"Jace." My name in her mouth, broken, desperate.
"I'm here." I slide two fingers inside her and she clenches around them immediately, hot and tight and slick, and I have to squeeze myself again, hard, because the sound she makes whenI curl my fingers against her front wall is the most obscene and beautiful thing I've heard in my entire life.
I work my fingers in slow, deep strokes, curling on every pass, and I close my mouth over her clit again and suck and circle and she's not quiet anymore. She's loud. She's loud in a way that tells me she's forgotten where she is and who might hear and everything except my mouth and my hands and the thing building inside her that I can feel, feel it in the way her thighs are shaking and her walls are fluttering around my fingers and her voice is climbing.
"Don't stop. Jace,pleasedon't stop."
I don't stop.
I press deeper, curl harder, suck her clit between my lips and hold it there while my tongue works the tip in fast, tight circles. Her back arches off the deck. Her hand finds my hair again and pulls, sharp, and the sting of it fires straight down my spine.
She comes.
Hard. Clenching around my fingers in waves, her whole body locking up and then releasing in shudders that I feel in the water, in the deck, in the sounds she makes that start as my name and dissolve into something wordless and raw. I stay with her through it, easing the pressure, gentling my mouth, letting her ride it down while her thighs tremble against my ears and her breath comes in ragged, broken gasps.
I press a kiss to the inside of her thigh. Then the other. She's still shaking.
I look up at her. The sky behind her has gone deep violet, the last gold at the horizon line. Her hair is half down, her eyes are closed, her mouth is open, her chest rising and falling with each breath. She looks destroyed. She looks like the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
She opens her eyes. Looks down at me. And smiles, slow and dazed and unguarded, and the smile hits me harder than anything that came before it.
I ease her back into the water. She slides down against me, boneless, and I pull her in, her back against my chest, her head falling to my shoulder. The warmth of the water envelops her. I wrap my arms around her and press my mouth to the side of her neck and breathe her in and I am hard and aching and I don't care. That can wait. What can't wait is this. The feeling of her against me, unguarded, trusting me with the trembling, post-orgasm version of herself.
The steam rises around us. The pines are black against the darkening sky. Somewhere in the valley a coyote calls, high and thin, and another answers.
I know two things.
The first is that I will not be going to the Amazon in October.
The second is that I am completely, irreversibly addicted to this woman.
21
MAYA
His heartbeat is steady against my back, slow and strong. His arms are around me, one across my ribs, the other resting heavy on my hip, and the water moves gently with each breath he takes. Steam curls around us, carrying the last of the sunset into the darkening sky.
I don't move.
I am not ready to break this. Whatever this is. This warm, weightless, dissolved feeling of being held by someone. Boneless, undone, trembling slightly in the places where sensation is still receding like a tide going out.
His mouth is against the side of my neck. Not kissing. Just there. Breathing me in like he's in no hurry to exhale.
I shift against him, some small adjustment I don't entirely control, and the movement settles me more firmly against his lap. Against him. He's still hard. And that makes something low in my belly clench again.
I shift again. Less accidentally this time.
His hand tightens on my hip. "Maya." His voice is rough, low, right against my ear. "If you keep doing that, I'm going to come in this hot tub. And I have plans that don't include that."
I should stop. I should be sensible. I should be careful.
Instead I roll my hips against him, slow and deliberate, and say, "What kind of plans?"
And that does it. His arms lock around me and he stands.
Straight up out of the water with me in his arms like I weigh nothing. Water sheets off both of us. The cold air hits my skin, immediate, sharp, and I gasp and press closer to him, to the heat of his chest and the impossible warmth of his body against mine.
"What are you doing?"
