If only that were true. Even now, he wasn't sure of her. The urge to claim and keep burgeoned, and for once he didn't try and reason away his possessive urges. Desire blasted reason to ash, revealing the primitive who recognized only passion's dominion.

He slid his fingers along the sleek folds. She released a strangled sound and jerked. Then jerked again when he concentrated on her center. She felt like hot, wet silk. With purposeful slowness, he built her need, using his hand between her legs and his mouth on her breasts.

Her hands dug hard into his head, tangled in his hair, held him closer. Only when her breathing was a tattered staccato did he relent. He trailed his lips across the soft plain of her stomach, then gripped her thighs in both hands and parted her legs.

His belly cramped with excitement.

Avidly he drank in the sight of her sex. Plump, pink, glistening. The sharp scent of her arousal made his head swim. Or perhaps that was the wild pounding of his yearning heart.

Lingeringly he kissed her there, tasting salty desire. She was so primed, within seconds she began to tremble and cry out. He'd never been so attuned to a lover's response. Her rhythmic moans created a delicious counterpoint to his depredations.

He lapped at her and slid a finger into her passage, working in time with the flick of his tongue. On a broken moan, she tightened to keep him. The physical verged into a new realm when he took her in his arms. If he wasn't so aroused, he'd be bloody terrified.

He penetrated deep and felt the precise moment her hold on reality snapped.

Ah, yes .

Her sobbing rapture was the sweetest sound in the world. Still he didn't stop. She'd driven him to the verge of madness. He intended to return the favor. He'd pleasure her until she disintegrated. Then he'd make her anew with his name inscribed on each spectacular inch of her.

She would be his. Utterly.

What created this uncontrollable hunger to possess every atom of Antonia? Right now, he was so lost to sensation, he hardly cared.

She still quaked when he set to build another climax. Her fingers speared his hair, tugged hard. He drank of her, used teeth, tongue, lips to summon that wild crescendo.

With shocking swiftness, she tautened into her peak. Her responsiveness astonished him. Flooded him with poignant wonder. Fantasies of having her had tormented him for so long. The reality surpassed his dreams, left him reeling.

He wanted to send her across the barrier again. He wanted her delirious with ecstasy, addicted to him. He wanted her very blood singing his name. The craving to thrust into her threatened to obliterate him, but having her spread out before him like a banquet offered its own satisfaction.

"Nicholas . " she begged in a cracked voice, even as the hands she buried in his hair loosened to a languid caress. "Nicholas, wait."

The sound of Nicholas on her lips was like music. He'd make her scream his name before he was done. Luxuriously he licked her again, probing the wet, delicate folds. He'd envisioned this moment too long to rush. In Surrey he'd made that fatal mistake and she'd deserted him.

"Nicholas . " Her voice faded on a sigh as he tasted her again, relishing her musky flavor. She dug her fingers into his scalp. "Nicholas, please."

Reluctantly he raised his head. She looked feverish and frantic.

"Don't you like it?"

His voice was gravelly. Her essence was rich on his tongue. He wanted more of her. Hell, he always wanted more of her.

"Of course I like it." Irritation burred her answer. She slid up against the headboard, her beautiful breasts rising and falling with each choppy breath. "You know I do."

"Then why stop?"

Her legs cradled his shoulders and her hot scent was more intoxicating than any wine. He could taste her on his lips. Delicious.

"Because . " She swallowed and lowered her eyelashes to evade his searching gaze. "You know why."

His voice lowered into persuasion. "Tell me what you want, Antonia. Tell me."

A choked whisper emerged and color surged into her cheeks. "I want you to stop teasing me."

He couldn't help smiling. "You'll have to be more specific."

Her chin lifted and she shot him an annoyed glance under her lashes. "I want . "

"Yes?"

"Curse you, Ranelaw," she snapped, staring at him directly out of eyes heavy with arousal. The effect was wildly inflammatory when she stretched naked before him, her full breasts quivering with each unsteady breath and her sex open to his gaze.

His smile broadened. "That's no answer."

"You leave me no pride." She blasted him with another incendiary azure glance. "I want you inside me. I want you to fill me until there's room for nothing else, not thought or guilt or regret. I want you to stop treating me like a toy and accept that here we're equals."

Antonia .

Hell and the devil. Any impulse to tease disintegrated in a flare of heat. Her words laid claim to his soul.

Even as he struggled to come to terms with her searing honesty, she continued in the same low voice. "I want you to make the world outside this room disappear. I want you to pound into me so hard, I only feel you, I only know you, I only think of you."

She faltered into silence. She breathed rapidly, unevenly. Her gaze fixed on him, hot as fire. Conflicting emotions flickered across her face.

Vulnerability. Of course. Her frankness left her undefended.

Fear. Courage. Challenge.

Above all, desire.

Slowly he sat up, his eyes not wavering from hers. She made a mockery of his defenses. How ironic to think he'd devoted such effort to conquering her, only to recognize she was in the end the victor.

He wanted her more than he'd ever wanted another woman. Worse, she exerted a pull on his emotions he'd never felt before. And he didn't know how to break this fatal fascination.

"Antonia, I don't deserve you," he said with utter sincerity.

With every moment, this encounter swept him further from the safe harbor of easy lust. He'd always known Antonia would be extraordinary. Now he realized she would mark him so deeply that he'd never be free of her.

Her dark blond eyelashes fluttered down then up again. An uncertain smile curved her lips. "Have I shocked you?"

"No . " Then he recognized her candor merited better return than face-saving denial. He leaned over her, supporting himself on his arms. His heart pounded so hard, he thought it must crash from his chest. "Yes."

She tilted her head to meet his eyes. The blue was so clear, he saw all the way to her soul. He'd spoken the truth when he said he didn't deserve her. The tragedy was at some profound level, he wished he did.

"Kiss me, Nicholas."

He obliged. Such passion. Such desire. Antonia .

When finally he lifted his head, her eyes were brilliant with excitement. Her voice was throaty as she shifted down the bed to lie under him. "Now, Nicholas."

At last .

The moment stretched into infinity as Ranelaw angled his hips and slowly pushed inside Antonia. Immediately he experienced that sense of homecoming. As though in all the turbulent world, this was the place he belonged.

She was taut, trembling, drawing him in. Her face was strained as though, like him, she recognized the importance of this joining.

Even though the need for completion blared in his head like a company of trumpets, he resisted the urge to thrust.

Take her. Take her. Take her.

But the tenderness that lit his passion like the last glow of sunset made him pause, take his time, ensure her pleasure. Beneath his physical hunger lurked a need to cherish this woman, with her spirit and beauty.

She sighed, a shaky exhalation, and shifted to take more of him. She linked her hands behind his neck. "Nicholas, don't play games."

Again the sound of his name pierced him to the bone. Such effortless power she exerted. "I'm trying . to demonstrate control," he muttered.

"I don't care," she said roughly, arching with a restless ardor that set his pulse thundering. Her squirming promised to hurtle him over the edge.

He gritted his teeth and bent her knees around his hips. The change in position squeezed the head of his cock. He bit back a tormented groan. And tried to remember why he didn't claim her in one deep lunge. "I do care."

I do care .

Brief clarity blasted through the scarlet fog of passion. God save him, he did care about her. As more than a willing bed partner, magnificent as she was in his arms.

He barricaded himself against the unwelcome revelation. Easy when this woman rocketed good intentions to the skies.

Had she even heard his broken, unprecedented confession? He set out to make her forget his foolish words, drown their echo in passion. But whatever he did, the reverence underscoring his every touch declaimed the unwelcome truth.

He cared for her.

Desperate to stifle discomfiting emotion, he inched further. She was hot as a furnace and drenched with desire. Her breath emerged in frantic gusts and her fingernails raked his shoulders. The sting was negligible compared to the agony in his balls as he battled to delay possession. To tease her into pleasure.

Although this didn't feel like anything as trivial as teasing. This union sent the planets spinning from their orbits.

She whimpered and her fingernails dug deeper. He'd emerge from this night as bloody as if he'd fought off an angry tigress.

Oh, yes, she was a tigress. He'd always loved that about her.

His muscles screaming, he made another incremental advance. Her choked whimper combined distress and pleasure. The sound roared through his blood.

More minuscule progression. His vision narrowed to a tunnel. He saw only Antonia. Her skin gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. Her breasts shook with the shuddering force of each breath. Her hands opened and shut on his shoulders in frantic supplication.

With a clumsiness born of frustration, she twined her legs around his buttocks, forcing him down. Resistance was excruciating, but resist he did.

"Please . " she begged in a cracked voice. "Oh, please . "

Her unabashed need jolted hunger through him. He couldn't delay much longer. Red lights flashed behind his eyes as he struggled for one last, quaking moment of restraint before he yielded to the whirlwind.

From his depths emerged words he'd never thought to speak to a woman. In a final flash, before he sank into mindless passion, he recognized this was why he shoved her so pitilessly to the brink.

"Say you're mine," he growled in a voice he didn't recognize. "Damn it, say you're mine, Antonia."

She hardly seemed to hear. She'd retreated into sensation. Each breath emerged as a strangled moan and she tossed her head side to side against the pillows. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. She looked as though he tortured her.

He rose to his knees and shifted his hands to her hips, hauling her into him without giving her what she wanted. She wriggled, sliding closer with a sinuous strength that tested his last shreds of control.

"Say it," he repeated in that same guttural voice.

"Nicholas . " she whispered in helpless pleading. Her hands left his shoulders and closed like shackles around his straining forearms.

"Say it . "

She opened her eyes and stared up. Her gaze was opaque. "I . "

"Say it, Antonia," he snarled, edging a fraction further. Her muscles contracted as she struggled to draw him deeper. Each tiny movement shot flame through his head, singed his mind.

"I . "

Her face was stark with arousal, with longing, with discomfort. He knew what he did tried her to her physical limits. Her nails scored his flesh like knives.

"Say it." For all his pride and determination, he knew he couldn't hold back much longer.

"I . "

She surged up and in a conflagration of light, he lost his futile battle. With a broken groan, he buried himself to the hilt. He slumped forward as she closed around him.

As if she never meant to let him go.

She inhaled on a jagged sigh and shifted, her beaded nipples grazing his chest with sweet friction. "I'm yours," she whispered.

The shaken confession etched itself on his skin. He released his breath in a powerful gasp and closed his eyes, seeking triumph.

And found none.

He hadn't won this war between them. Because her admission echoed the words ripping at his heart.

That if she was his, he was hers. Forever.

Chapter Twenty.

Antonia firmed her hold on Nicholas's sweat-sleeked back and felt the trembling tension in his muscles. She was overwhelmingly conscious of the throbbing, massive invasion of her body. His weight and hard power pinned her beneath him. He held preternaturally still as though her unwilling, broken confession turned him to stone.

Then with a desperation that both thrilled and terrified her, he began to move. The fierce purpose of his thrusts pounded her deep into the mattress and set the bed creaking. It was as though he struggled to hammer them together into a single entity, a pure infinity of passion forged from crackling flame. The wildness of his possession unleashed an answering wildness in her. Taut as a piano wire, she shuddered, her fingers digging into his shoulders. Hot need spiraled higher with every thrust.