“I have already stolen your heart,” he teased softly, reminding her he was sharing her thoughts.
“I’m not certain I’m ready for you to know every single thing I think.”
“Or feel.” His voice dropped an octave, to black-velvet seduction. “Or fantasize.”
Her hands found his hips. “You’re the one with all the fantasies. I’m just borrowing yours to try them out.”
His body surged forward, burying itself more deeply within her. “How am I doing?” He began to move with deeper, stronger strokes, picking up the pace until the smoldering embers were leaping flames. “We have not even started, piccola. Ihave the whole night to worship you as you deserve.”
At the unexpected flash of fire sweeping through her body, she bit her lip, and two small pinpricks of red welled up. Aidan’s glittering golden eyes focused there, untamed emotion in their depths. Just that look sent her spiraling over the edge, her body erupting in mind-shattering explosions. Her breathless cry was lost as his mouth found hers, capturing the sound forever. His tongue swept across her lip, a curling caress that impossibly heightened her pleasure.
Aidan’s every muscle tensed. He was motionless for a heartbeat, and then he threw back his head and surged forward, burying himself in her, her body’s shattering reaction to his overriding his control. It went on forever, the release, the spinning world, yet lasted not nearly long enough. He wanted to be there for all time, with Alexandria locked safely in his arms.
They lay together without moving, without speaking, savoring the moment and each other. Aidan was the first to move, reluctantly shifting his weight. He gathered her close, as if she might suddenly realize what she had surrendered into his keeping and try to run away from him, from what she was.
She stroked his arm as it wrapped possessively around her. “Aidan, I can know your thoughts just as you know mine. And I am still me. I don’t intend to be locked away in a closet somewhere.”
He propped himself up on one elbow. Wind blew through the room, bringing with it a mist from the sea. He lifted a hand, and the sliding glass door closed instantly. He dragged up a comforter to cover her even as he moved closer to warm her with his body heat. “I did not have the closet in mind, cara. I thought my bed would be far more appropriate.” There was a trace of male humor in his velvet voice.
She pushed the hair from her face and looked him in the eye. “I am going to work, Aidan. You’ve created a life here for yourself and Stefan and Marie. But Joshua deserves a normal existence, too. I don’t want his life to change so much that he loses everything familiar to him. I don’t want to lose that either. This is all so frightening. You’re frightening. I will not lose whatever part of me is left.”
“I want you safe, Alexandria. The women of our race are our most precious treasures. Without you we cannot continue our existence. I need to know you are safe every moment of the day.”
Alexandria sat up and dragged the comforter over her breasts, suddenly aware of her nakedness. Aidan carelessly threw a leg over her thigh, pinning her in place. “There is not an inch of you I do not know, cara. This is no time to become shy.”
She could feel a blush creeping up her entire body until her face glowed pink in the night. The way he had positioned his leg, she could feel his maleness pressed against her, his heat and strength, his growing, hardening need. She knew his words were teasing, but she had never been in a situation like this one, and she wasn’t certain how to act or what to feel.
“You’re using... this to control me.”
He grinned at her unrepentantly, rubbing against her suggestively. “ This?What is this? Are you saying I would use our sexual relationship to get my way?”
She began laughing again; she couldn’t help it. “You would use anything, Mr. Innocence, to get your way, and you know it.”
He cupped one breast, his thumb feathering over the sensitized nipple. “Is it working?” His voice brushed over her skin like velvet.
“You can’t possibly want me again, Aidan,” she protested, pushing herself away from him and the temptation of his body.
His hands caught her waist and drew her against his already hard shaft. He traced the contour of her hips and stroked her bottom. “You are beautiful, Alexandria,” he breathed as he rolled her onto her belly beneath him.
“Aidan.” His name came out in a breathless protest. His hands were strong—ruthless, even—pinning her in place, his breath on her back, his teeth closing over her shoulder when she tried to squirm free. The position made her feel intensely vulnerable.
Aidan pressed against her, his need to take control as strong as his need to give her pleasure. “You want me, cara mia. I feel it.”
“It’s too soon.”
“Not for your body.” Even as he said the words, his hand pushed against her to test her readiness, coming away bathed in liquid heat. “Oh, God, Alexandria, how can I ever resist you?” He needed her all over again. Needed to feel, to be alive, to know she would always be a part of him, his life, that when he opened his eyes and took his first breath each evening, she would be there to give him ever-deepening emotions, and to look at him with something other than fear in her eyes.
Alexandria might have resisted his dominance, but she could not resist his burning need. The intensity of his feelings swept through her mind, and her body caught fire with his. She pushed back against him, consenting, enflaming him further. She was laughing softly, teasing, but her breath caught in her throat when he thrust forward in intimate invasion. Her body tightened around his, holding him, clutching him, rippling with life and heat.
One powerful arm tightened possessively around her waist, his body all at once protective over hers.
“Are we crazy, we two?” he murmured.
“You’re the crazy one,” she gasped, moving with him, beginning to spin out of control again that fast. “I have work to do, yet you keep me here, locked to you, a prisoner of your passion,” she said, panting. He was building the fire fast, with sure, hard strokes, surging into her, his hands holding her beneath him. “I can’t believe I’m letting you get away with it.” And she couldn’t. It seemed impossible that she would be kneeling on a bed stained with her own innocence and loving this man’s possession of her, wanting more, wanting him again and again.
When they finally collapsed, holding each other, a fine sheen of perspiration coating their bodies, they were drained, spent, satiated. “I heard you chanting in my head, the first time we...” She trailed off. “The words were in your native language, weren’t they?”
“I ensured our bond again,” he admitted. “The thought of losing you through my own stupidity was too much. I recited the ritual words as I took your innocence, to bind us together for eternity.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Those words make an unbreakable tie for our males. Once said, the bond is eternal.”
She rolled over and blinked up at him. “What are you talking about?”
“When a Carpathian male finds his mate and knows for certain she is the one, he can bind her to him with the ritual words even if he has not yet claimed her body. It is like the human marriage ceremony but much deeper. Our souls and hearts are one half of the same whole, incomplete when apart. The ritual words bind them back together as they were meant to be.”
Her gaze narrowed in speculation. “I thought the two were bound by chemistry, by blood.”
“They are destined, true, and the bond is begun.” He pushed his long hair from his face and retreated to one side of the bed, as if uneasy with the conversation.