I was hard. Hot and hard against her soft skin. “I’m still sorry for waking you up,” I said tightly as my lips found hers. I plundered her mouth with my tongue, pressing in deep and forceful, determined to have more. Nothing could help me right now but Brynne. She was the only cure.

And I was sorry, but I’d been like this with her before. Waking in the night and needing sex to bring myself down from the hyperanxiety of wherever I’d been in my dreams tonight.

“It’s okay,” she rasped against my mouth.

Her response emboldened me. Most everything she did turned me on. I liked to be dominant, but it thrilled me when Brynne assured me that she was willing, and desired me in the same way I did her. I instinctively knew she wanted me. It was just another form of the communication we shared. I wished all aspects of our relationship were so easy. The sex part we had figured out quickly, from the very first. Yeah, the f**king had always been hot and wickedly good for us.

I rolled her under me and split her legs wide with my knees, opening her up and dropping my head. I tossed off the covers and drew my eyes down over the gorgeous, willing body I would be buried deep inside of in another moment. Thank sweet Christ.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Good, because I need to f**k you until you come, saying my name,” he said in typical fashion. “Then I’m going to take my c**k out of your divine cunt and f**k your beautiful mouth with it. And watch your lovely lips wrap around it and suck me dry.” His eyes flared and his sculpted chest moved from the heavy breathing as he moved into position. “Yes, baby, I’m going to do all of that.”

Ethan and his filthy mouth. It was crazy as hell, but that dirty talk did something to me.

Tensing in anticipation of what he would do, I moaned when he plunged into me hard and deep, filling me so full, bringing us so close together, my mind flashing back to what he’d said to me earlier in the night. We’ll get married. Not a question posed, but a directive as only Ethan could state and get away with, just as he’d done so many other times since we’d met.

Ethan held my wrists in one hand and roamed with the other as he rode me hard. In and out at a furious pace, almost angry in his method. I knew he wasn’t angry with me, though. It was the dream he battled. He needed to get the thing out of his head. I totally understood what was going on. Didn’t matter to me. I was a complete willing participant in his form of self-discipline.

He pushed me open wider and worked my sweet spot with his c**k so perfectly it didn’t take very long before I was striving for an orgasm, feeling the tightening of my muscles readying for the blast that would take me to heaven on a supernova of heat and light.

He pinched my nipple, much more sensitive than usual, and the pain blinded me for an instant.. I cried out as the climax started to roll through my body. He soothed the tender flesh with his tongue and spoke: “Say my name! I have to hear it.”

“Ethan, Ethan, Ethan!” I chanted against his lips as he plunged his tongue into my mouth and swallowed my words. I shuddered and clenched my inner muscles around his cock, pinned down and fully taken. And never more satisfied than I was in this moment. He took charge of my pleasure and never let me down.

But he wasn’t done. I remembered what he’d said to me before.

Ethan growled a very primal sound and pulled out of me. I protested the loss, but welcomed the jerk down the bed and the hot head of his penis filling my mouth as he readjusted his point of penetration. I could taste myself mixed with the taste of him and the eroticism was blatantly explosive. Gripping his hips, I pulled him deeper and sucked him to the back of my throat. Just a few strokes of my lips along the shaft before I felt the spurt of se**n splash down. The sounds he made were carnal and oddly vulnerable for such a dominant act. It always made me feel powerful when Ethan came. I made it happen.

He was staring at me, watching the whole thing as he liked to do, our eyes connecting us deeply beyond just the physical act.

“Oh, God,” he whispered as he slid out of my mouth and drew back down my body to press us close. He covered me again, gently this time, sliding inside me in a perfect fit of his body to mine before his erection faded. I could feel the thudding of his heart blending with mine.

I held on to him and let him have his way. For a long time he kissed and touched me, needing to be inside me for a while longer, telling me he loved me and making me feel cherished. I understood so much about this man and what made him tick. So much . . . except for the one thing I wanted to know, and didn’t know at all.

Ethan’s dark place was still as mysterious to me as it had ever been.

“I love that you brought me here.” I felt myself start to slip away into drowsiness again, determined to talk to him tomorrow about the nightmares, knowing that he wouldn’t like it, but screw it, I was going to anyway. I wondered if he sensed what I would do. Ethan had the uncanny ability to predict my intentions. “And I love you.”

He settled me in his arms and stroked my hair. I breathed in his spicy scent mixed with all the sex and his cologne and let myself go, knowing I was in the arms of the only man who had ever gotten me to stay there.

As morning dawned I disentangled myself very carefully from the body wrapped around me. Ethan just sighed into his pillow and rolled deeper into the blankets. He had to be worn out from last night’s stressful show at the National Gallery and then the three hour drive up the coast late afterward. I couldn’t discount the time spent on sex once we got here either. Or his bad dream. And the f**king after that. The look in his eyes and the silent domination was a replay of his nightmare that other time. I knew what I knew. The resulting encounter had not been as intense as before, but I sensed Ethan had been working very hard to control his response so he didn’t lose it quite as badly as last time. My poor baby. I’d never tell him that, but it pained me to see him hurting; even more so that I couldn’t do anything about it because he refused to share it with me. Men were frustrating as hell.

With the soap in the shower, I scrubbed at my skin in annoyance and hurried to finish, determined to be dressed and out of the room without waking Ethan from his much-needed sleep in.

I tucked my phone into my jeans pocket and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door softly behind me. I just stood and looked down the hall from the wing where our room was situated at one corner of the estate. This place was something else all right, shades of Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley with a dash of Mr. Rochester’s Thornfield Hall thrown in. I couldn’t wait to get an official tour, still enthralled with the fact that Ethan’s sister and her husband owned this place.