Shivering with the harshness of his self-imposed restraint, Ty began taking Janna as gradually as evening took the day. Her eyes opened in sensual surprise and she looked up into the face of the man who was slowly, so slowly, becoming part of her. Each time the pressure of him within her became almost painful, he sensed it, withdrew and gradually came to her again.
The exquisitely gentle penetration made waves of heat gather and burst within her, showering him with her pleasure. She heard him groan and push more deeply inside and then felt the harsh tension shaking his body as he forced himself to stop.
"You're a virgin!"
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ty's accusing voice was hoarse as he fought against his deepest needs and tried to force himself to retreat from Janna's moist, clinging heat. But he couldn't. He wanted only to continue taking her a bit at a time; and when he caressed her to ecstasy once more he wanted to thrust past the frail barrier separating their bodies from total unity. She would feel no pain at the instant he took her because she would be too deeply enmeshed in her climax to know or care that for the first time in her life a man would be fully sheathed within her.
Virgin.
"Christ," Ty groaned, "if I'd known, I never would have touched you."
"Then I'm glad you didn't know," Janna said huskily. She shivered and melted over him again, moving her hips helplessly, in the grip of a passion she had never expected and had no idea how to control. All she wanted was more of him, more of the sweet friction as she stretched around him. "I want this, Ty. Please. You're not hurting me. I love… feeling you." She moved her hips slowly, caressing him and herself in the same motion. "Oh, that's so good," she whispered raggedly, rocking, moving as much as he would allow, "but it's not enough… not… enough."
"Stop it!" Ty said roughly as he felt the last shreds of his self-control slipping away. "You're a virgin!"
Janna's nails dug into the flexed power of Ty's buttocks and her body twisted wildly beneath his as she whispered again and again that what he had given her was good but not enough. With each movement she became more seductive, more demanding, more welcoming, so hot and sleek that he found himself pressing again and yet again at the fragile flesh that barred total consummation.
Ty groaned and forced himself to move just slightly while his fingers sought and claimed the slick, delicate nub of Janna's passion. He controlled the instinctive rocking of her hips by settling more of his weight between her legs, pinning her in place while he caressed her, bringing her closer and closer to ecstasy.
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.