Drake Sisters 06 - Turbulent Sea

His kiss was infinitely tender.
    'You have trust issues, Joley. Serious ones. You gave your body into my keeping, but you don't trust me to know that you're tired and you need to come down slowly. You were flying high and it frightened you.'
    She kissed him again. He was right, her body was already calmer, the sensations like gentle waves calming turbulent seas. 'I'm still scared.'
    'I don't mind you being afraid, especially if you tell me, but you know I can read you - what you want, what you like, what you need. Trust me to provide you with those things.'
    'You're talking about sexually.' She lay back against her pillow, too tired to prop herself up even to look at his handsome face.
    'Emotionally first, Joley. Then, yes, physically, sexually. But this isn't about sex. You still want it to be, but it's not.

    If you could never have sex with me again, I would still want to be with you. I would still need to be with you. I won't lie and say I don't have a very healthy sex drive. Make no mistake, I'll take from you the things I want and need, but your pleasure, your needs always - always - come first, even if you don't know what they are.'
    She made a face at the ceiling. 'You talk and I don't know what you mean.'
    'You know exactly what I mean. I don't do anything by halves and neither do you. You committed yourself to me and you saw inside of me enough to know what kind of man I am.'
    Joley inhaled sharply, her breath catching in her lungs. She did know - and yet she didn't. She had been drawn to him, mesmerized and seduced by him, by his aura and his song. By his magic - his strength. Oh, God, his strength was what she craved more than anything in the world. That absolute confidence, that aggression that pushed her out of her comfort zone, that took her places she had only dreamt of - places she craved but feared. He would take her over and she would fight him every inch of the way. He was going to make her life hell - or heaven.
    She moistened her lips. 'Do you think you're going to rule me? Because if you think so, your fantasy is way beyond reality.'

He caught her face between his hands, forcing her toward him. Her startled gaze jumped to his. 'Don't start a fight with me, Joley. Not now. We've only got a few hours left together.' He leaned down and brushed kisses across her eyelids, the tip of her nose, back and forth across her mouth.
    Alarmed, Joley pushed at the wall of his chest. He was stealing her heart. He'd taken her body and her soul, she wasn't handing him her heart to destroy as well. He had given her the most fantastic sexual experience of her life, and she knew she would need him again and again. Nothing would ever compare to what she had with him, but it wasn't lovemaking. She hadn't felt that he was loving her. Possessing her - claiming her - yes. Owning her even, but not loving her, and she could be addicted, she could let him rule her in bed, but she refused, absolutely refused, to hand her heart to a man who might be involved in terrible things.
    'Yes,' he said softly, kissing her again.
    Small, caressing kisses that left her feeling helpless against the onslaught of tenderness. 'I won't let you.'
    He knew what she was afraid of. She could feel him in her mind, touching her inside where there was no way to stop him. He had marked her everywhere, all over her skin, and now he was leaving his mark on the inside.
    'It's already too late,' he whispered, trailing kisses along her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth.
    She was melting inside. Butterfly wings all over again. She wasn't just getting wet and needy, she craved his touch, his voice, the scent of him, but most of all she wanted him to feel that same frightening vulnerability that for her just seemed to grow worse around him.
    His hands stroked her skin, memorizing every inch of her, and all the while he whispered to her of faraway places, of being a boy in a cold, hard land, of belonging to her and only her. She could hear the strains of his song wrapping her up in haunting notes, holding her close while she drifted - drifted - on a tide of sex and sin and the fragile beginnings of love.
    She went to sleep to the soft murmur of his voice, and woke to the sensual enticement of it only an hour later. He was already hard and moving inside her, his kiss taking her breath while his hands shaped her breasts.
    In the tour buses, the trip from Red Rocks to Dallas took a little over fourteen hours. Ilya woke her over and over, until Joley