Once his trousers were pooled around his feet, the thrill of what she was about to do took over, a fresh wave of need leading her almost involuntarily forward. She mouthed briefly at the obvious bulge beneath his boxers, dampening the fabric, before sliding her fingers beneath the waistband and pulling down.
There was the sound of her name, rough and desperate as it escaped past his lips, and then she was taking him in, swallowing him down as far as she could. Snow hissed, already breathing heavy, and when Jo looked up, cheeks hollowed and eyes dark with her own lust, she swore she felt the length of him twitch between her lips.
He looked sinful like this, coming apart at the seams yet still ethereal; even with his own lips bitten and parted in pleasure, he seemed otherworldly in his beauty. Jo couldn’t help the swell of pride at being the one who got to see him like this, got to be responsible for the hungry look in his eyes and the fingers tightening in the long, knotted strands of her hair.
Snow’s hips stuttered, not thrusting so much as desperately trying to hold himself back, and the need to watch him come, to swallow him down and milk every ounce of pleasure she could from him, was only outweighed by one thing.
She needed him inside of her. Now.
With a lewd soundingpop, Jo pulled away, panting softly against the spit-shiny head of him and admiring her job well done. When she got to her feet again, it wasn’t without a few good strokes along his now-throbbing length.
“I want you,” she confessed, leaning in to whisper the words as her teeth grazed the shell of his ear; she hoped he could hear every layer of those words, every facet of what she meant but didn’t say.I want you near me, I want you inside me, I want everything you’re willing to give me. I want you, I want you, I want you.
As if the words had spurned him on, Snow chased down her lips in another fierce kiss, tongue delving strong and wet against her own. They breathed each other’s heavy breaths, swallowed down each other’s desperate moans, and before Jo even really registered it, her knees were hitting the back of the bed.
When she settled back into the plush comforter, Snow followed, barely willing to leave an inch of space or single moment between them untouched. He kissed her until she was dizzy and begging, soft words strung together in a barely coherent jumble. All she knew was that she wanted him, so much, more than anyone she’d ever wanted before.
Somewhere in their passionate blur, Snow must have helped her remove the rest of her clothes, because the next moment of clarity was the feel of their naked bodies pressed flush. She could feel his erection between her thighs, not yet pushing in, but grinding against her wetness in subconscious impatience.
Well. She was impatient too.
So when he didn’t make the first move, she reached between them, captured his gaze, and guided him in. His eyes fluttering shut as he sheathed himself fully inside her was another expression she planned to commit to memory.
Not that her mental functions had any hope of continuing properly once he started to move. His first thrust had her gasping out his name, back arching off the bed as he filled her completely. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, locked her ankles at the small of his back. And when he picked up a rhythm, not fast and rough, but slow and deep and intimate, she swore she could feel every inch of him, sparks of pleasure building into a heat that would eventually set them both aflame.
This was so, so much more than scratching an itch.
Eventually his pace wasn’t enough, her whole body teetering on the edge of something mind-blowing without knowing how to topple over.
“Faster, Snow, please. . .” She half-moaned, half-whined, into his neck, lips brushing against his pulse. He obliged, making her cry out and cling harder, so close it was like riding a constant wave of pleasure that refused to crash.
But somehow, Snow seemed to know what to do, navigating that rising tide with a hand between them, fingers rubbing a quick rhythm between her thighs that had her whole body quaking. It was a rush of pleasure so profound, she swore she blipped out of existence for a second, her brain shutting off and rebooting under the pounding burst of pure ecstasy.
She might have screamed his name.
Even as she came down from her high, that same pleasure thrummed like a second skin beneath every inch of her, made only more prominent as she felt Snow’s thrusts lose rhythm, his hips stuttering in the aftermath of his own release.
He whispered something into her neck as he came, something she didn’t catch over the ringing her ears, but by the way he continued to hold her tight, she figured it was something good.
The echo of his climax rang through her ears as he breathed, his weight on top of her heavy as his breath. She trailed her fingers up his spine, to his shoulders, and back down to just above the firm curve of his rear. He seemed in no haste to move and she was in even less to push him away.
His fingers were the first to find life, tangling in her hair, catching the side of her face in gentle caresses. They unwound, releasing her as he pulled away. The fullness was quickly disappearing as he went soft within her. But they shared an unspoken agreement to savor every last moment of that connection, every tingling, shivering sensation that there was to be felt until the very last second.
When Snow finally lay beside her, Jo could feel the floaty high of post-orgasmic bliss starting to fade. But she didn’t want it to. She wasn’t ready for it to end, for any of it to end. So she curled up against Snow’s chest and closed her eyes, holding him just as tightly as he seemed determined to do to her. She felt his heart slow and listened to him catch his breath, and she pressed kisses against his collarbone, his shoulder, his jaw.
Neither of them spoke, too afraid of popping the bubble they’d managed to temporarily hide themselves inside. And when they eventually managed to drift off to sleep, it was to nothing more than the sound of each other’s breathing, and the millions of things neither of them could bring themselves to say.
Chapter 31
Their Last Meal
MORNING CAME TOO soon.
Though perhaps it wasn’t the morning—merely the aftermath. It was the calm not before, or after, but between the storms.
Jo rested in that eye, clinging to the stability she’d found in the man who was still curled naked next to her. She pressed her forehead into the center of his chest, her nose crushed against his breastbone, and she breathed him in as if to absorb his essence, commit it to memory, and store it for whatever was to come.
She could’ve asked him then, what awaited them all the moment the clocks ran out. But Jo couldn’t find the words. She would wait, and tolerate the unknown, if it meant the preservation of the space that they had collapsed into together and made their own.
