“I’m looking very closely and all I see is perfection,” he assured her in a throaty voice. “You should make nothing but lingerie. This is...” Saint slid his finger under the strap where it came over the top of her shoulder. It connected to an eyelet that supported a split strap that framed the upper swells of her breasts in bold triangles before connecting to either side of the balconette cups. He swallowed. “Magnificent.”

The feathery trace of his touch was making her breasts tingle and swell. They ached, but even though she drew a breath and shifted, he showed no mercy. His thumb grazed the point of her nipple where it was lifting the amethyst silk.

She didn’t realize she’d made a throaty noise until he paused. “Hurt?”

“No. It feels really good.” Everything about his hands on her felt really, really good.

A satisfied rumble sounded in his throat. He brushed the strap off her shoulder, then scooped his hand inside the cup to dislodge it. His head ducked and he licked at her nipple, teasing, blowing softly, before he opened his mouth to take the tip deeply into the wet heat of his mouth. He sucked until she was standing on her tiptoes, fist knotted in his hair.

When Saint straightened, his eyes were glazed with lust. He checked in with her very briefly before he freed her other breast and bent her over his arm. He ravished the other one just as thoroughly, sending runnels of heat into her loins and making her cling and arch higher into his mouth and gasp his name.

He didn’t let up. No, he pushed his hand into her jeans and knickers and discovered exactly how profound an effect he was having on her. She groaned with aching delight as the restriction of her clothes firmed his touch against her folds. His finger probed, and the plane of his palm sat implacably against the pulsing knot of nerves that had been waiting for this. For him.

“Saint.” She was so aroused she was begging, bowed in supplication, lifting her hips to deepen his penetration, trying to increase the friction.

He fluttered his tongue against her nipple, and she lost it. Climax rippled through her, deep and satisfying, tearing a cry from her throat. If he hadn’t held her so firmly, she would have fallen down as she fell apart. It was terrifying and exalting and left her so shaken she was still quivering when he removed his hand from her jeans and eased her onto the bed.

“I thought my memory had exaggerated how responsive you are,” he said in a rasp. “Are you sure this is okay? I didn’t expect you to come so hard and fast.” He opened his hand across her abdomen where her muscles were still twitching in the aftermath.

He didn’t look that worried. He looked kind of smug.

“It’s very okay,” she said shakily, opening her jeans and lifting her hips to push them down and off with the rest of her remaining clothes.

Saint straightened to yank at his own shirt and pants, his impatience flattering. His erection sprang forth. All of him was like burnished oak, carved and sanded into smooth planes and lovingly accentuated details. He swept his hand across his torso as he looked at her, then slid his hand down, taking hold of himself in a tight fist, expression tense with carnal hunger. He reached for the night table drawer.

“You don’t need a condom,” she reminded him. “Unless there are other issues? I had a full screen as part of my checkup.”

“I was tested...” He frowned in recollection. “It was right before I left for London for the gala. There hasn’t been anyone else since. I’ve never had sex without a condom, though.”

“Me, neither. We’re both virgins.” Fliss sat up to draw the blankets down so she could get under them but paused to ask with false concern, “Do you think we should discuss it first? With a responsible adult we trust?”

“Like who? The pilot?” He threw the covers away and loomed over her, nipping at her lips with his own as he pressed her to the mattress. “Damn, but I’ve been wanting this.”

“I thought about you a lot, too,” she confessed in a whisper, stroking her hands down his strong back and over his firm buttocks.

Somehow, he made her feel both delicate and vulnerable but safe. He was proprietary in the way he inserted his legs between hers, effortlessly pushing hers open in a demonstration of how much strength he had—plenty enough to overpower her if he wanted to. But the way he kissed her was a coax.

Let me in. Come with me down this erotic path.

And he went down an erotic path of his own, one that took him over the hills of her breasts and across the field of her abdomen, then into the grove between her thighs.

“You don’t have to—” She was already aroused enough, but her voice turned to a moan of indulgence.

“I really do,” he said in a low voice, bringing his thumb into play with his tongue.

Fliss couldn’t talk after that. All her brain cells were fried by the lazy way he was pulling her toward orgasm again, coiling sensation upon sensation until she was at the tipping point.

“Not yet, lovely,” he said, lifting his head and stroking his thumb in the moisture of her folds, avoiding where she most needed to be caressed. “Wait for me.”

He set his teeth against her inner thigh just tight enough to threaten pain, then sucked a love bite onto her skin. The discomfort drew her back from the edge but made her sob in denial.

“Soon,” he crooned, climbing his wicked mouth over the wobbling muscles of her belly and pausing to worship her breasts once more. The inferno in her loins grew to an ache she couldn’t bear.

“You’re mean,” she accused, so tense with need she thought she’d break in half.

“So mean,” he agreed, taking his time with departing from her nipples before he finally, finally rose over her and guided himself to the molten core of her. “I’m going to savor this,” he said in sinful warning. “But let me feel it, Fliss. Let me feel you come as many times as you can.”

She was still very much out of her league, she realized in those seconds. Not just at his mercy, but willing to do anything for him. For this, the press of his thick shape sinking into her primed, welcoming sheath. Glorious shivers of near climax sent hot-cold sensations across her skin. Her knees bent to hug his sides and her heels dug into his ass, pressing him deeper.

Saint began to move, slow and deep and powerful, and it was all she needed. She twisted beneath him as orgasm detonated within her. Wild noises left her. Breath and thought and any sense of self were all gone in those moments of pure pleasure. Pure being.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, sounding barely affected despite destroying her. He continued moving in those precise but leisurely thrusts. “Now another,” he commanded, hooking his arm behind her knee to increase the depth of his possession.

She gave him everything he asked for.

“I don’t want earrings,” Fliss murmured through the dark, hours later, when they were exhausted and damp and drifting off to sleep.

Saint had her spooned into his front. He roused slightly, his ingrained cynicism thinking, Here we go.

“What would you prefer?”

“Respect.” She sighed and snuggled deeper into his chest. Her hand slid to cover the one he had draped over her waist and grew heavy.

Seconds later, he could tell by the shallowness of her breathing that she was deeply asleep, but he was wide awake, blinking into the darkness, aware of the white noise of the plane’s engines and an itch against his conscience.

He had told her he was a generous person, and he was, in a material sense. He could afford to be. But it could actually be argued that it wasn’t generosity when the cost to him was very low. On a more emotional level, he was much more miserly. He had built thick, jaded boundaries around himself. Any respect he offered was conditional. Tentative. Everyone would disappoint him eventually. It was not a matter of if but when.

Fliss was authentically generous, though. Considering how she’d been treated in the past and then Saint’s neglect of her when she’d been attacked by the press, she would have been within her rights to help him exit the plane without a parachute. It made her openness and lack of inhibition in this bed even more of a gift.

The abuse she’d suffered—and yes, it was abuse—incensed him. On top of that, he was disturbed to realize how little experience she really had with relationships. She needed more than respect. She needed to be handled with tenderness.

He didn’t have a capacity for that. Inadequacy chipped at him as he recognized how he was likely to disappoint her. In his mind, the baby had been the one who needed his protection. Fliss would provide the love their child needed, and Saint would try not to be the same sort of cold bastard his own father had been. Somehow, they would rear a contributing member of society.

Fliss was more vulnerable than he’d realized, though. It was hitting him that she would need more from him than orgasms and an introduction to some top designers. She would need things he might not have within him to give.

Maybe he shouldn’t marry her. He might’ve regarded love as a drug that wore off and left you with a horrific hangover, but she seemed to believe in it. She’d thought his parents should have divorced so they could find it.

That meant that at some point, she might expect him to let her go so she could marry someone else who—

The clench of rejection was so strong inside him, he twitched, causing her to drew a small, startled breath.

“It’s okay. Go back to sleep,” he whispered, securing her closer while pressing a kiss to the point of her shoulder.

She sighed and relaxed, but he lay awake a little longer, pondering that soar of feral possessiveness in him. Why? It wasn’t about the baby. It wasn’t even about sex.

Although sex with her was next level. And bareback sex? He would revel in that as much as she was up for. Still, as powerful as his orgasms were, that wasn’t the only reason he was obsessed with her. He’d been preoccupied with her from the time he’d left her in London three months ago, thinking about her daily. He had read the gossip stories to know where she had turned up—needing to know she was alive at least. He had wanted to know if she was reading her cards and communing with her grandmother.

He had wanted to know how much of what she’d shown him of herself was real.