She took the outstretched hand. He twined his fingers through hers, and his head lowered towards her. She worried the visions would come back, distracting her from everything else.
'Concentrate on what you're doing, and you won't see anything but me,' he murmured, breath hot on her face.
The first kiss was gentle, soft and unthreatening and gentle, just a brush of mouth on mouth. The visions were there, but she found that if she thought hard enough about his lips, the texture and the pressure and the warmth of them, they went away. He kissed her mouth open, encouraging her lips to part for him and her head to tilt back and when she was ready he deepened the kiss, the feel of his tongue against hers new and strange.
She could feel her awareness of him growing, an accompanying urge to hold him, to explore him rising from somewhere deep down, so she released his hand, and put her arms around his neck instead. The contact of her naked breasts against his chest sent a delicious shudder through her, and she stretched up further, pressed her tongue into his mouth, his heat flush against her belly.
He made a noise in the back of his throat, moving harder and faster into the kiss, hands sliding up her sides until his thumbs could caress the sides of her breasts and then racing back down again to cup her backside, hauling her against him. Without warning, she lost the sensation of skin on skin and he stepped back, his eyes flashing down her body, taking in the hardened nipples, the reddened skin, the heightened breathing.
She felt the command without him having to articulate it, sat on the edge of the bed, then pushed herself back to lay down. He stationed himself beside her, propped up on an elbow and one finger of one hand traced a path down her neck, under her right breast, lingering there while his face filled her vision and she lost herself in his kiss.
His finger continued its journey, circling around the softness of her skin until it reached the central peak, grazing it with his palm. Shivers spread outwards from his touch, and she found herself arching up into it, one knee raising. He was moving again, his hand dragging downwards across her stomach, a slow and deliberate glide which paused at the apex of her thighs.
Her belly tensed, constricted with a desire that was both excitement and trepidation, but his tongue was moving, moving against hers, her hand tangled in his hair and the more he stayed still, the more she wanted him to touch her.
She separated her legs. His hand slid down, covering the place between them and his head came up, his lips following her jawline with tiny, nipping kisses that trailed beneath her ear and extended down her chest.
She opened her eyes and watched him, his dark hair falling about his face, holding her attention with the pull of those secretive eyes. He took her nipple into his mouth and at the same time, his finger extended, pushing inside her to find the centre of her desire.
She gasped at the intrusion, the sudden friction within her softness, the instant pleasure it brought, sharp and sweet.
He watched her watching him, delicately feathering her breasts with teasing strokes and then sucking her nipple deep into his mouth with an insistent pressure. His finger worked inside her, and her breath began to come in fits and starts, a tightening in her groin coiling like a wound spring.
It was the way he regarded her that set her heart pounding though, that unbroken concentration, the seriousness with which he undertook each task, the rapt attention in his eyes. His head moved lower, kisses peppering her stomach, the tops of her legs, and he installed himself between her thighs, nudging them apart while he dipped forward, and she was left looking at only his eyes.
The kiss between her legs took her breath away. The first touch of his tongue, the soft rasp of contact, the warmth and the wetness and most of all, the knowledge that he wanted to do this for her, wanted to prostrate himself at her feet and use his mouth to bring her pleasure tipped her over the edge.
Her hips twisted, rose from the bed as she climaxed with a shout, coming down again just as quickly.
He was on her in seconds, stripping away his underwear, adjusting her position and with a single, sharp thrust, buried himself inside. She felt discomfort, unfamiliarity at the weight of him on top, the feeling of being stretched alien and awkward. He didn't move though, just stayed there, supporting himself on arms corded with muscle, looking into her eyes.
It was the first time she'd been able to touch him back. She reached out, learned the pattern of bone and sinew in his shoulders, and spread her fingers across his chest.
He seemed to take this as encouragement, tilted his hips and began to move inside her, the gentle push and pull of penetration a slow rhythm in her loins. After several minutes the aching inside her died away and his movements became less constrained, his hips working harder to withdraw and then enter her again. They moved together instinctively, and she felt the same exhilaration she'd experienced when they battled on the same side, but this was deeper somehow, a more complex connection. She didn't even need to ask him to go faster, before he did.
Sweat sheened his forehead. She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking him in. He dropped his weight on top of her, gathered her tight to his chest, pounding into her hard and fast and she gasped at the feeling that spread through her.
It wasn't orgasm, this was a different thing, a warm and a comforting thing, safe and solid and secure. She knew what it was although she'd never felt it before. Belonging. Here and now, this was where she belonged, with the powerful, vulnerable man currently climaxing inside her.
He drew in a few shuddering breaths, disengaged, and rolled over, panting.
She propped herself up beside him, mimicking his previous position and put a hand on his chest to feel the racing of his heart, wondering if it pulsed with the same emotions as hers.
He shoved a pillow under his head, raised a quizzical eyebrow. 'Well? Was that what you were expecting?'
She dropped a kiss onto the middle of his chest. It seemed to surprise him. She added another, then a third, and then, because it might be the sort of thing he'd like, she flicked her tongue at his nipple, feeling a tiny tremor and the hitch in his breathing before she did it again.
She kissed her way over his chest, learning the smell his skin had close up, the roughness of old injuries, the smoothness of scar tissue. It was a young body to have been so damaged, and an irrational urge to protect him raced though her.
The muscles in his stomach required counting; so she turned her tongue to that task and he put both hands behind his head to get a better view.
'Do you feel it too?' she asked between kisses, and she knew he'd comprehend what she meant – the connection between them, the unspoken understanding.
He shrugged. 'I've always felt it. Right from the first time we met. In fact, that time in the forest when we fought, I was trying my best not to kill you. I wanted you to win. You must have noticed.'
He reached out casually, flipped her hair to one side. She was kissing her way down a line of dark curls, which was soon to join many more.
She said, 'Liar,' and she took him in her mouth.
There was a finesse to this that she didn't yet possess, or maybe it was simply too soon, because it took several seconds of just sitting there patiently before anything stirred. Maybe she was supposed to be sucking. She tried that for a while, experimenting with various degrees of power, on just the end, on the end and a bit more, on as much as she could fit down her throat. He watched her without moving, but his face grew slowly redder and his lips were shiny with moisture.
She tried licking to see if that was any more effective, running up and down his length with her tongue, then flicking the top aggressively. He didn't appear to be able to look away from what she was doing. She got bored with the licking, ran short of ideas and felt his hand on the back of her head, urging it forward and then releasing so she could pull back. She put all the actions together, the sucking and the licking and the head bobbing, but the thing he liked most, the thing his eyes were telling her he liked most, was watching her doing that to him. She'd felt the same.
He pushed her away before she managed to get him to shout though, picking her up, spreading her legs and planting her firmly on top of him. Her eyes went wide as he slid inside her again.
She'd thought that last time he'd been deep, but this was something else. Every time he pressed upwards he rubbed against something inside her that made her whole body quiver. She slid down on top of him as he pushed up, and that almost-orgasm rippled through her again.
He licked a finger, inserted it carefully into the hot gap between her spread legs and began to rub. She forgot herself, riding the tides of pleasure with increasing abandon until the jerk and spasm of his release drove her over the edge, and she came around him with every nerve ending ablaze.