She's close. Her hand finds my hair, gripping hard, and her hips roll against my mouth in desperate, uneven movements.
I pull back. She makes a sound of protest that I swallow with a kiss as I rise over her, my mouth wet with her taste. She grabs at my shirt, yanking the linen off my shoulders with an urgency that sends a bolt of heat through my gut. My pants follow, hastily shoved down my hips, then kicked off the rest of the way. My cock springs free, hard and aching, and her hand wraps around me immediately, her grip firm enough to drag a groan out of me.
"Sit up," she breathes against my jaw. "I want to be on top of you."
I love hearing the demand in my wife’s voice. As much as I like to direct things in bed, nothing inflames me more than knowing Avery needs my body with the same urgency that I need hers.
I settle back against the angled headboard, the pillows braced behind me, and she swings one leg over my hips, straddling me. Face to face now, with her knees pressing into the mattress on either side of my thighs, her hands braced on my shoulders, the pearls hanging between us. The position puts us eye to eye, breath to breath, and there is nowhere to hide from each other here. No angle that allows distance.
Just the way I like it. I grip her hip in one hand, my shaft in the other, then guide her to me. The head of my cock notches against her entrance. Wet, delicious heat. She sinks onto me in a slow slide that takes me to the root, her pussy stretching around my thickness. The sensation of her tightness, the slick grip of her body taking all of me, punches the air from my lungs.
"Fuck." The word is barely a whisper. My forehead drops against hers. My hands shake on her hips. "You feel… Christ, Avery. You feel so fucking good."
She rolls her hips. The slow, grinding motion drives me deeper, and my fingers dig into her skin as every nerve ending in my body lights up at once. She sets the pace, unhurried at first, savoring, her body rising and falling in a rhythm that matches the gentle rock of the yacht beneath us. I let her lead. Let her take what she needs. My hands slide from her hips to her thighs, up the curve of her waist, and she shivers at the trail of my fingers over her ribs.
"You look like a goddess riding me. I love being fucked by my wife." It's the second time I've said it tonight and it registers with even more power now, with my cock buried deep inside her, her body wrapped around mine as she bounces atop me. My voice cracks on the last word and I don't care. Let it crack. Let her hear what she does to me. "Say it back. Tell me you're mine."
"I'm yours." No hesitation. Her pace quickens, her breath coming shorter. "I'm your wife, Nick. I love fucking my husband."
My hand spans her lower belly, and I hold her gaze as I plant my palm over the place where our child is becoming. She covers my hand with hers, her eyes bright, and the press of our joined hands against her skin while she rides my cock is sacred and filthy and so intensely real that my vision blurs for a second.
"I need you to fuck me harder." The words come from somewhere primal, somewhere that has nothing to do with thought. "I need to feel you come on me like this."
“Yes.” She braces her hands on my chest, fingertips pressing against the muscle, and her hips snap faster. The wet sound of her body taking my cock fills the cabin, and I grip her ass with both hands and thrust up to meet her, driving deep on every downstroke. She cries out, her head tipping back, the pearls swaying against her throat. The sight of her, skin flushed, mouth open, riding me with abandon while wearing the necklace I fastened around her throat before I made her my wife, is going to be seared into my memory until I die.
"That's it." My voice is gravel. "Take all of me."
Her inner walls contract, and I feel her start to climb toward release. Her nails rake down my chest. Her rhythm falters, becomes desperate, and I know how close she is. I shift my angle, grip her hips, and drive up into her with a precision that makes her whole body jolt.
A small moan spills from between her clenched teeth. "Oh, yeah. Nick, I'm—"
"Let me hear you."
She tips her head back and cries out with the force of her climax. Her pussy clamps down on my cock, tiny, pulsing contractions that drag a hoarse shout from my chest. Her body arcs backward, taut as a bowstring, my name breaking apartin her mouth. And the sensation of her coming undone around me—that relentless grip milking my shaft—rips my own orgasm loose before I can brace for it.
I come hard. Buried to the hilt, flooding her, my hands locked on her hips as pleasure explodes through me. I hear myself growling her name while my cock pulses inside her and the world outside this cabin ceases to exist.
She collapses against me. Her face presses into the crook of my neck, her breath ragged and hot against my skin, her heartbeat slamming against my chest where our bodies are still fused together. I don't pull out. I can't. My arms close around her back, one hand cradling the base of her skull, the other pressed flat between her shoulder blades, and I hold her against me while our breathing slows and our pulses find each other and settle into the same cadence.
The yacht rocks beneath us. Gentle. Steady. The creak of rigging somewhere above deck, the lap of water against the hull, the muffled percussion of halyards against the mast. Sounds I've known since I was a kid on these waters, sounds that meant survival long before they meant peace. Now they mean her. They mean us.
I press my lips to her temple. Her hair smells like sea salt and tropics and something underneath that's purely Avery. Warm, sweet, indelible. Carefully, I roll her over until she’s beneath me, our bodies still joined. I’m not ready to leave her yet. Not even close.
But as I hold her close and begin a slow tempo inside her, my mind returns to the promises we made each other on the deck this evening.
"You said something in your vows." My voice is quiet, roughened by what just passed between us. "You said love doesn't have to be safe to be worth it."
She lifts her head. Her eyes are luminous in the lamplight, searching mine.
"I spent thirty-three years believing the opposite," I tell her. "That the only way to survive was to never need anyone enough to be hurt by losing them." I trace the line of her jaw with my thumb, the one that bears no scars. "And then you walked into my life and made that impossible. You made me need you. You made me terrified of losing you. And you made that terror worth it."
Her hand rises to my face. Her palm cups my cheek, and I turn into the touch the way I always do, seeking her warmth the way a man seeks oxygen.
"You're not going to lose me," she says.
"I know." And I do. Not because I'm arrogant enough to think I can control the future, but because this woman just stood on the deck of this sailboat and vowed herself to me with the same courage she's brought to every impossible thing we've survived.
That kind of love doesn't break. It bends. It holds.
