And, God help me, I did. I came apart like a constellation exploding, my vision whiting out, my body bowing off the wall as wave after wave crashed through me. I quivered and jerked while his eyes stayed locked on mine, his hand moving in perfect synchronization with my trembling, drawing out every last aftershock. He watched me like I was performing magic, like my pleasure was a miracle he’d been granted permission to witness.
The way he looked at me was like I was the only thing in the universe that mattered. No. More than that. Like I was something sacred he’d been entrusted with, something precious he couldn’t believe he got to touch. Adoration, mixed with wonder, mixed with fierce possession, as if he was memorizing every flutter of my eyelashes, every hitched breath.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, voice wrecked with awe. “My fierce warrior.”
My. As in mine. My heart soared. And I was equally terrified. Because being his meant I had something to lose.
In that moment, with nothing between us but skin and truth, I saw straight into his soul. Past the violence, past every mask he wore for the world. I saw the man who’d bloodied his knuckles for my honor, who touched me now like I was simultaneously strong enough to handle his intensity and delicate enough to deserve his gentleness.
His free hand cradled my face, thumb brushing my cheek with such tenderness, my chest ached. He was looking at me likehe was witnessing something holy, like my pleasure was a gift he never thought he’d deserve.
“You’re everything,” he breathed against my lips.
And I understood then what this was. He’d given me his protection. Then his pleasure. But underneath it all, he was offering something neither of us could name yet, something that lived in the space between racing hearts and intertwined souls.
And somehow, I knew that when I finally confessed the rest of my past, he’d accept me. All of me. Or at least, I desperately wanted to believe he would. Because the alternative—losing this, losing him—was becoming unthinkable.
“I want you.” I tugged at his shirt with desperate fingers. “Need you. Need to feel you.” When I finally pulled it over his head—with some assistance because, apparently, dating a giant had logistical challenges—my mouth fell open.
Sweet mother of all that was holy.
His beauty struck me just as strong as it had the first time I’d seen him without a shirt on. He was art. Living, breathing artwork. Sculpted muscle that belonged in a museum, abs that dipped into a V that disappeared beneath his waistband, like an arrow pointing to the promised land. Broad chest, rounded shoulders, all of it wrapped in intricate tattoos that told stories across his skin. Stories I wanted to trace with my tongue, wanted to memorize with my fingertips.
“The way you look at me,” he said, voice rough with need. “Like you want to devour me.”
“I do,” I admitted, running my hands over his chest, feeling him shudder under my touch. “Want to taste every inch of you. Want to memorize what makes you lose control.”
He caught my wrists, pressing them against the wall above my head with gentle pressure. “Careful what you wish for, Warrior. My control is hanging by a thread.”
“Good,” I breathed, arching against him. “I don’t want your control. I want you unhinged. Want to see you come apart the way you just made me.”
I was literally salivating. I couldn’t wait to feel him on top of me, feel him buried?—
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
We froze like deer in particularly compromising headlights.
“Faith? Open up!” Blake’s voice boomed through the door.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered against Ryker’s chest.
“Shit,” Ryker whispered, meeting my eyes. The interruption should have been a bucket of cold water, but somehow, the illicitness of it, the almost-caught-ness, only made everything hotter.
We exploded into motion like teenagers caught by parents, frantically grabbing clothes, pulling on shirts, trying to look like we definitely hadn’t been doing exactly what we’d been doing. Through it all, we kept catching each other’s eyes and smirking like absolute idiots. My body still hummed, still ached, still wanted.
And then—because, apparently, Ryker’s mission in life was to murder me via spontaneous combustion—he lifted those two fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean. Slowly. Deliberately. His eyes never leaving mine.
“You taste divine, Warrior.”
My face achieved temperatures previously thought impossible outside of solar flares. “You’re a menace.”
“You love it,” he said with that crooked grin that made my stomach flip.
And, damn him, he was right. I did. I was starting to love everything about him.
I shoved his chest. “Go wash up!”
“You need to change your shirt,” he pointed out.
