He blinked. Confused that she would ask. Confused that she didn’t know.
“Isn’t it obvious?” His voice was rougher than usual, breaking around the edges of his words. “Hasn’t it been obvious?”
She licked her lips. “I don’t know. I?—”
“My heart refuses to beat unless you’re with me,” he interrupted, pressing his forehead to hers. “I can’t breathe when you’re not near.” He lifted his head and framed her beautiful, beloved face with his hands. “I love you, Sabrina. River goddess. I’ve loved you since the moment ya walked through the front door and fainted into my arms.”
Her nostrils flared, eyes filling until a single tear slipped from the corner of each.
He used his thumbs to gently brush them away, still unable to believe he was here. With her. And that there was nothing between them but love.
“I wanna make love to ya now.” He bent to nibble at the gentle curve of her bottom lip. “Is that okay?”
“God, yes.” Her immediate reply made him smile.
Lifting his head so he could watch her face, he entered her. Slowly. Gently. Easing in inch by inch because even though she was slick with desire, she was small and he was…not.
His vision dimmed at the edges and coalesced on the pleasure he saw in her expression as he pushed inexorably forward. Feeling her silky walls close tightly around him. Feeling her hands on his hips urging him onward. Feeling her heels hook into the bend of his legs for purchase as she arched and finally, finally seated him fully.
His swollen head pressed tight against the barrier of her cervix. His balls smashed gloriously against the curve of her ass.
It was all too much. Too pleasurable. Too decadent.
And yet it wasn’t enough because his shaft ached for friction, testicles begging for release.
She had gasped at the feel of him fully embedded inside her, her eyes screwing shut. But now, she framed his face and held his gaze.
“I love you.” The words were said softly, sincerely. They fell into his ears, overflowed his heart, and filled all the empty places inside him left behind by a lifetime of loneliness, neglect, and rejection.
His throat was full. There was a terrible burning behind his eyes. But he managed, “I love you, too, Sabrina,” before he claimed her mouth and began to move.
Hew had had sex in backseats and bedrooms. In quick, sweaty bursts of need. And, sometimes, in slower, heated tangles that left him sated but still somehow empty. He’d even been blissfully passionate before. Had lost himself in the pleasure of the body beneath his. But this…
This was different.
Different in the way a ham sandwich was different from filet mignon.
Because this was the first time he’d made love to a woman. The first time he’d bared his whole heart while sharing his body. The first time every thrust carried not just lust and hunger, but devotion and reverence.
Short, fast thrusts that ground his pubic bone against her swollen clit. That’s what his Sabrina liked. Which was lucky, because that’s what he liked, too.
It was a rocking, rolling motion that kept them locked tightly together, body to body, heart to heart.
The sounds she made were low, raw, unbearably sexy. Not the kittenish mewls or the keening whimpers of women who performed how they thought men wanted to hear. Oh, no. Sabrina’s groans of pleasure and gasps of need were all natural, pulled out of her by desire and the uninhibited way she worked with him toward her own release.
“Yes, Hew,” she whispered. “Yes, just like that.”
She moved with him like they’d done this a thousand times before. Like this was a dance they’d practiced over and over again.
They’d been made for this.
Made for each other and?—
His thoughts stopped because he felt it then. The little flutter inside her as her orgasm rushed closer.
Thank Christ. Because he was hanging on by a goddamned thread.
Forcing himself to keep the same pace, the same angle, he worked to push her past the point of no return. And then her body clamped down hard around his, rippling, milking, sucking him deep as her orgasm hit with the force of a lightning strike and she screamed his name.
