When he felt the sudden mist of passion flush her skin and her breath broke and her cries came quickly, rising urgently, he covered her mouth with his own and began to move again within her, trying to hold back from the elemental consummation that awaited him in the depths of her virginal body. A groan racked him as he thought what it would be like to sheathe every bit of his need in her, to pierce her virginity and feel her pleasure flow over him in a hot, ecstatic rain.
And then it was happening, the hot rain and the sheathing, ecstasy bursting with each movement of Ty's hips; and Janna wept at the perfection as he let go of control and locked himself so deeply within her that she felt the certainty of his climax as the most intimate kind of caress, a pulsing presence that sent her spinning into ecstasy once again, her body caressing him rhythmically in the quivering aftermath of his own release.
Janna's tiny, ecstatic cries pierced Ty like golden needles, reaching past the flesh to the soul beneath. "Violent pleasure racked him until his muscles stood out like iron. The endless, shuddering release that followed overwhelmed him.
Unable to see, unable to think, unable to speak, he spent himself again and again in the virgin who had touched a part of him no other woman ever had.
When Ty was at last quiet once more, Janna clung to his powerful, sweat-slicked body, savoring the intimacy of lying beneath him and feeling him inside her as evening condensed soundlessly into night around them. She hadn't known what to expect from the act of love, but she hadn't anticipated anything so hot, so sweet, so violently complete.
"I love you," Janna whispered, kissing Ty's shoulder.
The words were very soft, barely a whisper, but Ty heard them. A combination of guilt and anger raced through him when he remembered the irrevocable instant when he had taken Janna's virginity. Silently he raged at himself and his baffling lack of control where she was concerned. He had been able to keep himself tightly reined while he seduced her, yet he hadn't been able to pull back after he had discovered she was a virgin.
He didn't understand that. He should have been able to turn away from her; she wasn't the first woman to try that particular marital trap. He had eluded the others in the past, and those girls had been much more accomplished in their snares and lures.
But Janna had been a handful of fire and beauty, and her ecstatic cries as he pierced her virginity would haunt Ty until he died.
"I never should have taken you," he said in a low, bitter voice.
Janna's gently stroking hands became still. "Why?"
"Because I discovered that you were a virgin and I had no intention of marrying you, that's why. But I had a lot of help getting past your innocence, didn't I? First you tell me you're not a virgin-"
"I never said that," Janna interrupted in a fierce whisper.
"What about when you ran and I brought you down and kissed you too hard, and you said you'd taken a lot worse from men and survived?"
"I only meant that you hadn't really hurt me. And you hadn't."
"What about Joe Troon?"
"What about him?"
"Ned said that Troon 'kept' you for a while."
"Ned is a drunk and a liar. Troon caught me but he never kept me."
"Well, sugar, you sure as hell didn't act like any virgin I'd ever met. Ever since I came to after Cascabel's gauntlet you've been rubbing up against me and sighing and smiling and looking at me out of those smoky gray eyes like I'd spilled honey in my lap and you couldn't wait to lick off every bit of it," Ty said in a low, angry voice. "It would have served you right if I'd backed you up against a tree, opened my pants and had you standing up like the lowest kind of camp follower."
Janna thought of the ways she had tormented Ty without truly understanding the elemental force of his need… and her own. The thought of how often she had smiled when he had turned away to hide the evidence of his arousal made her ashamed now.
"I'm so sorry," Janna said, touching Ty's face tentatively. "I didn't know what I was doing to you. I didn't know the power of what you were fighting, how much you needed me."
"It was a woman I needed, not you," snarled Ty, jerking away from Janna's gentle touch.
All the movement accomplished was to remind him that he was still held within the satin sheath of her body; and she felt even better now than in his hottest memories. He told himself to roll aside, to separate himself from her, but his body refused to respond. He was drinking her heat, growing inside her, and his blood was beating heavily, urging his hips to move in primal rhythms.
"Virgin," Ty said, and it was a curse. "But you wanted it as much as I did, didn't you? Hell, you damn near burned me alive with your cries and your hips sliding, pushing me deeper and deeper…"
Ty shuddered unexpectedly, memories bursting inside him, sensuality lancing through his body, tightening him, making him feel every bit of the hot perfection of being locked inside Janna.
The knowledge of his own helpless response to her shocked Ty. He shouldn't feel this way. The sweat wasn't dry on his body from the first time he had taken her. He shouldn't want her again the way he did right now-need knotting his guts, his body hard and heavy and hot, filled to bursting once more.
He fought to remain still, not to respond, not to move, but the knowledge of the ecstatic consummation he would find within Janna's body was too new, too overwhelming for him to deny or control it. With a low, raw cry, he fought against the lure of her, but even as he cried out he was moving slowly, surrendering himself to her one hard inch at a time.
Janna's breath caught as Ty deliberately measured himself within her once, then twice, then three times. She didn't understand his rejection of her apology or his anger with her, but she understood the need that was making him tremble; it was her own need, doubling and redoubling with each heartbeat, a flame burning up from their joined bodies, heat delicately melting and ravenously devouring her at the same time. She shivered and arched beneath him in sensual abandon.
Ty groaned and felt fire eat ever more deeply into him* burning away thought, burning away reluctance, leaving only the elemental union of male and female, a joining that was deeper than flesh, hotter than desire, two living flames leaping higher as they touched, overlapped, entwined. He swore in a mingling of awe and savage triumph as he felt his lover's fluid grace rise to match his own savage need.
"Satin…butterfly," Ty said hoarsely, more accusation than affection in his voice. "Did you think that I'd marry you once I found what it was like to have you?"
He thrust his tongue into Janna's mouth, muffling whatever her answer might have been. Before the kiss ended she was moaning softly and moving in languid counterpart to the slow, circular dance of his hips.
"It won't work," he said, his breath coming quickly, heavily. "I'll take every bit of your body. I'll give you every bit of my body in return. But that's all. Just two bodies giving and taking. Do you hear me?"
Janna moaned brokenly and closed herself around him in a deep, instinctive caress.
"Do you hear me?" Ty demanded, clenching himself against the unbearable seduction of her body.
"Yes," she whispered. Her hips lifted slightly, then circled, seducing him, loving him. "I heard you the first time you told me in the valley."
"What?"
Ty's past words echoed cruelly within Janna's mind: I'll have my silken lady or I'll have none at all for longer than it takes to pleasure myself.
"I know that I'm not the silken lady of your dreams," Janna said, her voice a whisper of unquenchable hope and a foretaste of despair. "You're pleasuring yourself. That's all."
Ty didn't argue or protest her words.
Janna had expected no more, yet she had to bite her lip not to protest aloud the emotions tearing through her, passion and grief and the shivering precursors of wild ecstasy. When Ty moved within her again, she wept silently, grateful that it was too dark for him to see her tears, feeling his breath as cool, quickening gusts over her wet cheeks.