He lifted his head, a hard glint in his dark eyes as he exhaled a harsh breath. “I’ve never felt anything this good in my entire life. Nothing that even came close.”
She blinked up at him, knowing that everything she felt had to be showing on her flushed face, burning in her eyes like a hot, shimmering message. He groaned and held her head in his hands, then lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply, hungrily, his tongue thrusting and stroking, touching her teeth and the inner surface of her lips, then tangling with her own. She melted, sighing into the pleasure, seduced by the tenderness she could taste in his breathtaking kiss. And thrilled by the way it mixed with the raw lust as he moved one of his hands down to her knee, lifting it higher, wider, so that he could get even deeper inside her. He fed sexy growls into her mouth as his rhythm picked up, his thrusts so hard they started to shake the bed . . . along with the very foundations of her soul.
She was changing, evolving . . . becoming something lush and warm and full of sensation. She felt transformed, and knew her stupid heart was getting into dangerous territory. As hard-assed as she’d tried to be about the experience, there was no way for her to separate the emotion of the act from the physical. She was hyperaware with every cell of her body that this was Ryder between her legs, buried inside her, blowing her mind. The man who owned her without even knowing it. Who didn’t want her forever. Just for now. For this blinding moment. She had no guarantee there would even be a second time, and so she surrendered completely, knowing she needed to glean as much from the experience as she could. Secure the memories in a box in her mind that she could protect forever . . . or for however long she had. Memories that no one could ever take away from her. She sobbed at the thought, clinging to him, kissing him back with everything that she felt and feared and ached for, and he went wild, his pounding rhythm shoving her into a devastating orgasm that made her thrash and scream. He swallowed her raw cries with his mouth, drinking them in, then tossed back his head and gave a guttural roar as his own release slammed through him, his cock pulsing and jerking, spurting hot bursts of cum inside her. She kept climaxing, milking his steely shaft with her cushiony inner walls, and they strained together in that tangled, intimate knot until the violent shudders had eased into twitches, their lungs no longer heaving for breath.
Lily closed her eyes and held him tighter, knowing this had been right and perfect and necessary.
And that she’d never be the same again.
• • •
RYDER SHOOK HIS head, trying to make sense of what had just happened. When he’d come, it had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Yeah, he’d been with more than his fair share of women, and he’d started young. But nothing had ever prepared him for this. For Lily. She was the blow he couldn’t recover from. One incredible fuck and she’d somehow taken his memories of other women and burned them to the ground until they were nothing but scattered pieces of ash floating around in his head. The only thing that was solid and real and vibrant in the twisted landscape of his reality was the intoxicating woman trapped beneath him. She was a goddamn live wire of hunger and pleasure and emotion every fucking time he touched her.
He didn’t know how he hadn’t figured it out immediately last night when he’d had her against his door. That she was the woman in his arms. He’d never felt the way he did with her with anyone else in the world. Which just proved that deep down he’d known it was Lily all along. What a stupid prick, trying to convince himself that he hadn’t. He could be such a goddamn idiot at times.
Just look at his fuckup tonight. Not realizing she was a virgin. He didn’t even know how to wrap his mind around the fact that he was the only jackass who’d ever filled her with his cock. But he liked it. Liked knowing that no one else had ever known her the way he did. Better not to dwell on it for too long or he might just start beating his chest like a caveman. But now that his head had cleared he wanted some answers. And he wanted them now.
He wasn’t as hard as he’d been before he’d blown like a fucking geyser, but he was still firm. Keeping himself buried inside her, Ryder slid his arms beneath her and rolled to his back, then settled his hands on her hips, holding her in place. As she braced her soft palms against his chest and pushed up a little, her silky hair a wild, beautiful mess around her face, he said, “I want some answers, Lily. I want to know how a woman like you could still be a virgin at twenty-five.”
Her disgruntled expression was beyond adorable. “I’m not sure what you mean by a woman like me.”
Rubbing his hands over her hips, loving how soft she was, he said, “Sexy as all get out. A goddamn walking wet dream. What the fuck is going on?”
Her gaze skittered to the side. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. Not because I wanted to lie to you,” she said in a rush, lowering that worried gaze back to his. “I was just hoping to avoid the freak-out.”
“I’m not going to freak out,” he murmured, biting back a grin. “I’m a grown man, Lil. I don’t freak out.”
She didn’t look like she believed him.
Keeping his tone deliberately calm, he said, “If you’d told me before we got started, I would have done things to make it easier for you.” At least he’d have tried. He sure as hell wouldn’t have driven himself inside her like a jackhammer before making her come a few times.
“I didn’t want easier,” she confessed in a low voice, a frown weaving between her slender brows as she held his heavy-lidded stare. “I just wanted you. And now you’re going to run.”
“I’m not going to run,” he told her, his cock already getting harder, stretching her tender little pussy wider.
Her eyes went bright at the feel of him getting bigger. “You’re not?”
“No. Because then I wouldn’t be able to do this,” he whispered, leaning up to take one of those candy-pink nipples into his mouth as he lifted her hips a little, then jerked her back down on him. Her soft cry of pleasure only made him harder, the drenched heat of her plush, fist-tight little cunt the most perfect thing in the world he’d ever felt. She was full of the cum he’d blasted into her, steeped in her own slick juices, clasping him like a leather glove that pulsed in time to her heartbeat. He moved to her other breast, sucking and licking at the succulent peak, undone by the heady taste of her skin. Then he pulled back, locking his narrow gaze with hers.
“If you’re not going to tell me why you stayed a virgin, then at least tell me why you’re on the Pill.” He curved his hands around her ass as she leaned forward, putting her pussy at the perfect angle for his deepening thrusts. With his knees bent and his feet braced on the bed, he held her in place and pumped up into her, filling her again and again with his thick rod, her virginal body somehow taking every broad inch of him when most women couldn’t.
“Because I didn’t know,” she murmured, closing her eyes. When she opened them again she looked like a woman who was thoroughly enjoying a long, grinding fuck. Rosy mouth and cheeks. Creamy, glistening skin. Glowing eyes beneath the heavy weight of her lashes. She was so goddamn beautiful it hurt just to look at her.
“You didn’t know what, Lil?”
His sharp gaze followed her tongue as she wet her lips and moaned, “When I might see you again.”
Oh, God. The instant the telling words slipped past her lips, Lily panicked. Shit. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that to him. To Ryder, the most emotion-wary man in the world. Worried he was going to toss her aside and leave her, she sat straight up, and they both gasped as the position shoved him even deeper inside her.