Married By Christmas. Оливия Гейтс

      Unable to stand any longer, he sank down to the marble floor, barely aware of the water still raining down on them. Only she had ever made him powerless. Since he’d first seen her, she’d been his undoing. Now he wrapped himself around her, the woman who’d been made to take him whole, to fit within his arms and being.

      He realized she’d gone limp in his arms only when she lurched, a gasp seeming to restart her breathing. Her eyes, slumberous and replete and adoring, snared him, ate him up whole, sending fire raging through him again. She was a goddess of temptation and benevolence and fulfillment, one he’d always felt unworthy of. It never ceased to humble him that she, miraculously, wanted no one but him. Gratitude and greed surged inside him, making him crush her against him as he drove all the way inside her again.

      Her eyes squeezed shut as she gasped, her core contracting around his fully engorged erection, making him thrust deeper into her, wrenching moans from both of them. Her eyes snapped open, scorched him with the amalgam of pleasure and pain that intensified her one-of-a-kind beauty. She brought his face down to hers, merging their lips, too.

      His mind was a total blank as his tongue mated with hers in a languid duel. Though he’d been kissing her almost nonstop through the past weeks, this was different. This was total, complete. Tasting her while holding back, he’d felt like Tantalus, unable to ever quench his thirst until he’d felt he’d shrivel up and expire. Drinking from her lips now that they were sharing their bodies in profound intimacy again was a revival. Even her name described what she was. A resurrection. His resurrection.

      Soon the leisurely pleasure caught fire, and she was writhing in his arms as he pounded himself up inside her until they exploded simultaneously into an even fiercer, more prolonged orgasm.

      An eternity later, he relinquished her mouth to gaze down at her. Her head fell back, her face drugged with satisfaction.

      Then those lips he’d kissed swollen and deep red moved, and that beloved voice poured out in a heartbreakingly tender melody. “I want you again, Ivan. And again. I want to make up for all the time you wouldn’t let me have you.”

      At her words he hardened again immediately. It was as if their previous two times served only to whet his appetite. As it always had. Whenever he’d taken her in a fury of haste, the explosive satisfaction had only left him wanting more, the kind of pleasure that only slow lovemaking would bring. And that had been when he’d been ignorant of one paramount fact. That no other woman would do.

      Now that he knew every cell in his body was her personal property, no matter if she would have him or not, his desire frightened him with its magnitude.

      But she did want him the same way. She wanted him with everything in her. For now. And for as long as he could have her total desire, he would give her his everything.

      Adjusting her in his lap, over his erection, he began to move inside her again. He luxuriated in possessing her, in exploring her body and plumbing the depths of her responses as he loved her. He gave her two more screaming, heaving orgasms before he took his own roaring release.

      After he’d rinsed and dried them both, he scooped her up and headed toward his bedroom this time, where he intended to keep her for as long as she would stay.

      It was only when he was walking the huge corridor leading to his suite that she stirred in his arms, her question slurring. “Where are you taking me?”

      He bent to kiss those swollen lips that could barely articulate words. “To my bed. Where I’ll take you properly.”

      * * *

      It sometimes seemed impossible.

      Well, it always did, actually. That Ivan could give her even more pleasure every time he made love to her. But he did.

      Ever since that day six weeks ago when he’d given in and given her himself totally, every time he took her, it was even better, more carnal, yet more profound. He’d been very eloquent and copious with expressing his passion. Far more poetic than this science nerd could ever be. He told her every time he touched her, it was like he tapped into another realm, where neither of them had limits, where the potential for pleasure and unity was infinite.

      Anastasia sighed, stretched in bed, every cell buzzing with bliss as she watched Ivan through the open door of his gigantic bedroom, theirs now. He was coming into view then disappearing as he walked to and fro in the attached living room, his deep voice barely audible so as not to disturb her as he no doubt settled a business matter with a subordinate.

      She’d never felt like this before, not even with him. Their rapport had been growing with every touch, every glance and word, as if the ordeals they’d endured together had somehow given each a direct link to the other’s very essence. Now they were learning to perfect each channel of communication between them, every spark of sensation. The most incredible thing was his becoming that vocal in expressing his feelings, in communicating his thoughts and memories.

      Not that he’d ever crossed some lines. He hadn’t put a name to those feelings, or ever went back in time further than when he’d been establishing Black Castle Enterprises with his partners, whom she’d discovered were more than brothers to him. It had been okay with her, as she’d thought it was only a matter of time before he let her in all the way.

      But that had proved the only blot in the perfection. That she by now believed he never would.

      Suddenly, the bone-deep contentment of waking up in his bed evaporated. Getting up, she put on the turquoise silk robe he’d bought her, another thing that echoed her eyes, which he loved to see.

      Walking to the balcony, she opened the blackout curtains, let the cool late November daylight in, looking over the sprawling, snow-covered grounds, trying to shake off the dip in her mood.

      She was being too silly, too greedy, needing to reach as deep inside him as he had inside her. But she had to live with the fact that there was far more to him than there was to her. Or anyone else for that matter. What had made him this incomparable man that he was had to have been experiences and tests that she couldn’t even imagine. No doubt things he wanted to forget, might even regret. If he couldn’t let her in that far, probably thinking she couldn’t handle it, it shouldn’t bother her. That it did was her own problem, not his. A problem she should deal with, once and for all.

      “Did I wake you up?”

      She whirled around at Ivan’s vocal caress. She’d been engaged in such a struggle with her wayward thoughts that she hadn’t heard his approach. He was behind her, then around her, encompassing her in his cherishing power.

      She met his heated smile with her own. “I just woke up because you were no longer beside me.”

      “Now I am, and it’s the only place I ever want to be.” His breath flayed her lips, hot, virile, filling her lungs and being. “No one should wake up this beautiful. No one should be this beautiful, period.”

      Starting to tremble with that urgency for him that never abated, she ground herself against his hardness. “Look who’s talking.”

      He pressed her back against the French window, driving one pant-clad powerful thigh between her quivering legs where her robe opened to expose them. “Tell me, Anastasia.”

      He always urged her to tell him everything she was thinking, everything she wanted. It was as if he needed access to her very soul, to her every whim and need so he could satisfy them. Which he did. Apart from that one huge part of himself he never let her near, he was giving her everything there was to give. While she held nothing back from him.

      Now she gave him what he asked for, full capitulation. “I find everything about you painfully, distressingly, beautiful.” To accentuate her admission, she slipped her arms from around his neck, pushed his open shirt farther apart and covered the perfection of his chest in compulsive kisses. “Every inch of you, every move and word and touch, every callus and scar... It all delights me, drives me out of my mind, even more the more I’m exposed to you, the more I have of you.”

      His gratification—especially