“I can’t just take you like this, Tatiana. Not again, not so soon after your first time.”

Tatiana rubbed her breasts against his chest. “I’m not a virgin anymore,” she reminded him in a softly seductive voice, one that now held tremendous knowledge of pleasure. “And yes, you should definitely keep taking me like this. In fact, if I had known just how amazing making love with you would be, I would have jumped you the day we met in Napa.”

He covered her mouth with his, kissing her breathless before he admitted, “The first time I set eyes on you, I wanted you so badly.”

“You could have had me, Ian.”

He shook his head, her honest words wreaking havoc with the little bit of control he still had in his grasp. “No. Jesus, no. Don’t tell me that.”

“Just think of all the time we wasted, thinking about each other, wanting each other, when all along we could have been doing this.”

She shifted her hips in an obvious move to take him into her, and it took everything in him to grip her hips and stop her from impaling herself on him. “Not yet, sweetheart. Let me make you come again. Let me make sure you’re ready—that I won’t be hurting you.”

He slid one hand over her stomach down to the slick flesh between her legs. “I love touching you,” he murmured against her mouth. “I’ve never felt anything so hot, so soft, so perfect.”

“I love it, too,” she gasped as she moved herself back and forth over his hand, her breath coming faster with every push of her hips against him. She had her arms wound around his neck and was holding onto him so tightly that he could feel her heart pound faster and faster as she rose higher, then higher still.

When she pulled her mouth from his, and threw her head back so that she could arch her hips closer to his hand, he had to taste her breasts, had to draw her nipples in between his lips to taste first one, then the other. Her cries of pleasure echoed against the tiled walls of the bathroom.

Moving his free hand to the nape of her neck, he threaded his fingers into the wet tangle of her hair. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.” She blinked once, twice, before she was able to focus. “I want to watch you come. Let me see you. I need to see you.”

As if his request, and his desperate need, had flipped a switch inside her, a heartbeat later she was climaxing...and what he saw in her eyes, and in her expression that held back nothing at all from him, touched Ian in a way nothing else ever had.

Not only pleasure, not just arousal, but a depth of emotion that had him wishing, harder than he’d ever wished for anything in his life, that he was capable of loving Tatiana the way she deserved to be loved.

But it was the sweet and trusting smile she gave him even before she’d come down from her orgasm that nearly broke him. He’d already made the mistake of stealing her innocence. He couldn’t make it even worse by making her promises he’d never be able to keep.

Lifting her out of the tub, he carefully wrapped her in a towel, and as he picked her up to carry her back to his bed, she said, “I’m ready for you to show me slow and sweet now, Ian.” She kissed him softly, just the barest brush of her lips against his, before whispering, “Although if you want to know the truth, I’m ready for fast and hard again, too.”

His hands shook as he gently laid her on the bed, the towel falling open to reveal one perfect breast and a long length of leg. He’d been little better than an animal their first time. So no matter how hard it was to hold back a little longer, her pleasure mattered more than anything else.

She seemed to believe he’d given her enough orgasms already. But she was wrong. If he showed her nothing else before the night was over, he hoped she’d come away knowing just how much pleasure she deserved.

“Not yet,” he murmured against her skin as he moved over her to press a kiss to the underside of her breast.

“Please,” she begged when he slid her towel the rest of the way off so that he could run kisses over her rib cage and stomach.

“We’re almost there,” he promised, nipping lightly at her hipbone, then gently putting his hands on her thighs to push them open. “But not quite.” Lord, she smelled good, and for a few moments he just enjoyed looking, just let himself breathe in her heady scent.

“Ian.” There was a faint hum of panic in the way she said his name as she looked down at how open she was to him, and then at him, clearly poised to put his mouth on her. “I promised I’d tell you if I hadn’t done something bef—”

Her confession of further innocence fell away as he licked a wet, heated path over her aroused flesh.

“Now,” he told her, “you’ve done it.”

Just as quickly as she’d taken to everything else they’d done, she was instantly lifting her hips back to his mouth for more. Wanting to oblige her every sensual wish, he cupped her hips in his hands and drew her closer. He loved her taste on his tongue, loved the way she gave herself over so completely to him every single time, loved the thrill of knowing he was driving her back up to the peak again.

He knew the instant her orgasm started to roll over and through her, when on a low moan of pleasure, she gripped his hair in her hands hard enough to make absolutely sure that he wouldn’t take his lips and tongue away. Of course, there was nowhere he’d rather be than taking her up and over another crashing climax.

She was still trembling from the force of it when he moved on to his back and tugged her over him so that she was straddling him. “You’ll control everything this way,” he explained as he reached for another condom. He was just ripping the package open when she took it from him.

“This is another thing I haven’t done.” She shifted slightly so that she could look down at his erection. She reached for him with one hand, gripping the base of his shaft to hold him steady while she slowly unrolled the condom over his tip with the other. “How am I doing?”

He was gritting his teeth so hard in his attempts at control that he could barely tell her, “So good that I might not last until you’ve got it all the way on.”

Clearly delighted with the effect she had on him, the sweet sound of her laughter filled his bedroom. He was so struck by the beauty of it that it took him a few too many seconds to realize she’d moved again so that she was levered right over him.

She moved her hips over his in just the right way to make his eyes roll back in his head, and when she laughed again, the sound was utterly sensual, and full of newfound female power...and pleasure, too.

“You know what? I think I like being in control.”

And though it just might kill him the way she took him into her one slow, torturous inch at a time, Ian liked it, too. Loved it.

Her eyes closed as she lowered herself onto him, savoring the moment as though she wanted it to last forever, and though he did, too, in the end his primal need to have her couldn’t be denied any longer.

Gripping her hips hard enough that she’d likely have marks on her skin the next day, Ian held Tatiana right where he wanted her, then thrust hard into her. She gasped as he drove deep, but he knew this time that it was pleasure rather than pain that had her pushing just as hard down over him.

“It’s so good, Ian. So, so good.”

She was practically sobbing the words as she braced her hands flat on his chest and rode him, the muscles in her thighs working hard to lift her body up, then back down, over him. Her breasts bounced, tempting him, teasing him, until he had to cup them in his hands and stroke both nipples together with his tongue.

She moved her hands from his chest to thread her fingers into his hair and tug his mouth even closer, and when the new position took him even deeper, her body eagerly opened for every last inch of him. “More. Please, Ian. I need more.”