She could feel his triumph as he began to plunge in and out of her, hard and fast just like she’d begged him to. With each thrust, he seemed to enter deeper. She arched her back. Her insides wound tighter, and incredibly, she found herself climaxing again. Holding back was impossible. A sob tore her throat as she surrendered to another tide of pleasure. Before she could catch her breath, he flipped her around, leaving her legs dangling off the island, and entered her again, face-to-face. He gripped her hips hard and pumped into her. She was nothing but a trembling mass of overly sensitized nerve endings. He was ruthless, as if he was trying to brand her as his.
And she didn’t care. Her brain had ceased to work a long time ago, and there was only her body and its insatiable need for the sensation only Alex could give her.
The sound of flesh slapping against flesh. Harsh breathing. Her own voice in another piercing scream.
He gave a guttural groan and one final thrust. He leaned heavily against her, and she welcomed the solid reality of his body on hers. As the tides of sensation receded and she slowly came back to her senses, she was surprised and a little frightened to realize that Alex had reached something inside of her that was far beyond the physical.
* * *
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that. When he got his breath back, he gave her a kiss and went to the bathroom. Sated and sleepy, she followed him to the master bedroom and leaned against the door frame. She’d thought the cabin was a hunting lodge and expected a decapitated stag head mounted over the bed or something. But instead there was a modern painting. Oak walls gave the room a light touch, with a large window that faced the woods. The sunlight filtered through the pale emerald drapery and dyed the ivory sheets on the bed green.
Natalie heard the toilet flush, and Alex reappeared with a small towel. He cleaned her gently, and she sighed. Even the soft fabric was too much for the sensitive junction between her legs.
“Let me take you to bed,” he murmured.
Alex picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her on the cool sheets. She curled into a fetal position. He spooned her, and she relaxed into his body heat. After their passionate lovemaking, his presence next to her felt like the most natural thing in the world.
They lay there for a few moments, his hands skimming her curves. Then he murmured, “You mentioned something about doing it from the side…?”
There was a slight but slowly increasing pressure along a cucumber-sized length of the back of her thigh. Her eyes widened.
“You don’t need to…rest?”
She didn’t need to turn around to know there was a smile on his face. “Apparently not.”
Chapter Ten
IT WAS THE damnedest thing.
What had happened in the Halls’ backyard had stayed with Alex through the rest of the day and far into the night. When nothing, not even an arctic shower, had worked, he’d thought he could sate the need if he slept with her.
What a huge miscalculation.
What they’d just done was more than sex. He’d never been so attuned to another person. And when she’d demanded that he take her…he’d been filled by a savage exhilaration he thought would kill him.
Look at what she was doing to him without even touching him. His teenage years were well in the past, but she made him feel like he was back in high school, hormones running rampant. He wanted to mark her as his. Make her forget Charlie Rodale, that moron Marcus O’Dell, and every other man on the planet.
The ferocity of his possessiveness startled him. He didn’t get involved this deeply this quickly. The primary reason for approaching Natalie in the first place had been to strike at the Rodales. But now he found himself stricken.
Bitterness filled his mouth. Hadn’t he learned from what happened to his father?
Emily Rodale, young, beautiful, and ambitious, had slept with James Damon only for the business secrets that had enabled Charles Rodale Sr. to destroy the Damons’ company. When the family lost its fortune, Alex’s mother hadn’t been able to deal with the situation. She had loved James only for the financial security he had provided for her. Being poor hadn’t been something she could understand. Growing up rich tended to do that to people.
And look how everything had turned out for James himself. Destitute and alone. Alex’s mother had been able to find someone else. She’d been a beautiful woman, after all, with zero maternal instinct; Alex had woken up one day to find her gone.
She’d never come back. Had never written or called or sent him Christmas cards or birthday presents.
He still remembered the humiliation and the terrible, racking pain. The feelings of helplessness and inadequacy.
Emily would feel them tenfold. A hundredfold.
Natalie rolled over and looked at Alex with wide eyes, dark and clear, and he was immediately jerked back to the present. “What are you thinking?” she said.
“Nothing.” Then he smiled. “Well…maybe something.”
He reached for a condom. The second he was protected, he grabbed her and parted her thighs. He entered smoothly, finding her ready and hilting himself in one exquisitely long plunge.
She adjusted to his invasion. He kissed her, and it was as if he hadn’t had two killer orgasms in the past hour.