What Matt offered might be Purgatory or Heaven, but she was willing to risk either to escape her cold, emotionless room in Hell.

“Enough talk,” Matt whispered, and he began to move in her again. Long, slow strokes, one arm beneath her body, holding her to him so she felt him pressed all along the length of her, his thighs rubbing the inside of hers. She pressed her face into his neck, heard the rasp of his breath against her ear as he lifted and lowered his hips, and her hands crept down, felt his buttocks clench, release, clench, release with each slow pump into her. Her body trembled, swept by heat, and her breath began to match his rapid rhythm.

“Your pussy knows its Master, doesn’t it, Savannah?”

“Yes…yes…” She couldn’t hold her head up, dropped it back, and his mouth took her throat as she felt her hair brush her shoulder blades. God, he was so powerful, so all- consuming. Ah, God…

“Take me, Matt. Please make me yours, all yours.”

His strokes grew stronger, his gaze more intent, never leaving the clasp of hers, and as the pleasure swept up through her, inhibitions left and she said the words he’d said she’d say, words she wanted to say, just as the climax began to break over her.

“I am yours, Master. You’re my… Master…”

It was a swirling tornado of images and emotions and physical completion, all spinning her up into the relentless fist of the orgasm. His relentless body stroked her without breaking rhythm, nothing to stop the flow of a tidal wave up through her pussy and lower abdomen, spearing out through her limbs, making her clutch him even more tightly, cry out against his skin, seeing their bodies bathed in the flickering light of the muted television sets. The screens had picked up this moment, so she saw the two of them on the couch, the muscles rippling along his back, buttocks and thighs as her slender legs clamped around him, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

“Yes, baby. Let me hear you.”

Her voice was a long, smooth utterance, like a wolf howling in low, urgent demand, her need for her mate calling him to her. Everything she longed for was in that one, prolonged note of desire. And as her hands tightened on him, Matt’s body stiffened and then slammed forward into her urgently, over and over. His grip shifted to the couch arm so he did not shove her head into the arm with the force of his movements, his rapid pistoning into her, the hot spill of his seed inside her womb.

He had chosen not to use any protection, she realized, and that too was another statement of his claim on her. A very significant one.

He came to a gradual slow halt, keeping up slow strokes that made her mewl with pleasure, until at last he stilled, laid his forehead against hers. She reached up, cupped the back of his head in her hands, felt the damp line of perspiration on his nape.

Her heart was so full, she wanted to give him something, something he’d know she was giving to him, sealing her belief in his words, his desire for her.

“I read it last year.”

Matt raised his head, looked down at her. He curled her in the crook of his arm, turned them so he was lying on his back and she was in the shelter of his arm on the wide couch. He touched her faintly smiling lips and she saw it coaxed a smile from his own. “What?”

“The Grinch. That’s how I knew about the Who Mouses. I was Christmas shopping and there was a storytelling hour going on in the corner of the bookstore. I lingered in the shelves nearby and listened to it.

So I guess I didn’t technically read it.

I heard it read.”

She reached up, surrounded him with her arms and squeezed. A hug. A basic, wonderful hug he reacted to by closing his own arms around her and hugging her back.

With a groan, he hauled them both to a sitting position, moved her so she was cradled against his lap, her bottom down against his wet cock, which stirred against her as he snugged her down on it.

“You’re…” A faint blush rose in her cheeks.

“Getting hard for you again.” He tipped her chin, held it so she looked directly into his piercing eyes. “I have so much need stored up for you, I’m probably going to have to close down the whole damn fortieth floor for a week to preserve your reputation while I keep you here, ravishing you over and over again.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that, but her body did. She saw by the intentness of his gaze that he registered the shudder that ran through her.

“So,” he said lightly. “You’ll marry me, then?”

“You’re giving me choices, now?”

She narrowed her eyes. “If I changed my mind, would you invite your team back in for a renegotiation?”

He laughed then, a male sound of appreciation that coated her with heat, and she pressed against him instinctively, making his eyes darken with renewed desire.

“From now on, I think we’ll keep our negotiations strictly a two-person executive session. Kiss me. And for once, don’t be afraid of anything.”

She reached up, brought her lips to his and lost herself, and it was the easiest thing she’d ever done, to obey his command, now that she’d surrendered herself to him. She deepened it, played with his tongue, enjoyed the feel of his canines pricking. Shuddering at his growl, she whimpered in delight when he shifted his grip and put her under him once more, parting her legs and putting himself against the opening of her pussy, making it obvious that his cock was close to being able to take her again.

“Tell me what you want, Savannah.”

His voice was harsh with lust, but his eyes were asking for more.

For everything.

Cleopatra couldn’t ever give up being perceived as a woman of power. Be just a woman, and no man like Marc Antony or Matthew Kensington would want her.

That’s what you think, Daddy.

Tennyson Rule Seven: Never be afraid to face your destiny.

“I want…” God, she suddenly wanted everything. “I want to live somewhere else. I want to have a yard, and…learn to garden. I want to have mismatching pictures.”

His eyes told her he understood, which brought forth the thing she suddenly wanted the most. She pressed her face into his neck, her lips against his thudding pulse.

“I want to be your wife.”

His arms tightened around her.

“Those rules, the ones Geoffrey posted on the wall of his office that you haven’t taken down? They come down tomorrow. From here on out, your life is governed only by one rule, the one I wouldn’t tell you at the beginning, but that I’ve told you several times now. Do you know what it is?”

His lips were very close to hers, sending spirals of pleasure through her lower extremities, making everything tighten with need for him again. She opened herself to him further, felt his cock slide into her tender opening.

“That I’m yours,” she whispered throatily. “Yours, forever and ever.”

And you’re mine as well.

“Close.” He looked at her, his sensuous mouth serious and firm, and she wanted it on her again. “Rule One, the first and last rule you’ll ever need, Savannah, to get through anything. Are you paying attention?”

“Yes,” she whispered. But instead of letting him say the words, she spoke them first against his lips.

“I love you.”