The testing was also a caress. Eve made a sound of wonder as pleasure rippled through her. Sensual heat licked over Reno’s violently aroused flesh, dragging a ragged groan from him. His hips moved reflexively, pushing between hot petals, seeking an even deeper joining.
Eve’s eyes opened as the pressure between her legs intensified, Reno’s body slowly stretching her with a gentle, measured movement that was at odds with the harsh lines of his face.
«Tell me,» he said hoarsely.
Reno wanted to say more, but he couldn’t. He was feeling Eve too intensely, sleek heat and sultry rain and a loving glide of flesh over flesh. She was feeling him in the same way, her eyes heavy-lidded, watching him as he took her and gave himself to her in the same deliberate movement.
Never had Reno known such a sensual merging of body with body, heat with heat, breath with breath. There was no barrier, no cry of pain, no sudden attempt by Eve’s body to reject him.
She gave way before him like a summer storm, luring and surrounding him as he pressed into her hot center. No matter how deeply he probed, there was only liquid heat and a satin constriction caressing him in secret, teaching him what it meant to be fully, passionately joined with a woman.
The hot perfection of sheathing himself so slowly within her nearly undid him. Blood hammered through his veins, filling him until thought he must burst or die.
«Eve…»
Reno’s voice was ragged, all but throttled by the wild race of his blood.
Eve heard him and knew that he was trying to ask if he was hurting her. She would have answered, but the slow, heavy penetration was transforming her.
Rings of fire pulsed up from the point where her body joined his. The tiny, secret convulsions brought a pleasure so great she could only give herself to it and to the man who was so deeply a part of her that he felt each silky pulse distinctly. And with each pulse came a sensual rain that eased his way even more, luring and welcoming and caressing him profoundly.
Reno felt his control being stripped away by the sweet rhythms of Eve’s pleasure. He measured himself once within her, then twice, before the firestorm within him burst. He arched into her welcoming heat and gave himself to her in a shuddering rush that left him spent.
The weight of Reno’s body against Eve’s sent another wave of passion through her. She made a sound deep in her throat and twisted against him as her body was impaled by a shaft of ecstasy.
The sinuous, gliding pressure of Eve over his buried flesh sent tongues of fire licking sharply through Reno. He moved slowly within her and savored her shimmering response.
Watching her, he moved again, enjoying her throaty cries and the melting of her body around him. He had never known a woman to enjoy so clearly his presence within her. He had never guessed how much satisfaction there could be in watching his smallest motion transformed into sensual feminine pulses and a silent, sinuous pleading for more of him.
Nor had he known what his own body was capable of, the rushing transformation repeated, sweet needles of fire pricking delicately, deeply, until he was consumed by a need that was all the sweeter for having been ignited while he was fully sheathed within her.
«I hope you’re right about having lots of lives, gata.»
Eve’s lashes lifted, showing eyes that were still glazed with pleasure.
«What?» she asked huskily.
Her voice broke before the question was finished, for Reno was moving slowly within her, filling her.
«Do you like this?» he asked, withdrawing and returning once more.
«Dear Lord, yes.»
«It doesn’t hurt?»
Soft laughter was Eve’s answer. Her hands caressed the length of Reno’s spine. She paused to comb through the scattering of silky hair in the small of his back before she went on to his buttocks. The taut muscles intrigued her, as did the swift, ripping breath he took when her hand strayed between his thighs. She repeated the caress, drawing another shudder from him.
«No more of that,» Reno said, dragging Eve’s hand back to his flank.
«Don’t you like it?»
«Too damn much,» he admitted. «Save it for next time.»
«Next time?»
«Yes, gata. Next time. I may need it then. I sure don’t need it now.»
«I don’t understand.»
Reno moved again within Eve, caressing and stretching her in the same motion.
«If I get any harder,» he said, «it will be over too soon. I want this one to last a long, long time.»
«Oh.»
He bent down and put his cheek next to hers. The heat of her skin amazed him.
«Are you blushing?» he asked.
Eve buried her face in his neck and hit his shoulder lightly with her fist.
«How anyone can be so abandoned and yet so shy…» Reno’s voice faded into a soft laugh. «Never mind. You’ll get over it.»
A muffled comment told him that she doubted it.
«Look at me, sugar girl.»
When she shook her head, he gently pried her face from his neck.
«Shy little night-blooming flower,» Reno said, dropping tiny kisses over Eve’s hot face. «If you knew how rare you were, you wouldn’t blush.»
He saw the narrow gleam of Eve’s eyes as she peeked through her lashes at him.
«And you are rare,» he breathed against her lips.
«I’m just a…»
Whatever Eve was going to say was lost in the slow penetration of his tongue until he filled her mouth just as he filled her body. The tiny, throaty cry she gave affected him the way a burning match affects dry straw. He retreated and returned with exquisite control from her body, measuring both of them simultaneously, intimately. Then he withdrew again.
With a ragged sound that was Reno’s name, Eve moved her hips, trying to reclaim him.
«You make me feel like the man who first discovered fire,» Reno said in a low voice, watching her.
He rocked slowly against her, leaving none of her untouched, moving with the deliberate rhythms of a storm that has eternity to gather and break.
«Hurt?» he asked softly.
Her answer was a rippling sigh of pleasure.
«Tell me if I hurt you,» Reno said.
Smoothly he shifted, sliding his arms beneath her knees, bending and lifting her legs, pressing them gently back against her body, moving in slow motion, joining them more deeply than she would have believed possible.
«Eve?» he whispered.
«Dear God,» she said, shivering with pleasure.
As Reno moved, a hot, gentle vise closed around Eve, a burning so soft she knew it only in after-thought. A long, sweet shimmering began to steal through her, making her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Reno withdrew, taking the sensual pressure with him.
«No,» Eve said.
«I thought I was hurting you.»
«Only when you left.»
She made a low, ragged sound as Reno slowly returned, rocked against her, then retreated as deliberately as he had taken her. The ghostly shimmering returned, delicate currents of fire claiming her softly.
«I think…» Eve whispered.
He moved again, and flames licked gently, stealing her voice.
«What do you think?» he asked.
«I think…a woman…discovered fire,» Eve said. «With you…»
Tender fire leaped, consuming her.
Reno heard the echoes of ecstasy in Eve’s voice, felt it in the rhythmic shivering of her body, and wanted to shout his triumph at the stars.
But he had no breath to shout, for the flames that he had nurtured in her were spreading outward, licking over him in the silken rhythms of her release. He held himself utterly still, fighting against the need to join her. He didn’t want that yet, not before he had plumbed the depths of her ability to respond to him.