"Me too." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I have an implant."
His eyes stay on mine. One beat. Two.
He presses forward.
The stretch is immediate and total. A slow, deep push that goes on longer than I'm prepared for, and I grip his forearms and breathe and he watches my face the entire time, reading every flicker of it. He moves in increments, giving me time with each one, and when he is fully seated inside me he stops completely. His forehead drops to mine.
Nothing between us. Just this. Just him, filling me so completely that I can feel my pulse around him.
"Okay?" His voice is strained at the edges.
"Yes." The word barely clears my throat.
He holds. The stillness of a man exerting serious control, visible in the locked set of his shoulders and the tension running down his arms into the ground. His breath comes out through his nose in one long measured exhale.
"Reid." I shift my hips. "Move. Please."
He moves.
Long, slow strokes, pulling almost all the way out and pressing back in to the hilt, deep and deliberate.
"Good girl." His mouth at my jaw. "You feel so perfect."
I arch up into him.
"I know." His lips graze my ear. "I know, sweetheart. You're taking me so well."
The pace builds. The snow beneath the jacket compresses further with each stroke. Above us the pine branches are still and the wind comes in intervals across the ridge and none of it reaches me. I am entirely warm. Entirely here. Entirely his in a way that should frighten me but it doesn't.
After a while he goes still inside me. Braced above me, he shifts his weight in one smooth controlled motion and then I am on top of him, his hands firm on my hips, and somehow the connection hasn't broken.
I look down at him.
He looks up at me. Completely patient. Completely present. Waiting.
I start to move.
Tentative at first, finding the angle, learning the weight and depth of him from this position. My hands go to his chest, the warm solid muscle under my palms, and I find a rhythm. His controlled stillness fractures, degree by degree, something raw and unguarded pressing through, and the sight of it makes me move with more purpose.
He sits up.
My legs wrap around his waist and we are chest to chest, his face level with mine, his eyes wild. He ducks his head and takes my nipple into his mouth, his tongue working over it in slow pulls, his teeth grazing just at the edge of too much. His hands grip my hips and he lifts me and lowers me in rhythm with his tongue, taking on my weight like it's nothing, setting the pace with his hands and his mouth simultaneously, and the groan he makes against my breast travels through his chest and into mine and I feel it in my spine.
"You feel so good," he says against my skin. "Christ, Maya."
I press my face against his temple. His arms tighten around me. We are moving together and the ridge is below us and the sky is above us and the mountains are holding all of it and I think, with the small clear part of my mind that is still capable of thought: this is what it was supposed to feel like. All along. This is what it was supposed to be.
His hand slides between us. His thumb finds my clit, pressing in slow firm circles, and the combination of that and the depth of him inside me and the heat of his mouth still working my nipple brings me close to explosion.
"Come for me, sweetheart."
I do.
It crests and breaks all at once, my whole body locking around him, and the sound I make is muffled against his neck. I feel every pulse of it from the inside out. His arms come around my back, pulling me flush against him, and then he is growling low into my hair. I feel him release inside me, warm, real, his whole body shudders once, hard, and then goes still.
We stay there.
His arms around me. My face against his neck. The cold air sits on my bare shoulders and his hands are warm against my spine and his pulse is slowing under my lips and the valley is somewhere below us, patient and enormous.
