She straightened, sliding her hand over his erection, her thumb rubbing the silky head, slick with his seed. She laughed softly as he thrust uncontrollably into her hand, pressing her body against his, her lips trailing along his gorgeous jaw. She licked her way down to the base of his strong throat, where his pulse beat strong and steady.
“One thing is for sure. There is nothing…nothing standard issue about your gorgeous ass.” She moaned softly and shifted her hands up through the power of his wet hair, twisting the silky, too-long strands around her fingers, and dipped her mouth lower, to the hard planes of his chest. She sent her mouth over his flat nipple, biting his deliciously erect nub, then suckled him strongly. He tasted so good, she wanted to devour more of him.
Her mouth moved lower, reverent, hungry, claiming the places she hadn’t let herself touch. Not like this. Not when it meant so much. She pressed soft, open-mouthed kisses down the hard terrain of his chest, tasted the salt still clinging to his skin. Every inch of him felt like a map back to herself, sweat-slick muscle, the curve of his ribs, the powerful slope of his abdomen where she dragged her tongue in a slow, deliberate line.
Then she saw it.
The scar.
Just above his hip. Faint. Jagged. A ghost in the flesh where the bullet had gone in. Where she had almost lost him.
Her breath caught.
She didn’t ask. She didn’t need to.
She bent low and pressed her lips to it. Gentle. Unforgiving. Her hands flattened against his waist as her mouth lingered over that wound like she could take it back. Like she could undo the pain he’d suffered in silence. Like she could speak apology in the language of skin.
He flinched.
Not from pain.
From memory.
From feeling her there.
Her lips softened, then firmed. She kissed him again. Slower. Deeper. A promise pressed into the scar.
Bear’s hands trembled as they threaded through her hair, the first sign of his restraint beginning to slip. His voice came raw, scraped from somewhere deeper than bone. “You don’t have to do that.”
She lifted her face, meeting his eyes, her breath shuddering between them. “I can’t help myself. With you, I can never help myself.”
Her fingertips traced up the lines of his obliques, mapping the sharp grooves carved into him by time, discipline, and sacrifice. She followed the trail of her hands with her lips, her tongue, leaving heat and devotion behind. His muscles jumped beneath her touch, and every time he gasped, she kissed him again. Like she was trying to teach his body a new memory to replace the old one. Not violence. Not blood. But her. Her mouth. Her want. Her truth.
Tonight, this surrender was all about recognition.
Her mouth moved over the inside of his thigh, and he groaned low, trembling now, his control fraying thread by thread. But she didn’t linger. She rose, kissed up the line of his torso again, chased the water trailing down his chest like it was something sacred. She wanted to remember the way he tasted when the world was stripped away, sunset and sweat and salt and man.
When her lips found his again, she poured everything into that kiss. Every apology. Every ghost. Every moment she’d shut him out and every hope she didn’t know how to name.
Still, he let her lead.
Still, he didn’t demand.
Still, he let her choose.
She pulled back just enough to whisper against his mouth, “Let me show you what it means to take.”
His breath stuttered. His hand curled at her jaw.
He didn’t kiss her again.
He lifted her.
Big hands slid beneath her thighs and in one fluid motion, he gathered her against him, rising with effortless strength. Her body curved into his instinctively, slick heat pressed to the hard swell of his erection, her breath catching at the raw contact as he walked her to the bed like a man carrying fire.
He laid her down with a gentleness that betrayed the tension in his frame. He was shaking. Not from uncertainty, but from holding back.
Then he was over her. Not crushing, not looming…there. Filling the space with muscle and gravity and need, dark hair dripping around his face, eyes so locked onto hers she thought she might drown in them.
