Now, it was about her pleasure.
She swayed forward, and he reached out to steady her. “Oh, please, Bran.”
Hunger shone in her eyes. So, too, did something else—impatience. That crippling need he felt, here it was reflected at him.
Driven by instinct, he took a breast in each hand and dipped his head, tasting one nipple, then the other—salty … sweet. His tongue swirled, licked, tasted, laved. Her sighs turned into whimpers and groans, gratification whipping through him, amplifying his own desire.
“Oh, Bran,” she pleaded. “I want you.”
He went still.
I want you.
An edge ran along those three words. This wasn’t directionless wanting. It was sharp and intentional. A straightedge of desire were those words.
As he freed her nipple from his mouth, her whimper almost had him undone.
“Then”—this was pure madness—“have me, Artemis.”
Their gazes held, each testing the resolve within the other.
She rose—and let her robe fall.
If this was a test to see if he could continue to hold her gaze, then fate had set him up to fail. As she stepped into the bathtub, the water level rising precariously toward the copper lip, oh, the view as she lowered. His eyes didn’t know where to look, for she was all curves, not a single straight line on her.
If this was a dream, then it was a nightmare. Because to think one might have this woman, then for it to prove a mirage would be torture. A man might never recover from it.
He reached for her hips as she sank into the water, steadying her, but also feeling her. Sudden doubt assailed him. What if …
What if he couldn’t perform as he once did?
She came to straddle him, her knees to either side of his thighs. How very aware he was of her cunny hovering above his cock. She reached for his shoulders, and they met eye to eye—and he realized what he wanted more than anything wasn’t actually to tup her.
Well, it was.
But what he wanted more, first, was … He reached out, cupped the back of her head, and pulled her forward. Their lips touched, tentatively, this kiss more intimate than anything else they’d been doing tonight.
How soft was her mouth.
How he’d missed her softness.
His life had become little more than all hard, unforgiving angles. But this—Artemis—was a gentle place to land. Not that she was passive. A person could contain more than one version of a self within. And Artemis did—determined and driven … yielding and forgiving. Her heart had never grown a shell, but maintained its resilience.
And he knew all this from her kiss that contained both experience and innocence, and let itself be vulnerable and known.
He pressed forward, deepening the kiss, their tongues swirling. Instinctively, his hips thrust, and she, too, followed instinct and ground her cunny along the length of him. Together, they groaned and let instinct take over.
Unable not to, he reached between them and brushed his fingers against the curls of her sex. She gasped, then exhaled a thoroughly aroused sigh into his mouth. His fingers trailed along her slit, swollen with desire and so deliciously ready for him.
He took himself in hand.
Where she was soft, he was hard.
She braced her forearms on his shoulders, tangling her fingers through his hair, her breath warm against his neck. The crown of his cock found her quim. A second, laden with the weight of the universe, beat past before, slowly, she lowered onto him, her sweet cunny stretching around him as she took him in, inch by inch. A long groan snaked through her, entering and quaking through him as he filled her. With near imperceptibility,she began to move on him, as if she were testing both him and herself.
Her mouth slid up his throat to his lips, and they were again kissing. Their kiss … this coupling … took on the timbre of desperation.
Desperate.
