Tension coiled deep inside her and mindlessly she shook her head, trying to deny the flood of pleasure pouring into her, melting even her bones. She was somewhere between darkness and subspace, teetering right there, unable to distinguish between pleasure and pain but wanting him never to stop.

For one moment, everything in her stilled. She could hear her sobbing breathing, so ragged, her lungs desperate for air. She could hear the slap of their bodies coming together as with each stroke, fire arced through her. His hand at her nipple was relentless, pulling, tugging, and as if her nipple had a direct line to her center, she felt the spasm start there first.

Wyatt felt her body clamp down hard on his. It was exquisite. He’d never felt anything like it in his life. Her silken sheath, so hot he was burning up, dragging over his sensitive cock, making him feel more alive than he ever had in his life. He wanted her to feel exhausted, limp with sex, fully satisfied and too tired to lure other men, the biochemical drained from her body so that she had a long reprieve.

He felt the gathering in her body, starting around his cock, building to hurricane force. He tightened his grip on her hips, tilting her body to fit even more tightly with his, so he could go deeper. Around him her body rippled and gripped, while her head tossed and her body writhed, fighting off the inevitable storm as he slammed into her again and again in a kind of wild fury.

She stiffened under him, her body clamping down on his, a vicious vise. It seemed impossible to breathe, to get air into his burning lungs, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to him but the ferocious joining of their bodies. He drove through the fury of the storm once more, burying himself with the flames stroking over him. He thought he might have gone a little insane, the inferno so hot and tight it bordered on pain, but there was no stopping the driving force that had him hammering into her over and over like a machine totally out of control.

Agonizing pleasure radiated from his groin to every part of his body as her body shuddered, clamped down on him even tighter, milking and strangling, a fiery massage that sent him careening off the edge of a cliff. His body of its own accord went still. He felt the pulse throb in his cock. A single heartbeat of pure anticipation.

Pepper screamed, nails digging into his back and shoulders, a wild, heart-wrenching cry as the orgasm took her with hurricane force. It ripped through both of them, every cell in their bodies, muscles, bones, radiating down their thighs to the soles of their feet and up through their bellies to chest and finally the roar in their heads.

His body shuddered, the release so violent, his seed jetting deep into her over and over again. The sheath surrounding him seemed to be made of living, breathing hot velvet, as it kept squeezing and milking long after the thunder in his ears subsided.

He allowed himself to collapse over her, pinning her to the floor with his weight, his body blanketing hers. He needed to feel her soft body imprinted on his. He kept his arms around her, refusing to allow her to withdraw from him.

“Put your arms around my neck, sugar,” he whispered softly, keeping his voice gentle. She was fighting for breath, but he could feel her sudden confusion, the wariness in her, as if suddenly, he might have become the enemy.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, her arms crept around his neck. He kissed her throat and blazed a trail up to her chin, all the while enjoying the aftershocks. He held her to him, nuzzling her ear, nipping at her earlobe.

“What are you doing?”

“Did you think we would just get up and put on our clothes?”

Wyatt lifted his head to look into her eyes. Definitely confused.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this. Training involved me doing things to others, not them doing anything to me. I’ve never felt like this and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.” She sounded lost. Afraid. Vulnerable. “Aren’t we finished?”

Because any man she seduced was supposed to die. That was her job. Seduction and assassination. There was no aftermath, no loving arms to be held in.

“No, baby, we’re not through yet. We got what we both needed. What we had to have, but I still want to love on you. I need to do that, sugar. It’s important to me.”

He kissed her eyelids, her temple and smoothed back her hair. “I get to love on you, honey. Just like this. Hold you close to me and let you know how amazin’ you are. How much you matter to me. That what we did together wasn’ just about sex. It will never be just about sex with you. I don’ know what’s growin’ in me for you, but it’s there, Pepper.”

She lay beneath him, looking up at him with questions in her eyes. His hand stroked her long hair from her face, his fingers gentle, soothing even.

“I don’t understand.”

“You deserve tender. Gentle. I can do that now that we’ve been through the storm of the century.” He grinned at her as he leaned down to brush a kiss along her throat. His hand stroked her breast and then he leaned down and flicked her nipple with his tongue before rolling off her to lie on the floor close, his body pressed to hers. “You are incredible, Pepper. My woman. Incredible. How do you feel, sugar? Are you all right?”

Was she? Pepper wasn’t certain of anything. She lay very still beside him, wanting to touch each place on her body where he’d kissed her. Where he’d touched her with such gentle fingers. He’d gone from fierce to tender in minutes and the change threw her. Wyatt was… She didn’t know.

And then it dawned on her. Her body wasn’t hurting. There was no burning. No tension. For the first time she could recall in years, her body was her own. Completely sated. Satisfied. There was no terrible drive for sex. No unwanted hunger she couldn’t assuage or stop.