Jack pushed his trunks down and stepped out of them without ceremony. He was done hiding from her. Done hiding from himself.
Her gaze dropped to the thick, rigid length of him. The involuntary parting of her lips sent a bolt of pure electricity through his chest. She looked at him with a mixture of wonder and want that made him feel, for the first time, like a redeemable man.
He climbed onto the bed, rising over her. His free hand traced a slow path from her jaw to the swell of her breast, following the curve to her waist, gliding over the soft rise of her hip. She trembled under the contact, her breathing shallow, her pupils blown wide until the green of her irises was little more than a thin, luminous ring.
“You’re shaking,” he whispered.
“So are you.”
His fingers trembled against her ribcage with a current that ran deeper than nerves, deeper than desire, originating somewhere in the marrow of who he was and who he wanted to become.
His mouth lowered to her breast, drawing her nipple between his lips, and he moaned.
Her raw and unguarded cry resonated in his sternum, pulsing straight to his cock. He swirled his tongue around the taut peak, alternating between gentle suction and the lightest graze of his teeth, until she was writhing beneath him, her hips rolling against the sheets in a rhythm that begged for more.
“I love hearing your little sighs.”
His hand slid down her stomach, fingers trailing through the soft curls to find her folds drenched and warm. He gently parted her. Slick, silken heat coated his fingers as he traced the seam of her sex, spreading her arousal with slow, measured strokes that made her gasp and clutch at the sheets.
“So wet,” he breathed against her breast, dragging his tongue across her nipple. “So warm.”
It validated how much she wanted this, how much she wanted him.
Her hips lifted, chasing his touch, as he moved his fingers. Firm, unhurried rotations that turned her breathing ragged and her thighs restless. He increased the pressure, watching the flush climb from her chest to her throat, watching her lips part on soundless moans as the pleasure compounded.
He slipped one finger inside, and the tight, hot grip of her body drew a groan from his chest that sounded foreign to his own ears. She was impossibly snug around his knuckle, her inner walls clenching and releasing in a rhythm that matched her quickening pulse. He curled his finger forward, stroking along her front wall, searching for the spot that made her spine arch off the mattress.
When he found it, she cried out. Her hand flew to his wrist, not to stop him but to anchor herself, and her thighs fell wider apart in unconscious invitation.
She hissed through her teeth when he added a second finger, adjusting to the stretch, her body opening for him in slow, pulsing increments. He pumped his fingers in and out of her with a rhythm designed to unravel, thumb circling her swollen bud as his mouth worked her nipples into sensitive peaks.
“Jack, oh God, I can’t?—”
“You can.” He kissed the words into the valley between her breasts. “Let me take you there.”
He moved down her body, pressing his mouth to her ribs, her navel, the sensitive hollow below her hipbone. When his breath fanned across her sex, her whole body tightened in anticipation, her fingers twisting in his hair.
He licked through her folds in one long, luxurious stroke, tasting the sweetness of her arousal, and the sound that tore from her throat was primal and gorgeous. He sealed his mouth over her clit, sucking gently, fingers still working inside her until her hips bucked.
He pressed his free hand flat against her stomach to hold her steady. “I’ve starved waiting for you.” Now, his fast was over.
Jack feasted without restraint, lapping at her swollen flesh with broad, unhurried strokes, alternating between teasing licks and plunging his tongue deep inside where she was hottest and sweetest.
Her thighs trembled at his ears. Her moans climbed to a register that vibrated in his bones. Her back bowed off the mattress, and her mouth opened on a silent scream as her inner walls clamped around his fingers in violent, rhythmic spasms.
He worked her through every tremor, gentling his mouth, slowing his fingers, drawing out the aftershocks until she lay boneless and panting, her chest heaving, her skin flushed pink.
He kissed his way back up her body, tasting the salt of exertion on her skin. She gazed at him with glazed, heavy-lidded eyes and a smile so sated it loosened something in his chest that years of solitude had fused shut.
“Come here,” she whispered, pulling him close for a kiss.
Something about her tasting her own release on his tongue sent a throbbing pulse straight to his cock. He positioned himself between her thighs, bracing his weight as the heavy press of his arousal rested against her slick folds. Awareness jolted through both of them.
She was molten against him, drenched and swollen from her release, and every instinct in his body screamed to drive forward, to bury himself in that devastating warmth and lose what remained of his sanity.
His arms corded with restraint. Every muscle in his back locked as the overwhelming need to pin her, to press her wrists into the mattress and hold her exactly where he wanted her, surged through him with terrifying urgency.
The compulsion to seize control before someone stole it roared through his blood, primal and consuming. His grip tightened on the sheets beside her head as he drew in a ragged breath.
