Only 03 - Only You

body was capable of, the rushing transformation repeated, sweet needles of fire pricking delicately, deeply, until he was consumed by a need that was all the sweeter for having been ignited while he was fully sheathed within her.
    “I hope you’re right about having lots of lives, gata.”
    Eve’s lashes lifted, showing eyes that were still glazed with pleasure.
    “What?” she asked huskily.
    Her voice broke before the question was finished, for Reno was moving slowly within her, filling her.
    “Do you like this?” he asked, withdrawing and returning once more.
    “Dear Lord, yes.”
    “It doesn’t hurt?”
    Soft laughter was Eve’s answer. Her hands caressed the length of Reno’s spine. She paused to comb through the scattering of silky hair in the small of his back before she went on to his buttocks. The taut muscles intrigued her, as did the swift, ripping breath he took when her hand strayed between his thighs. She repeated the caress, drawing another shudder from him.
    “No more of that,” Reno said, dragging Eve’s hand back to his flank.
    “Don’t you like it?”
    “Too damn much,” he admitted. “Save it for next time.”
    “Next time?”
    “Yes, gata. Next time. I may need it then. I sure don’t need it now.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Reno moved again within Eve, caressing and stretching her in the same motion.
    “If I get any harder,” he said, “it will be over too soon. I want this one to last a long, long time.”
    “Oh.”
    He bent down and put his cheek next to hers. The heat of her skin amazed him.
    “Are you blushing?” he asked.
    Eve buried her face in his neck and hit his shoulder lightly with her fist.
    “How anyone can be so abandoned and yet so shy…” Reno’s voice faded into a soft laugh. “Never mind. You’ll get over it.”
    A muffled comment told him that she doubted it.
    “Look at me, sugar girl.”
    When she shook her head, he gently pried her face from his neck.
    “Shy little night-blooming flower,” Reno said, dropping tiny kisses over Eve’s hot face. “If you knew how rare you were, you wouldn’t blush.”
    He saw the narrow gleam of Eve’s eyes as she peeked through her lashes at him.
    “And you are rare,” he breathed against her lips.
    “I’m just a…”
    Whatever Eve was going to say was lost in the slow penetration of his tongue until he filled her mouth just as he filled her body. The tiny, throaty cry she gave affected him the way a burning match affects dry straw. He retreated and returned with exquisite control from her body, measuring both of them simultaneously, intimately. Then he withdrew again.
    With a ragged sound that was Reno’s name, Eve moved her hips, trying to reclaim him.
    “You make me feel like the man who first discovered fire,” Reno said in a low voice, watching her.
    He rocked slowly against her, leaving none of her untouched, moving with the deliberate rhythms of a storm that has eternity to gather and break.
    “Hurt?” he asked softly.
    Her answer was a rippling sigh of pleasure.
    “Tell me if I hurt you,” Reno said.
    Smoothly he shifted, sliding his arms beneath her knees, bending and lifting her legs, pressing them gently back against her body, moving in slow motion, joining them more deeply than she would have believed possible.
    “Eve?” he whispered.
    “Dear God,” she said, shivering with pleasure.
    As Reno moved, a hot, gentle vise closed aroundEve, a burning so soft she knew it only in after-thought. A long, sweet shimmering began to steal through her, making her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
    Reno withdrew, taking the sensual pressure with him.
    “No,” Eve said.
    “I thought I was hurting you.”
    “Only when you left.”
    She made a low, ragged sound as Reno slowly returned, rocked against her, then retreated as deliberately as he had taken her. The ghostly shimmering returned, delicate currents of fire claiming her softly.
    “I think…” Eve whispered.
    He moved again, and flames licked gently, stealing her voice.
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    “I think…a woman…discovered fire,” Eve said. “With you…”
    Tender fire leaped, consuming her.
    Reno heard the echoes of ecstasy in Eve’s voice, felt it in the rhythmic shivering of her body, and wanted to shout his triumph at the stars.
    But he had no breath to shout, for the flames that he had nurtured in her were spreading outward, licking over him in the silken rhythms of her release. He held himself