Harriet flushed red at the compliment, then reached up and drew him down to kiss her again.
There was no more talking after that. Just breath, skin, teeth, hands—everywhere. She scraped her nails along the back of his shoulder.
Her body ached for him already, desperate and ready, the slickness between her thighs giving him all the permission he should need. He kissed his way down her throat, over her collarbone, across the soft weight of her breast, until his mouth closed over her nipple and drew. She arched into it with a soft cry, clutching at his hair tightly.
Jeremy groaned against her, then moved lower. His lips grazed her stomach next. His fingers traced her ribs, her hipbones, the outside of her thigh. Every touch seared. Branded.
When he settled between her legs, his weight pressing her open, his length thick and hot against her entrance, she was already trembling with anticipation.
He looked at her, eyes dark and fixed on hers, and not with uncertainty—only reverence. As if this moment were too muchfor him to bear. He reached for her hand and gripped it tightly, pinning it above her head as he guided himself against her.
The stretch came as a shock.
She sucked in a breath, hips twitching at the pressure, the size of him. Jeremy hissed, his grip tightening, his other hand braced beside her head. His entire body shuddered as he pushed forward, inch by slow inch, until he was seated deep and trembling above her.
“God,” he bit out. “You feel…”
She was full, impossibly so, stretched to the edge of pain, though the ache was already warming into something sweeter, something close to unbearable pleasure. He held still, chest heaving, waiting. Not because she’d asked him to—but because he could feel her, the way she clenched around him, the adjustment, the tension in her breath.
She rolled her hips slightly.
That broke him.
Jeremy started to move—long, dragging strokes, each one deeper than the last. The rhythm was measured at first, but thick with promise, with all the restraint of weeks of waiting threatening to slip loose.
Harriet’s fingernails dragged against his back, her thighs wrapping tighter around his waist, pulling him closer, urging him on.
“You can’t break me,” she gasped against his ear.
His breath caught. Then he took her harder.
The slick sound of skin meeting skin echoed in the studio as he lanced into her. She met him thrust for thrust, lost in the friction and the fullness, the way his abdomen flexed above her with each movement, the sweat dripping down his temples. His face was tight with strain, his jaw clenched, hair damp. Her name tumbled from his mouth over and over, like a prayer.
He felt everywhere. Inside her. On her. Against her. Heat and weight and breath!
She couldn’t catch her breath. Didn’t want to.
Her body surged towards climax, coiling tight behind her ribs. Every movement dragged her closer; the grind of his hips against hers, the hot press of his mouth at her collarbone, the slap of his skin at the inside of her thighs.
She fell apart with a desperate cry. Her back arched in delicious pleasure, head tilted in the sunlight, the rush of it overtaking her before she could warn him. Her body clenched around him, a desperate flutter, and he cursed and followed her intoit, groaning deep in his chest as he spilled inside her in thick, pulsing waves.
They didn’t move for a long time, even as the sweat began to dry on her skin, even as the light on the floor turned warmer, softer. Instead, he fell beside her, one hand tracing slow, idle shapes at the curve of her waist, the other buried beneath her curls at the nape of her neck. His eyes were half-lidded, dazed and dark with whatever storm still lived behind them. She could feel the aftershocks still rolling through her, a low thrum between her thighs. It was an intensely pleasurable ache she would not trade for anything.
She reached up and touched the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, her fingers sweeping lightly over his skin. “You’re still staring,” she murmured.
“You’re worth staring at.”
“Mm.” Her lips tilted. “That sounds dangerously close to poetry.”
Jeremy made a low noise in his throat, and before she could pull her hand away, he caught it and kissed her wrist. His teeth grazed the inside gently. “I think painting is enough for this lifetime. Besides, poetry was never my forte.”
She giggled. “No?”
He nuzzled against her neck. “Not unless I can write it into your skin.”
Her stomach pulled tight again. She should have been spent—her legs still trembled when she shifted—but his voice had that effect on her.
“I think you already have,” she whispered.
