I climbed up her body. Settled over her, weight on my forearms, and she pulled me down and kissed me—tasting herself on my mouth, not caring, her tongue sliding against mine with a hunger that had been fed but not satisfied.
"Off," she said against my lips, tugging at my belt. "These. Off. Now."
I stood long enough to strip. Her eyes tracked every movement, and the way she looked at me made my blood run hot. Not shy. Not embarrassed. Hungry.
"Get back here," she said, and there was something new in her voice. Not the raw pleading of two nights ago, not the desperate surrender. Authority. Maggie Blackwood, the woman who ran a ranch and didn't take orders from anyone, taking charge in the one arena where she'd let me lead before.
I liked it.
I came back to the bed, and she surprised me—pushed up onto her knees, met me in the middle of the mattress, and pressed her palm flat against my chest until I was the one laying back. She straddled my lap, her knees bracketing my hips, her hands on my shoulders, and looked down at me with an expression that was half challenge, half wonder.
"My turn," she said.
"Maggie—"
"Shut up." She rocked her hips against me—slow, deliberate, a long drag of heat that made my vision go white at the edges. "You've been running this show. Taking care of me. Being patient and controlled and—" Another roll of her hips, and I grabbed her waist hard enough to leave fingerprints. "—and I am grateful for every second of it. But right now, I want to see what you look like when you stop being in control."
Christ.
She reached between us. Found me. Lined us up with a precision that made my jaw clench. And then she sank down—slowly, inch by inch, her eyes locked on mine the entire time, watching my face the way I'd watched hers two nights ago.
I couldn't hide it. Didn't try. My head dropped back. A sound came out of me that I didn't recognize—low, guttural, pulled from somewhere deeper than thought. Somewhere only she could reach.
"There," Maggie whispered, and her voice was thick with satisfaction. "There you are."
She started to move.
Slow, like she'd asked for. Rolling her hips in long, devastating waves, her hands braced on my chest, her hair falling around us like a curtain. I watched her through half-closed eyes—the flex of her stomach muscles, the way her lips parted on each downstroke, the flush spreading from her chest to her throat.
She was magnificent. Powerful. A woman in full possession of herself, taking exactly what she wanted and giving everything back.
I let her set the rhythm. My hands moved to her hips—not guiding, not controlling. Holding. Grounding. “Fuck, Maggie,” I ground out through clenched teeth, trying to hold on so this didn’t end before we were ready. But she felt so good, so right. I squeezed my eyes shut, needing to focus.
"Eyes on me, baby,” she said, throwing my own words back at me. I couldn’t have ignored the request even if I wanted to. When I met her gaze, the connection was so raw, so unshielded, that something cracked open between us that I knew we could never close again.
She moved faster. The slow rhythm building, her breathing going ragged, her nails digging into my chest. I sat up—wrapped one arm around her lower back, pulling her flush against me, the other hand sliding up her spine to cradle the back of her neck. We were pressed together from hip to chest, her forehead against mine, breathing each other's air.
“And you think you could’ve stopped this—us,” I whispered.
“I was delusional,” she replied, just as breathless. Her head fell back with a long moan that nearly made me come on the spot. I kissed up the column of her neck, along her jaw, and then claimed her mouth like she was truly mine.
Because after this, she was.
I held her gaze and started moving with her—meeting her rhythm, matching her pace, and when I shifted the anglejust slightly, she made a sound that went through me like a blade. Her whole body tightened, her hips bucked against me erratically, chasing her orgasm.
“That’s it, beautiful." My mouth against her ear. “Come for me. Let me see it. I’ve got you."
"I know," she breathed. "I know you do."
She came with her eyes open. Looking at me. Not hiding, not muffling the sound against my shoulder, not turning away. She let me see every second of it—the way her mouth fell open, the way her body seized and shuddered, the way her eyes went bright and blurred and shattered-wide with something so naked it hurt to witness.
I followed her thirty seconds later, my arms locked around her, my face pressed into the curve of her neck, and the release that crashed through me felt less like an ending and more like an arrival.
We didn't untangle right away.
We stayed like that—her in my lap, my arms around her, both of us breathing hard, hearts hammering against each other's chests. Her hand came up to cup the back of my head, her fingers moving through my hair in slow, aimless strokes.
Minutes passed before either of us said anything.
