He stiffened, bit back a moan as her hesitant fingers skimmed over his hips. He was already hard and shifted slightly, worried that he might frighten her.

Slowly, he ordered himself. Delicately.

He slipped the top strap of her apron over her head, untied the one around her waist and drew it off. Her eyes fluttered open, her lips curved.

“Will you kiss me again?” Her voice was honey thick now, and warm. “It makes everything go gold behind my eyes when you do.”

He rested his brow on hers, waited a moment until he thought he could give her the gentleness she’d asked for. Then he took her mouth, swallowed her lovely, soft sigh. She seemed to melt beneath him, the tremblings giving way to pliancy.

She felt nothing but his mouth, that wonderful mouth that feasted so sumptuously on hers. Then his hand cupped her throat as if testing the speed of the pulse that fluttered there before he trailed down.

She hadn’t been aware that he’d unfastened her blouse. As his fingers traced the soft swell of her breast above her bra, her eyes flew open. His were steady on hers, with a concentration so focused it brought the trembles back. She started to protest, to make some sound of denial. But his touch was so alluring, just a skim of fingertips against flesh.

It wasn’t fearful, she realized. It was soothing, and just as sweet as the kiss. Even as she willed herself to relax again, those clever fingers slipped under the cotton and found the sensitive point.

Her first gasp ripped through him—the sound of it, the arousing sensation of her body arching in surprise and pleasure. He was barely touching her, he thought as his blood pounded. She had no idea how much more there was.

God, he was desperate to show her.

“Relax.” He kissed her, kissed her, as his fingers continued to arouse and his free hand circled back to unhook the barrier. “Just feel it.”

She had no choice. Sensations were tearing through her, tiny arrows of pleasure and shock. His mouth swallowed her strangled breaths as he tugged away her clothes and left her bare to the waist.

“God, you’re so beautiful.” His first look at that milk-pale skin, the small br**sts that fit so perfectly into the cups of his palms nearly undid him. Unable to resist, he lowered his head and tasted.

She moaned, long, deep, throaty. The movements of her body under his were pure instinct, he knew, and not designed to deliberately claw at his control. So he pleased her, gently, and found his own pleasure growing from hers.

His mouth was so hot. The air was so thick. Each time he tugged, pulled, laved, there was an answering flutter in the pit of her stomach. A flutter that built and built into something too close to pain, too close to pleasure to separate them.

He was murmuring to her, lovely, soft words that circled like rainbows in her head. It didn’t matter what he said—she would have told him if she could. Nothing mattered as long as he never, never stopped touching her.

He tugged his own shirt over his head, craving the feel of flesh against flesh. When he lowered himself to her again, she made a small sound and wrapped her arms around him.

She only sighed again when his mouth roamed lower, over torso, over ribs. Her skin heated, muscles jerking, quivering under his lips and hands. And he knew she was lost in that dark tunnel of sensations.

Carefully he unhooked her slacks, baring new flesh slowly, exploring it gently. As her hips arched once in innocent agreement, he clamped his teeth and fought back the tearing need to take, just take and satisfy the grinding in his taut body.

Her nails dug into his back, drawing out a groan of dark delight from him as his hand skimmed down her bared hip. He knew she’d stiffened again and begged whatever god was listening for strength.

“Not until you’re ready,” he murmured and brought his lips patiently back to hers again. “I promise. But I want to see you. All of you.”

He shifted, knelt back. There was fear in her eyes again, though her body was quivering with suppressed needs. He couldn’t steady his hands or his voice, but he kept them gentle.

“I want to touch all of you.” His eyes stayed on hers as he unsnapped his jeans. “All of you.”

When he stripped, her gaze was drawn inexorably down. And her fear doubled. She knew what was to happen. She was, after all, a farmer’s daughter, however poor a farmer he’d been. There would be pain, and blood, and. . .

“Gray—”

“Your skin’s so soft.” Watching her, he skimmed a finger up her thigh. “I’ve wondered what you’d look like, but you’re so much lovelier than I imagined.”

Unsettled, she’d crossed an arm over her breast. He left it there and went back to where he’d begun. With soft, slow, drugging kisses. And next caresses, patient, skilled hands that knew where a woman longed to be touched. Even when the woman didn’t. Helplessly she yielded beneath him again, her breathing quickening into catchy pants as his hand roamed over the flat of her stomach toward the terrible, glorious heat.

Yes, he thought, fighting delirium. Open for me. Let me. Just let me.

She was damp and hot where he cupped her. The groan tore from his throat when she writhed and tried to resist.

“Let go, Brianna. Let me take you there. Just let go.”

She was clinging to the edge of some towering cliff by no more than her fingertips. Terror welled inside her. She was slipping. No control. There was too much happening inside her body all at once for her burning flesh to hold it all in. His hand was like a torch against her, firing her, searing her mercilessly until she would have no choice but to tumble free into the unknown.

“Please.” The word sobbed out. “Oh, sweet God, please.”

Then the pleasure, the molten flood of it washed through her, over her, stealing her breath, her mind, her vision. For one glorious moment she was blind and deaf to everything but herself and the velvet shocks convulsing her.

She poured into his hand, making him moan like a dying man. He shuddered, even as she did, then with his face buried against her skin took her soaring again.

Straining against the chain of his own control, he waited until she was at peak. “Hold me. Hold on to me,” he murmured, dizzy with his own needs as he struggled to ease gently into her.

She was so small, so tight, so deliciously hot. He used every ounce of willpower he had left not to thrust greedily inside as he felt her close around him.

“Only for a second,” he promised her. “Only for a second, then it’ll be good again.”