“Yes.”
“How long do we have?”
“Until the middle of the night sometime.”
She pushed away from the door and headed for him. It was all coming to an end, but not before she had a chance to show Maddox everything he meant to her after all he had done, all he’d revealed.
Standing before him, not even a foot separating her sorrow from his intensity, she shimmied her jeans down her legs and peeled her shirt over her head.
His eyes grew dark, his lids heavy as his fingers flexed next to him, but he didn’t reach out to touch her.
She could practically see the war waging within him between honor and desire.
For her the war was over. She’d chosen a side.
Desire.
With a flick of her wrist the bra snap gave, and the scrap of fabric gave way. Cool mountain air flowing in from the open sliding glass doors teased her sensitive flesh, making her nipples pucker to stiff points begging to be touched.
“Don’t just leave me standing here, Maddox.”
His lust-filled gaze travelled over the skin she revealed to him. With a low growl he lunged forward, grabbing her wrist and yanking her to him. Letting out a grunt, he buried his face in her neck and bit the tender flesh there, making her gasp.
“It won’t be gentle.” The words scraped over the shell of her ear, making her shiver.
“Thank God.”
Two little words, just two, gave him all the permission he needed to let go and give in to an attraction that started the first moment they saw each other. If he chose. He backed her up against the door again, only this time the coolness from the wood seeped into her pores from head to toe.
He tore his shirt over his shoulders, tossing it to the floor. Hooking his fingers in her bikinis, he tore the scrap of lace from her as he undid the button of his jeans.
The force pulled her hips away from the door before she fell back against it and shot her hands out to his shoulders to hold herself upright.
Dropping to his knees, he wrapped a hand around her ankle and parted her legs. His eyes met hers from where he knelt between her legs, just a fraction of a second before he smiled a feral smile and licked into her center.
The swipe of his tongue over the most sensitive part of her made liquid heat pool in her center. Her skin flushed, and she pressed her palms against the door to anchor herself.
His hands stretched up to tease her nipples as she fought against collapsing on legs that had gone as weak as tissue paper.
Clinging to him, she rode out the wonderful assault from his tongue. He kept an aggressive rhythm as though frustration, attraction, fear, had all clashed and now poured out from him to her.
Sharp pleasure built up within. His shoulders, now covered with a light sheen of sweat, flexed under her fingers.
When he sucked that part of her into his mouth the sensations crested and broke free, sending wave after wave of pleasure through her. She beat her first against the door and thrashed her head. Power and vulnerability had never been part of her sexual experience until now. Until Maddox had his mouth on her, wordlessly showing her everything he felt.
He tore away from her and stood. Crushing his mouth to hers, her taste on his lips and tongue, he lifted her against the door, and with one smooth thrust buried himself inside her.
She cried out as the fullness of him stretched her to the limit, leaving no part of her untouched.
He tore his mouth away, his gaze finding hers, and began a rhythm that had her trying to get closer and pull away all at once. Her nails scraped his flesh and he hissed with the sting, but never let her go. If anything the pain made him thrust harder, deeper, his grunts louder, the way he clenched the soft skin of her waist tighter until she was sure he was leaving bruises… but she didn’t care.
She’d wear every last mark of him, taking them into battle tonight with pride.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled herself closer to him. Her nipples grazed his hard chest, the core of her rubbing just right and stoking the fires all over again with his rhythm.
His thrusts grew fast and desperate. He made love to her with less finesse and more desperation to give her pleasure than take his own.
She’d never had a man show her all of himself like this. The power, the desire, the need, all on display, his vulnerability making them powerful together.
