“I managed in the jungle,” she said, her voice low but steady. “I can manage with you.” Then softer. “Please, babe…”
The word cracked something in him.
“Let me show you,” she whispered, voice shaking with truth, “that what I said…was all about me, not you.” She touched his face, her fingertips trembling as they skimmed the hard line of his cheek, down to the fullness of his lips. “I wanted to be honest when I gave myself to you.”
He didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her words wrapped around his ribs like bindings, pulling him apart and stitching him back together in the same breath.
She leaned forward, her mouth finding his, soft but fierce, an offering and a reckoning.
He answered her with his body, his hands. He palmed the full globe of it, fitting perfectly into his palm. He squeezed gently, kneading, reverent and possessive all at once, taking what she offered, giving back everything he’d held in silence.
Her forehead pressed to his. Their breath mingled. “With you,” she whispered. “With only you.”
He almost came right then and there, his body absorbing her words, filling so many gaps inside him, he was almost bursting. The ache in his skin intensified, morphed into exquisite torture. When he ran his thumb over her hot, taut nipple, she cried out and arched her back. He was mesmerized by the sight of her, drawn so effortlessly. Leaning forward, slipping his arm around her back, he clamped his mouth over that delicious knot and took her with a restless movement of his hips. She moaned softly, groaning and panting, and he absorbed the sound of her pleasure.
Her hand slipped down his torso, to his throbbing erection, and he growled when her fingers closed over him. He held on through her strokes, long, sweet, and firm. “Not in here,” he whispered. “Too slippery.” Without waiting for a reply, he gathered her against him, rose out of the water like Poseidon, and stepped out.
He slid down the side of the tub, the water running in soft rivulets, and settled her across his lap, and she gasped when she came into contact with his dick. Her gasp met his breath, their eyes locking, startled, hungry, unable to look away.
He steadied her with his hands at her back, his thumbs tracing small, reassuring circles along her spine. She leaned closer, her forehead nearly touching his, both breathing hard, each breath mingling with steam and the scent of her skin.
He didn’t know what kind of mystical feminine movement she made, but she held him in place, in thrall as she slowly, inch by excruciating inch, lowered herself onto his shaft, until he was buried inside of her to the hilt. She slipped her hand around his nape, her fingers caressing his skin while she rode him at a slow, seductive pace. What began as stillness became motion, a slow rhythm born of trust, of need, of every word they had spoken and every one they had swallowed. They moved together, learning each other again, finding the places where heat met heartbeat, where sighs became language.
He pressed his mouth to her neck, scattering damp kisses along her throat and to her chest, both hands all over her. She leaned back, giving him better access to her breasts, as he lowered his head and laved a nipple before taking it deep inside his mouth. She clutched his neck and arched, offering herself up to him while swirling her hips harder, faster against his.
“I need your weight on me,” she whispered. There was no hesitation on his part. She asked, and he was helpless to resist her. Bracing his back and legs, he rose as she slipped off him. His arms supported all that sweet fire and hot skin. He left the bathroom and entered her bedroom, stopping at her bed, lowering her carefully to the mattress.
At the bed, she looked up the length of his body, then stared at his erection in awe and fascination. “On second thought…,” she murmured. Leaning forward, she oh-so-slowly swept her tongue from the base of his erection, all the way up to the sensitive tip, tasting him in a long, endless, velvet stroke. She sucked the tip, made a soft, aching sound, then took him, all of him, into the silken heat of that incredibly beautiful mouth of hers.
White-hot sensations jolted through him at the sight of her pleasuring him with such eagerness, with such shameless abandon. She pulled him in deep, then withdrew with a delicate swirl of her tongue and just enough suction to make him groan deep and breathless. When she repeated the process, once, twice, that groan turned guttural as every muscle in his body tensed.
She made him weak in the knees as her lips continued to slide up and down his length, each time taking him a little deeper, sucking him a little harder, stroking him faster, and ultimately driving him straight to the edge of insanity.
Knowing he was on the verge of coming, and wanting to be inside of her when he did, he gently grasped her elbows and pulled her back as he climbed onto the bed, hovering over her.
Her beautiful face was flushed, her eyes a dark, arousing shade of blue, her soft, smiling mouth reflecting a feminine satisfaction that sent a renewed rush of heat spiraling down to his groin.
Dropping his mouth over hers, he thrust his tongue deep. In response, she slid her hands up his chest to his shoulders, tracing the sinewy contours of his arms, the biceps that were taut from restraint.
A sense of urgency spurred him on. Pushing his hand between them, he found her clit, and she moaned against his mouth, her hips arched against his hand, and her legs curled around the back of his thighs in a desperate attempt to pull him closer. Still kissing her, he pressed his hands to her knees, shoved her legs wide apart, and skimmed his hand up her supple thighs.
“Dakota, please,” she whispered. “I need you inside me.”
He needed that, too, had never needed anything more. The head of his cock slid along her sex, soft and moist, until he found the entrance to her body.
Something cracked through him, the quiet of a stillness that had never been ruffled by anything. Everything clamped down to keep from asking for too much, for needing too much, but with Bailee, he couldn’t hold on to those barriers anymore. He drove into her, hard and deep, the force of his penetrating thrust making her gasp and moan, and she responded, meeting him and moving with him, giving him something he’d never experienced before.
Fulfillment.
Heat threaded through him, under his skin, around his heart, through the throbbing ache in his dick, behind his eyes where stupid, breathtaking tears threatened.
He had always thought that if a moment like this had ever been given to him, he would lose himself, sink out of sight, and he would have to claw his way back.
Bailee. He thought. Then said, “Bailee.” Ancestors bless him, she accepted him, gave him back to himself with every movement, gaze, and touch.
Her fingers framed his face, their eyes locked as their hearts were given, intangible becoming something whole and real, as she held him in that fragile, endless moment. His eyes closed, then opened, meeting hers, searching, grounding, taking him where he’d always craved to go.
He whispered her name once, a sound more prayer than word, and she answered with a breath that trembled through them both, the clench of her inner muscles around him sucking him into the softest, tightest, hottest sheaths, and he groaned and instinctively thrust into her. His body thrummed, demanded, urging him to move harder, deeper, faster, and give into this joining, and its completion simmering just below the surface.
