I want them to.
"That's it," he groans, pounding into me now, harder, faster, chasing the second release like a man possessed.
"That's how I want you. Open. Wet. Screaming my name."
"Please, Ruairí, please?—"
I don't even know what I'm asking for anymore.
I just need.
Need him.
Need more.
He flips me without warning, pulls me onto my hands and knees, and slams back into me from behind with a force that makes me sob.
One hand fists in my hair, pulling my head back so my spine curves like a bow, and the other is gripping my hip, bruising hard, anchoring me in place as he fucks me from behind like he's trying to fuck the past out of me, like he's trying to fill every place I've ever been empty.
"You're gonna come again," he says, voice dark and feral, hips snapping into me with a rhythm that borders on brutal, "and then I'm gonna fill you so deep you'll be leaking me for days."
His words make my pussy clench, my body trembling with another rising climax, and when he reaches down and rubs my clit with rough, perfect circles, I break.
The orgasm hits me like lightning—white-hot, blinding, my body locking up before it crashes down into wave after wave of pleasure, wrung out of me by the pressure of his cock, the movement of his hands, the sound of his voice in my ear telling me to give it to him, to take it, to let go.
And I do.
I come hard, body convulsing, throat hoarse from moaning, nails clawing at the sheets, and still he doesn't stop, not until he grunts, thrusts one final time, and spills inside me with a groan that sounds like surrender, like victory, like everything in between.
He stays there, buried deep, his chest against my back, our bodies shiny with sweat and breathless in the afterglow.
Hours later,I wake up to a split-second confusion, the usual displacement of someone who doesn't expect to survive the night and so refuses to get attached to the furniture.
I blink once, twice.
The ceiling is not the one I was raised under.
It is low and whitewashed, the beams above uneven and hand-hewn, the kind that creak when the weather changes and catch the morning light in small, golden slats.
A single lamp glows at the far end of the room, its linen shade tilted slightly, casting a warm amber hush over the stone walls and the quilt pulled halfway down my bare legs.
Everything is rife with the scent of him—oakmoss and something smoky, like old books and firewood and the last pour of a good bottle left breathing on the table.
The sheets beside me are still warm, the fabric rumpled where his body had been.
I reach toward that space, not to call him back, but to feel the residual heat of being held.
My muscles ache, but gently, like after a long swim or a slow stretch, a lingering fullness where he had been inside me, a flush across my skin that has not yet cooled.
Ruairí has left a soft robe at the foot of the bed, pale blue, embroidered at the cuff with the family crest.
I slip it on, the fabric cold against my skin, and knot it tightly at the waist.
I pad barefoot to the window and pull the curtain aside two inches.
The morning is gray and still.
The garden below is lit by the last breath of the sodium lamps, their orange glow catching on the ironwork and the gravel path.
