His hands go to his belt.
I watch him. I don't move. He didn't tell me I could move and I find I don't want to until he does — I want to watch him undo his belt and his pants with those precise hands. I’m drowning in the anticipation of being with a man who has been taking me apart and he’s finally decided he's done waiting.
He's hard. Very. I see it — his want running alongside mine through the connection, amplified, and the combination of both of us wanting simultaneously is something I'm going to need a minute to recover from afterward.
He doesn't give me a minute.
"Come here," he says.
I sit up. He pulls me into his lap, both hands on my hips, positioning me exactly where he wants me — and I feel himagainst me, thick and insistent, and I make a sound and his hands tighten.
"Look at me," he says.
I look at him. His eyes hold mine.
"Stay there," he says. "Don't move until I say."
The anticipation is its own particular cruelty. I stay.
His hands move slowly up my sides. Down. His thumbs trace my hip bones. He's watching my face the entire time, reading whatever he finds there, and I am entirely at his mercy and entirely unwilling to be anywhere else.
"Please," I say.
His hands find my hips again and he lifts me and I'm sinking down onto him and the stretch is immediate and good and deep and I exhale hard against his shoulder.
He holds me still. Both hands on my hips. Not moving.
"Dalton—"
"I've got you," he says. Low. Steady. "Give me a second."
I understand. The bond is running loud enough that the second is as much for him as for me. I feel what he's feeling through it — the heat of being inside me, the effort of holding still, the need of a man who has been managing himself all night and is at the very edge of that management.
I press my lips to his jaw.
He exhales.
Then he lifts me and brings me back down and we both stop being careful about anything.
He doesn't stop. He finds the rhythm and drives it, his mouth at my throat, my nails in his back, the bond running so hot between us I can barely separate my own sensation from his. His thumb finds my clit and I gasp his name.
He works me with his hand and his hips simultaneously and I come again, this time harder than the before, his name in my mouth, clenching around him. He follows me over with his facepressed into my neck and both hands gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks.
He stays close after. His weight half on me. Both of us breathing hard.
The bond settles into something deeper than it was an hour ago.
Chapter ten
I'm not sure when Leo got there.
Somewhere in the night he let himself in and curled around me. I didn't ask. Leo arrives when Leo decides to arrive. The bond was warm and settled when I woke — the Dalton-arc deep and quiet, the Leo-arc warm and present — and Leo being in my room felt like the natural continuation of a perfect night.
He doesn't look up when the knock comes. "That's Jake," he murmurs.
"How do you know."
"Because he's been in this corridor for twenty minutes."
