Then she laughs, a startled, disbelieving sound, and something inside me unclenches.
I straighten, sliding one hand down between her thighs, fingers skimming over sensitive skin. She jerks, body clenching around me, a gasp tearing free.
“Easy,” I murmur. “Just helping.”
I find the little bundle of nerves I’d already mapped with my mouth, stroke lightly, in time with my slow thrusts. I’m not gentle because I don’t know what I’m doing; I’m gentle because Ido. I’ve been here before, with other women, but none of that history feels like it belongs here. This is its own thing. Its own universe.
“Bran,” she says again, more desperate now.
“You’re okay,” I say, even as my own control frays. “You’re better than okay. Let go for me.”
Her hips lose their tentative rhythm, movements going jerky. Her legs start to shake against the mattress. Her hand shoots back, groping for something to hold, and finds my forearm. Her nails dig in, little crescents of pain that ground me.
I keep the pace steady. In, out. In, out. Fingers circling slowly, relentlessly.
“Come on,” I coax, voice frayed. “That’s it. Take what you need.”
She stiffens, every muscle in her body pulling tight, and then she breaks.
Her inner muscles clamp around me in a series of hot, desperate squeezes, the sound that tears out of her low and wrecked and beautiful. I ride it out with her, swallowing my own curse, holding on until the last possible second before I let myself go, following her over the edge.
It’s not fireworks. It’s detonation. Something that reaches down into the oldest parts of me and blows them wide open.
Weenduptangledtogether on our sides, breath coming in harsh pulls, skin slick with sweat.
I gather her in against my chest, careful of her arm, careful of everything, and press my lips to her temple.
She doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t have to.
Her breathing slows gradually, hitching once when a stray aftershock shivers through her, making her clench around where I’m still buried inside her. I grit my teeth and stay put, giving her body time, giving us both this moment.
Eventually, the need to move wins out over my caveman brain. I ease out of her, slow and careful, and roll to my back, bringing her with me so I don’t crush her with my weight. She curls into my side on instinct, one leg thrown over mine, hand fisted in the fabric of the sheet.
Within minutes, she’s asleep.
Just like that.
I lie there and listen to her breathe.
Tallulah Gentry doesn’t know it yet, but she just signed her soul to the devil, and his name is Bran Kelly.
Slowly,withexcruciatingcare,I ease myself from the bed.
She murmurs something in her sleep, brow scrunching. I pause, hand hovering over her shoulder, ready to soothe.
She shifts, rolls onto her side, and settles again, lashes dark against the pale of her cheeks. Moonlight spills through the half-open curtains, turning her skin silver, painting shadows in the hollow of her throat.
I pull on a pair of sweats, not bothering with a shirt, and stand there for a long moment, just looking.
How the hell did we get here?
She was a fucking virgin.
I would never have guessed, never have thought—
My stomach clenches at the memory of how tight she was, the way her body fought me for that first stretch and then welcomed me. The little choked sounds she made, hands fisting in the blanket, her stubborn insistence that she was fine even when I could feel the tremor in her legs.
