Somewhere in the back of his head he heard her little yelp of surprise, but he couldn't stop now, not when he was so damn close to what he wanted.

To what he needed so desperately he was going crazy with it.

She was over his shoulder a second later, then flat on her back on his wide leather couch.

His hands moved without any help from his brain, ripping her panties and bra off, and then she was lying there, her eyes wide as she stared up at him, her thighs splayed open on the dark leather.

Cole could barely drag in enough oxygen as he stared down at the slick pink flesh between her thighs, her soft brown curls already slightly damp for him.

Maybe, he thought later, he would have been able to stop himself from taking her without any foreplay if he hadn't already seen the proof of her desire. If he hadn't known that she was just as desperate for this f**king as he was.

His zipper was down, his c**k in his fist a moment later.

He positioned his throbbing head in the center of her drenched pu**y lips and drove into her, high and hard, with such ferocity that she slid halfway across the couch.

"Cole!" Anna's scream ricocheted through the high-ceilinged living room.

He gripped her smooth, naked ass in his rough hands so that he could hold her where he wanted her, then drove into her again and again, harder and harder.

Lost to everything but the feel of her clenching heat around his cock, so damn tight he could already feel his balls pulling up tight, the buzzing sensation at the base of his spine moving around the front of his groin, it took him several seconds to realize that Anna's hands had come around his shoulders, that her fingernails were scratching down his back.

When had her legs come around his waist to pull him closer? When had she pulled herself up so that she could kiss him, driving her tongue into his mouth with the same pounding rhythm as his cock?

Her inner muscles contracted around him and then she was begging against his chest,

"Please, Cole, oh God, more, more!" and then her tongue and teeth were scraping across his nipple.

The feel of her teeth flipped a switch inside, the one that meant he couldn't hold back anymore, couldn't protect her from his too-strong needs, his too-big body.

But just as he was about to unleash everything he was into Anna's soft body, he looked down at her, her slim arms and legs wrapped so tightly around him, and saw just how small she was compared to him.

Fuck. He'd never taken anyone this hard. No matter how good the sex had been, he was always aware of how big he was. Knew how much damage he could do to a small, feminine body. Which was why, subconsciously, he'd always dated tall women, women that could handle him.

But Anna, his small, sweet Anna, was pushing him harder, and faster, than he'd ever let himself be pushed. His c**k had never been this hard, on the verge of total obliteration. Jesus, it was going to kill him to pull back. But he had to.

Because he couldn't hurt Anna.

Sweet, innocent Anna.

Stilling, he held her hips tightly in his hands. She tried to buck into him, but when he wouldn't let her move, she looked up at him, confusion warring with desperate desire on her sweat-dampened face.

"Cole?"

"So small and sweet." He had to lick at her lips, tasting the salt from her skin mixing up with her own sweet essence. "I don't want to hurt you."

He'd been saying the same thing to her since practically the first moment they'd met, and damn it, he didn't think he could live with himself if he ever hurt her, if he accidentally ripped her apart because he'd needed her too bad to think straight.

"Then why are you hurting me now?"

His chest clenched with instant regret. "Jesus, Anna, I didn't mean--too rough on--you're too small for--" He was trying to force himself out of her wet heat as word fragments fell from his lips, but f**k, even knowing what he was doing to her, he couldn't manage more than an inch.

"I love it when you're rough, Cole. I love it when you can't control yourself."

He blinked hard, his brain working to convince him that he'd heard her correctly. "But I'm hurting you."

"The only time you hurt me is when you stop."

And in that moment as he looked into her eyes and knew she wasn't saying what he wanted to hear, but was speaking the truth--he let the switch go.

All the way up.

The next heartbeat had him driving into her so hard that the entire couch slid across the floor. The knowledge that he hadn't imagined her answering smile of pleasure had him ravaging her mouth with his lips and teeth and tongue even as he ravaged her pu**y with a c**k that was as hard as steel and so thick that he could feel her sensitive tissue working to stretch around him.

And then, through his own crazy thrusting and pumping into her, he felt it...the telltale way her muscles all clenched around his cock, the way her ragged breaths came to a momentary stop, hitching in her chest, the way her nails dug in deep along with her heels, the way her thigh muscles tightened on his hips. Any other time he would have focused on her pleasure, would have made sure she hit her climax before he did, but now that the beast was out, there was no locking him back into his cage.

Rearing up over her, he roughly cupped a breast in each hand, her hard ni**les searing the centers of his palms, and he rode her like he'd never ridden anyone. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed tight as she held onto his forearms and let him take her, riding the wave that he'd become. And instead of pain or fear, in that moment when a gasp left her throat as she began to climax and she opened her eyes and stared straight into his soul, he saw his own pleasure mirrored in those ocean depths.

A pleasure so deep that he wasn't sure how either of them were going to survive without it.

His roar shook the windows as he exploded, her muscles milking him, and if he might have thought that he should pull out, that they weren't really married and he shouldn't be shooting his come deep into her womb, he didn't hear it, wasn't aware of anything but riding out the biggest, strongest orgasm he'd had in thirty-four years.

* * *

Cole shifted them so that he was lying beneath her on the couch and Anna was plastered over his big, hard body, still holding on for dear life, still trying to figure out how to breathe, how to think. She was still trying to figure out how it was even possible for anything--or anyone--to make her feel so good. To feel so much.

If she were smart, if she had any sense of self-preservation at all, she'd be sliding off him, putting space between them, making sure she didn't let him take her over, body and soul.

But that last orgasm must have obliterated a huge chunk of her brain cells. Because she couldn't have left Cole's warmth, the comfort of his arms around her, if someone had been holding a gun to her head.