I looked into her eyes, holding her gaze.
“Mine,” I said, a low growl.
“Yours,” she echoed.
I pushed inside. The feeling was obliterating. Hot, silken, impossibly tight wetness sheathing me. A groan was torn from the depths of my soul. I buried myself to the hilt in one long, slow, inexorable thrust, feeling her body stretch to accommodate me, hearing her choked cry of pleasure-pain. I held there, embedded fully, letting us both feel the shocking, complete connection. Then I moved.
I pulled out almost all the way and slammed back in. No gentle rhythm. No careful pace. This was a claiming. A fucking. Each thrust was deep, hard, driving the breath from her lungs. The bed rocked against the wall with a solid, rhythmic thump. Her legs wrapped around my waist, her heels digging into my back, urging me on.
“Yes! Like that! God,just like that!” she screamed, her head thrashing on the pillow.
I fucked her with a ruthless, pounding intensity, each stroke aimed to bury myself as deep as I could go. The sounds were obscene and beautiful: the slap of skin, her ragged cries, my own guttural grunts. I could feel her inner walls beginning to flutter again, that delicious, rapid clenching. She was right back on the edge I’d denied her.
“Now,” I commanded, pistoning into her. “Come for me, Malibu. Come on my cock.”
Her climax hit her like a seizure. Her body arched violently, a raw, shattered scream tearing from her throat as she convulsed around me. The feeling of her pulsing, milking tightness was too much. My own release detonated, a white-hot torrent flooding into her as I drove in one last, deep time, my shout muffled against her neck. I collapsed on top of her, spent, both of us slick with sweat and trembling.
After a long moment, I shifted my weight, but didn’t pull out. I couldn’t. I was still semi-hard inside her, the aftershocks of my orgasm still rippling through me. I nuzzled her throat, tasting salt. “Holly?” I murmured.
She turned her head, her eyes hazy and sated. A slow, wicked smile touched her swollen lips. Her hips gave a subtle, testing roll beneath mine, and I felt myself stir in response inside her still-clenching heat. “You’re not done,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Are you?”
I could only smile before pulling her on top of me.
Over the next few weeks, we got very reacquainted with each other’s bodies. Very. The counter. The bed. The shower. The bath. The couch. On the couch so frequently, in fact, that when Dalton teased about bringing a black light over we practically tripped over each in our hurry to dissuade him from doing just that. Which, of course, was the opposite of subtle. In between Dalton’s roaring laugh, Maria’s deep blush, and the look we shared over their heads…we started to find ourselves again.
Things weren’t perfect. Hell, what did I expect? We’d never been the soft, easy kind of couple. We were gasoline and a match, two alley cats in a room full of fireworks, always one spark away from lighting the whole place up.
The first real fight hit a few months in.
I’d pushed too hard at PT that day. Told myself I could handle it. Told myself pain meant progress. By the time I made it up the stairs to our apartment, my leg felt like it had a live wire wrapped around it. Sweat soaked through my shirt, and every step sent a warning up my spine.
She was waiting on the balcony. Dinner was set on the table inside. Candles lit. The kind of domestic scene that still startled me sometimes—like I’d walked into someone else’s life by accident. I tried slipping past her.
“You overdid it,” she said.
“I’m fine,” I tossed over my shoulder, already angling for the bedroom where I could collapse without an audience.
“You’re not.”
I dropped my keys harder than I meant to. The clatter echoed down the hallway. “You gonna start bubble-wrapping me too? Dalton already tried.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m trying to keep you from ending up back in a hospital bed.”
“Newsflash, Malibu—I’m not broken.”
The second the word left my mouth, I wanted it back.
She stepped closer, and I saw it then. The anger. But underneath…fear.
“We buried you, Jackson,” she said, voice shaking in a way that cut deeper than shouting ever could. “And doing that almost had our friends burying me. Don’t you dare snap at me.”
That knocked the air out of me. I stared at her, breathing hard, leg throbbing, pride flaring uselessly in my chest. I hated that she saw weakness. Hated that she worried. Hated that I couldn’t give her a clean, unscarred version of myself. But underneath all of that was something worse.
Guilt.
“I know,” I said quietly.
Because she was right. They had buried me. Folded a flag. Said goodbye. And she’d unraveled in the wreckage of it. Silence stretched between us. She moved first. Pressed her forehead to my chest like she was anchoring herself. Or maybe anchoring me. I felt the tension drain out of me in a rush I didn’t expect. I swallowed hard, lifted her chin until I could see her eyes, and kissed her.
