.
could reanimate him, her heat devastated him.
Warm, hot, and she...she...
She opened her eyes.
“Rafael...”
That tremolo was a thousand volts to his heart, reanimating it after it had shriveled. And he was all over her, his hands everywhere, exposing her flesh, gliding over every inch, making sure all of her was intact, was functioning...was there.
A maddened beast rumbled in his gut at every bruise and graze he found. It dismantled his mind all over again that he’d been unable to prevent her injuries and was now unable to erase them. His lips documented each and every one, tried to soothe and seal them, pouring litanies of regret all over her for failing to do so.
All he could do was have her skin to skin, no barriers for the first time, exposing himself totally for her to take of his power, and for him to absorb her ordeal into himself.
As if he was succeeding, her enervated arms started to cling, her limp body to strain against him until he felt they’d merge. Then her feverish sobs started to make sense.
“My...my driver...was crushed. I—I tried to get him out...but I—I couldn’t...then I was facedown on the ground and they were taking me away.... And I only thought of you...had to reach you...but got only your voice mail...then my phone died...”
His body convulsed around hers, holding her tight as weeping overpowered her, his lips drinking her tears, pledging over and over, “I’m here now. I’ll never leave you again.”
Her hacking sobs became words again. “I—I lost my purse, had only my phone...gave it to the taxi driver as fare. But he said coming all the way here would take him another hour out of his way in the opposite direction, so he dropped me on the main road....”
And he finally found something he could put right. “I’m going to find that driver, and I’m going to make him regret every contemptible act he’s committed in his life.”
Her tears suddenly stopped, her eyes widening with dismay. “No, no...it doesn’t matter....”
“Don’t try to stay my hand, Eliana. This sorry excuse for a man not only took your phone—your only method of communication—in lieu of fare, instead of getting you a charger, but then he left you stranded miles away from your destination, injured and alone. He will pay.”
The next second he wanted to bludgeon himself at the way she seemed to shrivel at his aggression, even when it was on her behalf. She was so shaken, felt so fragile, as if she was...
Dread swept him all over again. What if she was hurt internally, something that would manifest gradually...?
“Deus, meu amor...I have to take you back to the hospital.”
She resisted when he scooped her up. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You can’t know that. Some injuries, like concussions, become symptomatic later. You need to be monitored....”
“But nothing even came near me. The half of the car I was in was totally untouched.”
“But the scratches and bruises all over you...?”
“I got those as I tried to get my driver out.”
“But you said you found yourself facedown when they came to take you. You could have lost consciousness.”
“It was just a reaction to the horrific sight of my driver’s injuries, the flood of adrenaline as I tried to extricate him, then when...when he died right before my eyes.”
Helplessness pummeled him again because he knew that he couldn’t rewind those terrible moments, wipe away their memories.
But he could do something else. “Still, a couple of nights in hospital are a must.”
“They aren’t. Apart from my self-inflicted bruises, they gave me a clean bill of health. But even though I miraculously escaped without a scratch, I was just...distraught thinking how I could have died or worse.” Her eyes welled as she clung to him. “I needed to be where I can feel you. Then I found a damaged part of the wall around the estate and entered through it, as the gate was too far and I just had to get to your bed....”
Groaning with raw, gut-wrenching emotion, he pressed her to his heart. “I’m here now, preciosa. I found you and I’m never letting you out of my sight again. I’ll keep you safe from now on. Always.”
“You can’t stop fate.” Before he could swear he would, she went on, hands trembling over his burning flesh. “When that bridge was collapsing and I thought I’d die, I had only one regret...that I was never with you completely.”
The insupportable thought that her life could have been snuffed out in seconds, that he could have lost her, ravaged him again.
Then she sobbed. “You can’t stop fate, Rafael, but you can have now. Let me have you now, all of you. Take all of me and show me how alive you are. Show me how alive I am, meu amor.”
Meu amor. She’d called him my love.
And everything inside him snapped.
He bore down on her, felt her heart beat to the same insane rhythm beneath his, knew she couldn’t bear preliminaries or gentleness, needed him to reaffirm her life ferociously.
Hand bunching in her locks, tethering her head down to the mattress, his eyes captured her streaming ones as he rose between her splayed thighs and pressed his crown to her molten entrance. Then he lunged.
He felt her flesh trying to ward off his invasion, tearing around his advance. Her shriek boomed inside his head as he pummeled through her barrier. Her body bowed beneath him, a deep arch of agony, but her nod was frantic. She wanted him to give her a ravishing, a full possession. He’d give her everything he had.
He withdrew through the clinging ring that clamped him like a vise, then thrust back harder, tore through the rest of her innocence, felt the scald of her blood and submission gush around him, coating his shaft.
Her cries became pain mixed with exultation, ripping through him. They became whimpers of loss as he withdrew until only the head of his erection remained caught in her flesh. Then he powered his unbearably hard length back into her mind-blowing tightness and heat, forging a new path inside her. His alone. His only home.
Bending, he sealed her lips with his, swallowed her gusting breaths and tortured keens as her flesh began to yield to his shaft, sucking him into an inferno of sensation.
The carnality, the reality, the meaning of being inside her... It was too much. He needed to give his all to her, to lose himself inside her, to pierce her essence and consume her.
He glided out of her tightness, pummeled back just as she pumped up, impaling herself further on his erection. Pleasure detonated, almost blew out his arteries.
“Eliana—there can’t be pleasure like this, there can’t be. Take it all, Eliana, give it all to me....”
“Yes...Rafael...yes.”
She crushed herself against him, catapulting him into a frenzy. He pounded into her now, building in force and cadence, had her voluptuous breasts jiggling beneath him, her trembling legs spreading wider as her core poured more welcome over him.
The heat, the friction escalated until he sensed the heart thundering beneath his might burst with need for release.
Tilting her hips, he angled himself, still unable to sink inside her to the root through the tightness of her untried body. But he adjusted his position, seeking her inner triggers to ignite her release. Until he did.
Shrieking, she shattered around him, her flesh wringing his shaft with convulsions, the flood of her release razing him, its current snapping his sanity.
He detonated inside her, streams of ecstasy scalding through his length, pouring into her womb, his seed