“Muscle memory.”
“You’re ridiculous.” But she was grinning, and she pulled me down by my belt loops, and her grin turned into an expression I was becoming addicted to: humor still in her eyes, everything else focused and wanting.
I took my time. Her breasts first, my mouth on her nipples, tongue and teeth and patience while she arched into me. Her skin was warm from the day, salt-flushed, and I followed the taste of it down her ribs, her stomach, the crease of her hip. When I settled between her thighs she grabbed a fistful of sheet and her head dropped back.
I pressed my tongue flat on her clit and her whole body jolted. Slow, steady strokes while she moved against me, herthighs shaking, my hands on her hips. I slid two fingers inside her, curled, and she swore, bright and sharp and startled out of her.
“Right there—fuck, right there—”
I held the pressure and she came on a broken exhale, her thighs clamping, her whole body pulling taut. I eased her through it, then built the next one, gentler, my tongue soft circles while my fingers kept their rhythm. She came again with my name on her lips and her hand gripping the back of my head, holding me there.
I kissed her inner thigh. Looked up.
“Get up here.” Her voice was wrecked.
I stood, and she reached for my belt, undid it with fingers that weren’t entirely steady, pushed my shorts and boxers down. Her hand closed around my cock and my hips rolled forward involuntarily. She sat up on the edge of the bed and took me in her mouth, and the wet heat of it whited out my vision for a solid second.
Her tongue worked the underside while she took me deep, and my hands found her shoulders, her hair, gripping because my knees weren’t reliable. She pulled back, swirled her tongue over the head, took me deep again. My stomach clenched and the edges of control started to fray.
“Marley—” A warning. She pulled off, looked up at me with dark eyes and swollen lips, and the sight of her nearly finished me.
She moved back on the bed. I followed, settling over her, the full length of us touching: chest, hips, thighs. Night air moved through the open windows, cool on heated skin. Moonlight reflected off the creek and threw rippling patterns across the ceiling.
I pushed inside her slowly. Watched her face. Her eyes closed, her lips parted, and she let out a breath that felt like ithad been held for days. I held still, buried, my forehead against hers.
“You wreck me,” I said. Low, barely audible. “Every time you find a detail in the water and your whole face changes. Every time you argue with me and you’re right. You wreck me and I don’t want it to stop.”
Her eyes opened. Dark, liquid. She kissed me, slow and deep, her hand on my jaw, and started to move beneath me.
We found a rhythm. Slow, rolling, deep strokes that she matched with her hips. My mouth on her throat, her collarbone, her breast. She wrapped her legs around me and the angle shifted and we both groaned.
Then she pressed her palm flat on my chest and pushed. I rolled, bringing her with me, and she straddled me, and the shift was immediate. She braced her hands on my chest and moved, setting the pace, and the sight of her above me. Strong, flushed, commanding. The most devastating thing I’d ever seen.
“There you go,” she breathed. She rolled her hips in a slow circle that turned my vision dark at the edges.
“Jesus, Marley.”
She grinned. “That’s what I thought.”
She rode me with the same focused intensity she brought to everything: purposeful, responsive, adjusting angle and depth until she found what she wanted. I reached up, palms on her ribs, thumbs grazing her nipples, and she arched into my hands.
I sat up beneath her. Wrapped one arm around her waist, my other hand between us, thumb finding her clit. Her rhythm stuttered.
“I’ve got you,” I said against her throat.
She did. Tight, sudden, her nails biting into my shoulders, her whole body shuddering. I held her through it, kept moving, kept the pressure, and she gasped and tightened around me again before the first wave finished.
“I can’t—” she started.
“You can.” I thrust up into her and she cried out, her forehead dropping to my shoulder, her breath hot on my neck. The fourth one built and broke in how her body pulled around me, rhythmic, devastating, and I stopped thinking about control.
I came inside her with her name on my tongue and her arms locked around my neck and the creek moving beneath us in the dark.
WE LAY IN THE WRECKAGEof my remade bed. Her head on my chest, her breathing evening out. Night sounds finding their way in: frogs, creek, the distant thud of a boat hull rocking somewhere on the Intracoastal.
“Three years,” I said.
She tilted her head. “Hmm?”
