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“Let me bring some color to your life, Ethan of Florida, as you have brought heat and desire to mine.” Her words were brave, but she stood trembling. Afraid the flames that ignited in her body whenever he touched her would consume her.
Afraid that one night would never be enough.
Knowing that one night was very likely all they could ever have.
But desire triumphed over fear, and she held up her arms to him. “Be mine for this night, Ethan. Let Atlantis meet the dual-natured, and both be the better for it.”
He did not say a word but started toward her. Slowly, stalking her. Letting her see the full weight of his hunger on his face. He pulled his clothes off as he came, so that by the time he reached her he was entirely nude, his enormous erection jutting up between them. Her eyes widened at the sight of his powerful body sculpted into lean muscle.
“It’s time, ocean girl,” he whispered. “I want to kiss every inch of your skin right this minute. In fact, I may very well die if I don’t get my hands and my mouth on you in the next sixty seconds.”
She leaned forward and traced one finger down the planes of his chest and abdomen, and he shuddered. She bit her lip and took the leap over the precipice.
“Then perhaps you should remove my dress.”
Ethan stared at Marie, unable to believe his ears. Unable to believe that the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was offering herself to him with the same courage she’d shown when she’d questioned his authority. When she’d defied him. When she’d laughed at his attempt to order her around.
Somehow, this gentle healer had displayed greater strength than the meanest and baddest of his pride-brothers. Maybe it was her gentle touch that had stolen its way into his heart.
“Your dress. Right. I might be able to manage that.” He reached out for her, hoping she didn’t notice that his hands were shaking. Touched the silken folds of her dress and, underneath, the silken curves of her skin.
“I love this dress,” he said. “But it has to go.”
He bent to grasp the hem of the dress on both sides of her endless legs and then stood, pulling the fabric with him. She moved to make some adjustment, and the top of the dress fell open, helping his clumsy fingers complete the job. In seconds, the dress was up and over her head, and she stood in only a few tiny scraps of dark blue lace.
The sight of her sent all the blood in his body rushing to his cock, which jerked and strained toward her. His inner cat agreed with the sentiment, growling its hunger and need.
“Holy crap,” he said, grinning like a damn fool. “If that’s the Atlantean version of ladies’ underwear, I bow down to your superior race.”
She tilted her head and flashed a smile filled with the power of ages-old feminine seduction and newly discovered heat. “Do you like it?”
“It makes me want to purr.”
Marie laughed. “I’d like to make you purr, warrior. But first, I’d like to feel you touch me.”
He didn’t need to be asked again. Ethan swept her up and onto the bed, rolling with her as they fell so that she landed on top of him, trapped by his arms. “I plan to touch every part of you,” he promised.
“Less talking, more touching,” she said, and then she nipped at his bottom lip. The sharp touch of her teeth ignited the flames that had been stirring in his
blood, and he pulled her head down to his and took her mouth.
The predatory heat in his eyes exhilarated Marie. No gentle coupling, this—she wanted flame and fury and the sea-struck lightning of tempest-force winds. He’d torn her undergarments from her body as if he had to see her totally nude or he’d die from the wanting. Then she’d taken the aggressor’s part, she who had never taken the initiative in bed sport, and actually bitten him. She felt as though the panther side of his nature had communicated itself to her soul, and she, too, wanted to snarl and bite and dig her nails into his back, leaving no doubt in his mind that she was laying claim to him as well.
For one terrifying and thrilling moment she rose over him to conquer him, but then the predator in Ethan took command, and he growled low in his throat, then roared out a feral claim. He was alpha and master of his domain; he was fiercely primitive.
He was everything she’d never wanted and never known, and she was drowning in the sensation of him.
Ethan set his mouth on her and licked and kissed and bit her skin from her lips to her chin and then down to her neck. He bit the juncture where her neck met her shoulder, and she cried out at the electric current that sizzled down through her body. Her nipples tightened and hardened nearly to the point of pain, and then suddenly he moved down again and ran his tongue across one stiff point, and she cried out again. He lifted his head, a look of such fierce triumph on his face that the mere sight of it caused creamy heat to pool between her thighs.
“I warned you I would taste every inch of you,” he repeated, his voice so rough that the sound of it rasped across her sensitized nerve endings. “I always make good on my promises.”
He lowered his head to her breast and sucked one nipple into his mouth, licking and kissing it, then sucking it so hard that she cried out as the shock waves from the pull of his mouth sent arrows of knife-edged desire driving through her body. With his fingers, he caressed and pinched her other nipple, switching back and forth between the two until she was writhing on the bed beneath him, nearly mindless with hunger.
“Please,” she moaned. “Please, it’s too much, Ethan. Please.”
“Not yet,” he said. He moved back up the bed and kissed her again, eating at her mouth until she thought he’d devour her, his hands stroking and caressing every part of her except for the center of her need. She returned the favor, frantically shaping his rock-hard biceps and the sculpted muscles of his back and bottom with her hands. Every inch of him was lean and hard and purely male.
He drove her to a fury of desire and insanity until she finally grasped his thick, glossy hair with both hands and yanked his head back from hers. “I need you now,” she said; it was her turn to issue commands.
