His fingers floated over my belly, through my folds, along my inner thighs. Everywhere he touched me, I erupted and smoldered.

His pain fisted my heart.

He was too much.

Too deep, too pure, too perfect.

“Could a hallucination give you what I did last night? Could a ghost lick you until you came?”

His smile was crooked and cheerless. “You don’t know how many nights I woke to a dream so similar to what you gave me. You don’t know how many times I woke cursing and raging because I didn’t want to leave a world where I had you only to lose you day after day.”

My chest splintered. My rib cage became firewood for the incinerating flames inside my heart. “Arthur …”

I loved him too much. The way he spoke terrified me that I wouldn’t be able to keep him now that I’d found him again. Would we always be shadowed by the past?

My shaky sigh webbed around us. “Let it go. You have to let it go.”

The pain.

The torture.

The driving need for revenge.

He needed a fresh start—away from here. He needed to let the future take us forward, rather than let the past drag us back.

Raising his hand, he squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I have no idea how this turned from pleasure to …”

Wedging myself upright on my elbows, I whispered, “I know why. It’s because you don’t believe in us.”

His eyes flashed open. “How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Until you accept that life has brought us back together and stop reliving the pain of being apart, you can’t believe in what we have.”

“I know what we have and I do believe in it.” His voice was a whip, slicing through the melancholy. “I’ll show you.”

Knocking away my elbows, he forced me to lie back down. In a swift move, he switched from haunches to stomach, positioning himself between my spread legs.

His hands clamped down on my thighs, gluing me to the mattress. “I’ll show you until you trust me.” His dark hair framed his extraordinary face as he looked up the length of my torso. “I’ll prove to you that I’m yours, no matter what.”

“I know you are.” My heart skipped a beat at the determination on his face and the dark shadows beneath his eyes.

He was stunning. Masculine but caring. Possessive but loving. The complete perfect package.

I grabbed handfuls of linen as his head bent. His breath fanned hot and steamy on my pussy. His lips hovered, trapping me in the acute moment of anticipation.

My pulse turned into a geyser, wanting to burst. “Please …” I braced for the slippery incredibleness of his tongue.

Another breath, the billowing heat condensing on my skin.

Another.

I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Please!” I cried.

“Be my fucking pleasure.” He licked me.

I shot upright, hurling straight toward heaven. “Oh, God!”

His hands captured my thighs, holding them down and spread. His tongue dashed over my clit, lapping quick and sharp. Then he flattened the strong muscle and swept it from bud to entrance.

I spiraled.

The pleasure … it was too much.

My mind swam as he nibbled and speared inside me with no warning.

“Oh, hell. Arthur!”

He growled, thrusting his tongue again. “Goddammit. Believe me.”

“I believe you. I believe you!”

His five o’clock shadow rasped my sensitive inner thighs. “No, you don’t. Not yet.” He tasted me thoroughly, moving back to suck on my clit.

It was too good.

I’ll explode.

“I do. I do believe you!” My legs tightened until every muscle cramped. “Please … I can’t stand it. Stop.”

But he didn’t stop. Again and again he dipped inside me, dragging his tongue to lap and lathe.

I lost myself to him, bobbing away on the tide of bliss he created. He was Poseidon and I was an unlucky ship about to be wrecked on the shores of a detonating orgasm.

My pussy tightened, reaching for the promised shoreline, wanting nothing more than to decimate into tiny shards.

“Yes …”

“Not yet,” Arthur growled. “You’re not allowed until I say so.”

My eyes flashed open, half in rage, half in obedience. “I can’t stop it.”

“Yes, you can.” Letting me go, he crept up my body. His lips were swollen and damp, my wetness glistening on his chin. I waited for him to smother me with his body, but instead he urged me to roll onto my side. “You’re not to come until I’m inside you.”

Every inch of me was alive, crawling and begging for a release.

Lying down beside me, he lassoed a strong arm around my belly and yanked me into the hard muscles of his body. My back to his front. My softness against his hardness.

I flinched as he ground his throbbing erection against my lower back.

“I’m going to fuck you now, Buttercup. I’ll prove to you that I can love you while using you. That I can trust you while riding you. That I can believe in you.”

I moaned as his hand ran over my hip, grabbing my thigh and wrenching it back to entwine with his.

“Take me,” I mumbled. My body undulated, my core empty.

With my legs open, he maneuvered his hips and fisted his cock, guiding it to my entrance.

The moment the tip of him entered me, I gritted my teeth and fought off the relentless orgasm.