“Not if you keep going so slow,” she snapped testily.
“Spread your legs,” he demanded. He stretched his body the full length of hers, supporting his weight on his forearms, kneeing her legs wider for him. “Lift them around my hips.”
She obeyed instantly.
“Lock your ankles. This isn’t going to be easy.”
A delirious little shiver rocked her at his words. She knew that. She’d known it the first time she’d felt him pressed up against her bottom, there in Cincinnati, the morning he’d burst through her door, and it had been one of the things wreaking havoc with her senses ever since. All of her boyfriends had been big, tall men. She liked big men, always had, liked a bit of dominance. And Adam Black was big and bad to the bone, all around. She’d told the maids the truth, sort of; he wasn’t in proportion, he was larger there than a woman would expect. “Somehow, I don’t think anything about you is ever easy,” she managed to gasp out.
“No it’s not, but I think easy would bore you, ka-lyrra. I promise you I’ll never bore you.”
And then his hand was between her legs, a finger slipping into her sleek heat, pressing in, pressing upward, searching for her barrier. Then two fingers, and she was only dimly aware when he breached the thin membrane, the fleeting pain eclipsed by the pleasure of him moving inside her. Her hips arched helplessly up, wanting more, needing, aching for all of him.
And then his hand was gone and the thick head of his penis was nudging against her soft folds, and he was pushing himself inside her. She mewled, a whimper of distress, trying to adjust, wiggling, trying to accept, but he was too big and she was too tight.
“Easy, Gabrielle. Relax,” he gritted.
She tried, but she couldn’t; it was instinctive to resist, and they waged a silent sexual battle for a few moments, where he hardly gained another inch. Her muscles were bearing down on him, resisting the steely intrusion.
He sucked in a hissing breath through clenched teeth. “Gabrielle, you’re killing me; you have to let me in.”
“I’m trying,” she wailed.
With a muffled curse, he abruptly shifted her, pushing her legs apart and up, resting her ankles on his shoulders, tilting her pelvis up and back, ruthlessly exposing her.
Fisting a hand in her hair close to her scalp, he tugged her head back and slanted his mouth hard over hers, taking her in a deep, soul-claiming kiss, his hot, velvety tongue probing, retreating. She was too stunned by the kiss, by the fierce, possessive savagery of it, to tense when he impaled her, which was, she realized, precisely why he’d done it.
He drove himself deep inside her with one slow, smooth, relentless penetration, filling her so completely that she screamed into his mouth, but he kept his lips sealed over hers, swallowing the cry. He stayed like that for long minutes, in her to the hilt, thoroughly invading every soft warm crevice of her, but not moving, just kissing her, his hot tongue tangling with hers. He was so large that it took long minutes for her to adjust, to ease and accommodate. Long minutes while he stayed still, occupying his territory, not surveying the perimeters until she was whimpering against his lips, begging him to move. Now that the pressure felt good, she was feeling an entirely different kind of pressure, that needed lots of moving to sate.
“I’m in you,” he purred. “Ah, Christ, I’m in you.” Then—finally—he began moving, an erotic little circular motion of his hips—not a thrusting but a slow deep rubbing inside her. Grinding himself into her, backing off just a bit, grinding again, each time nudging the tight bud of her clitoris with exquisite friction.
His intense, slow movements abraded some crazy spot inside her she’d not even known she had, and all her muscles clenched again on him, locking, shuddering, and when she came it was like nothing she’d ever felt before, an explosion so deep inside her, so shatteringly intense, that a visceral cry was torn from her throat.
“Bloody hell,” he roared, his whole body going tight. He clamped his hands down on her hips, trying to back off, to pull out, not anywhere near ready to come yet, but it was too late, the way her body was closing around him was more than he could stand and he exploded inside her.
Hours later, Adam propped himself up on an elbow and stared down at Gabrielle, pondering what made beauty.
He thought he was beginning to understand. It wasn’t symmetry of features; it wasn’t perfection. It was uniqueness. That which one person had that no other possessed. That which was only their own. Perhaps Gabrielle’s nose was like a thousand others, but they weren’t on her face, with her eyes, with her cheekbones and hair. Nor were those noses graced with her many expressions, crinkling so charmingly when she laughed, flaring so haughtily when she was irritated.