Stages of Love

Prologue

He had not broken his words to her, not once in two years.
It had been hard, especially in the beginning. He was unused to being with another person and found the interplay, while entertaining, sometimes bewildering. He was given to quicksilver changes in mood. He would be grave at light moments. He would annoy her and harass her and force her to see things she would rather not. He dragged all her hidden inconsistencies into the light and forced her to look at the world with new eyes.
And she, in turn, served first as companion, and then as accomplice to him. She learned to adjust to his moods, to make him laugh, to make him abandon his control, to sense the tightly reined passion in him and bring it bubbling to the surface.
And always, always, there was the feel of his hands on her body; stroking, tasting, feeling, awakening.
“Would you ever say to me, stop? If you loved me, you’d stop?” he asked playfully as his hands moved masterfully over her, teasing.
“Hannibal!” she gasped, needed to feel his mouth on hers and him inside her. He flipped her over onto her back, twining his hands in her hair, tugging her head back to savage her throat with his lips. He entered her roughly, balancing her on a knife’s edge between pleasure and pain before he reached between them and pressed his fingers to her nub and she went over the edge into ecstasy.
“Not in a thousand years!” she cried out, exultant.
He growled low in his throat, experiencing his own release. Collapsing across her he buried his face in her breasts and said,
“That’s my girl.”