Everything is so damn slow I want to scream at him to pick up the pace.
But he’s already gliding up my body as my pussy ripples with aftershocks from his tongue on me and inside me. He uses his thighs to spread me, his knees to keep me open, and his fingers joined with mine to pin my arms over my head.
He never looks away. All his feelings are right there. He’s holding my legs open as he thrusts deep into me, but he’s the exposed one.
Hewantsme to see what I’m doing to him. Wants me to read each flicker of emotion in him. To see all the things words can’t say because some words aren’t enough.
But some feelings are.
We come together with flushed skin, damp sweat-slicked bodies, and low moans. And when the explosion comes, it starts as a tingle at my curled toes, creeps up my legs and blooms between my thighs.
He spills himself into me, shuddering as he holds himself there, his face against my throat, and his ragged breaths echoing my name.
I don’t know what this feeling is yet, but I don’t want to let it go, so after Archer releases my wrists from the bed and gathers me close, I don’t shove him away and get up.
He didn’t knot me, but I feel as tied to him as if he were trapped in my body.
We share the same pillow as the last of the late afternoon warmth from the sunlight spills from the window beside my bed and onto our bare shoulders.
“How I feel about you will never change or go away, Juniper,” he says quietly. “With the bond or without it, you’re mine and I’m yours.”
I know that.
He showed me, and now he’s telling me in case I didn’t read it in his eyes. But he wants something from me that I’m not sure I’m ready to give. Or if I ever will be.
I open my mouth, hesitating.
He touches his mouth to mine. “I’m not asking if you can forgive. I don’t deserve it yet.” He sweeps hair back from my face. “Have you eaten?”
My stomach lets out a long, echoing roar of a cavern filled with wild things that have been starving for a decade or more, and I blush.
He grins at me. “Wait here. I’ll make you something.”
He swings his legs out of bed and pulls on his pants. He doesn’t bother with a shirt. I love it and hate it. Love the view. Hate that I’m attracted to him when I haven’t come close to forgiving him for hurting me. Or if I’m even sure if I want to.
And I watch him from bed, with the covers held to my chest, as he pads across the room to the kitchen and starts pulling ingredients from the refrigerator.
He’s frying bacon when he catches me looking, his mouth quirking in a brief smile. “What?”
“No one has ever cooked for me before.”
“Good,” he says from the stove. “I get to be your first.”
All my firsts have been different.
Torin was the first person I ever slept with.
Callum was the first to knot me.
And Archer is the first to cook for me.
His eyes burn when he looks at me. My cheeks burn and I turn away, though my gaze returns to him far too soon. “Why breakfast for dinner?”
He shrugs, embarrassed. “It’s the only thing I know how to make. I can try something else if you don’t mind me setting fire to your kitchen,” he says, surprising a laugh out of me.
“I don’t mind.” I scrunch my nose. “And I couldn’t complain even if I wanted to. Cooking is not one of my strengths.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “What have you tried to make?”
