she’d babbled justifications for her virginal state with him buried inside her. Another breaker of heat crashed over her as she relived her mortification. Then the heat changed texture when she recalled every second of his domination.
What would he do to her when pain was no longer part of the equation? When he no longer feared hurting her? When he lost the last shred of inhibition and just plundered her?
She wondered if she’d survive such pleasure. And she couldn’t wait to risk her life at the altar of his unbridled possession.
She was about to attempt to beg for more, needing to cram all she could into her one time in his arms. But she lost coherence as he caressed and crooned to her. Then his words registered.
Cásate conmigo, querida.
Marry me, darling.
Instinctive responses and emotions mushroomed, paralyzed her, muted her. Heart and mind ceased, time and existence froze.
Then everything rushed, streaked. Elation, disbelief, joy, shock, delight, doubt. The madly spinning roulette of emotions slowed down, and one flopped into the pocket. Distress.
She pushed away from the meld of their bodies, moaning at the burn of separation, rediscovering coordination from scratch. “I meant it when I said no tomorrows, Rodrigo. I don’t expect anything.”
He rose slowly to a sitting position, his masculinity taking on a harsher, more overwhelming edge among the dreamy softness of a background drenched in red roses. He looked like that wrathful god she’d seen in the beginning, decadent in beauty, uncaring of the effect his nakedness and the sight of his intact arousal had on flimsy mortals like her. “And you don’t want it, either?”
“What I want isn’t important.”
He stopped her as she turned away, his grip on her arm gentleness itself, belying his intensity as he gritted, “It’s all-important. And we’ve just established how much you want me.”
“It still makes no difference. I-I can’t marry you.”
He went still. “Because of Mel? You feel guilty over him?”
She huffed a bitter laugh. “And you don’t?”
“No, I don’t,” he shot back, adamant, final. “Mel is no longer here and this has nothing to do with him.”
“Says the man whose every action for the last ten weeks had everything to do with Mel.”
He rose to his knees, blocked her unsteady attempt to get off the bed. “Care to explain that?”
Air disappeared as his size dwarfed her, his heat bore down on her, as his erection burned into her waist. She wanted to throw herself down, beg him to forget about his honor-bound offer and just ride her to oblivion again.
She swallowed fire past her hoarse-with-shrieks-of-pleasure vocal cords. “I’m Mel’s widow, and I’m carrying his unborn child. Need more clues?”
“You think all I did for you was out of duty for him?”
She shrugged dejectedly. “Duty, responsibility, dependability, heroism, nobility, honor. You’re full of ’em.”
And he did the last thing she’d expected in this tension.
He belted out one of those laughs that turned her to boiling goo. “You make it sound like I’m full of…it.”
Words squeezed past the heart bobbing in her throat. “I wish. You make it impossible to think the least negative thing of you.”
He encroached on her as he again exposed her to that last thing she’d thought she’d ever see from him. Pure seduction, lazy and indulgent and annihilating. “And that’s bad…why?” Oh, no. She’d been in deep…it, when he’d been only lovely and friendly. Now, after he’d kick-started her sexuality software with such an explosive demonstration, had imprinted his code and password all over her cells, to all of a sudden see fit to turn on his sex appeal intentionally was cruel and unusual overkill.
She tried to put a breath between them. He wouldn’t let her, backed her across the bed, a panther crowding his prey into a corner. She came up against the brass bars, grabbed them, tried to pull up from her swooning position.
“It’s bad because it makes it impossible to say no to you.”
His lips twitched as he prowled over her, imprisoning her in a cage of muscle and maleness. But instead of his previous solemn and tender intensity, that mind-messing predatory sexiness spiked to a whole new level. “That has always been my nefarious plan.”
“Okay, Rodrigo, I’m confused here,” she panted. “What’s brought all…this about?”
His eyebrows shot up in mock-surprise and affront. “You mean you don’t remember? Seems I have to try much…harder-and longer-to make a more lasting impression.”
She coughed in disbelief. “You’re telling me you suddenly want to marry me because of the mind-blowing pleasure?”
He tightened his knees around her thighs, winding the pounding between them into a tighter rhythm, licking his lips as his gaze melted over her captive nakedness, making her feel as if he’d licked her all over again. “So it was mind-blowing for you?”
“Are you kidding? I’m surprised my head is still screwed on. But I can’t believe it was for you. I’m not by any stretch hot stuff, not to mention I must have cramped your style, being your first pregnant virgin and all.”
“I admit, I was and am still agonizingly cramped, as you can see. And feel.” He pressed his erection into her belly. Feeling the marble smooth and hard column of hot flesh against hers, the awe that she’d accommodated all that inside her, the carnality of the sharply recalled sensations as he’d occupied her, stretched her into mindlessness made her gasp, arch up involuntarily into his hardness. He ground harder into her as he drove a knee between her thighs, coaxing their rigidity to melt apart for him. “And in case you want to know my style…” His other knee joined in splaying her thighs apart as he leaned over her, teasing her aching nipples with the silk-sprinkled power of his chest. “…it’s a woman who has no idea she’s inferno-level stuff who happens to be a pregnant virgin. Or who was one, until I put an end to that condition.”