He doesn’t.
He kisses down my throat and over my breasts, his beard a soft drag against my skin as his mouth closes over my nipple. I arch into him with a whimper, my fingers sliding into his hair, and he takes his time there too—tongue and lips and the faint scrape of teeth until I’m trembling and pulling at him, needing more.
When he finally moves down my stomach and settles between my thighs, I’m already aching. He looks up at me once,those hazel eyes dark and steady, and then puts his mouth on me.
I sob.
He’s unhurried. Long, slow strokes of his tongue through my folds, circling my clit without quite giving me the pressure I’m begging for with my hips. He pins me down with one large hand spread flat on my stomach when I try to roll against his face and takes his time like he has all night, like tomorrow isn’t coming, like this island and this bed and the two of us are the only things in the world.
“Wyatt, please—”
He hums against me, and the vibration alone pulls a broken cry from my throat. Then he seals his mouth around my clit and sucks, soft at first, then harder, working me with his tongue until my thighs are shaking on either side of his head. My fingers are fisted in his hair, and the orgasm crests so slowly it’s almost unbearable—then crashes through me all at once, wave after wave, my back arching off the bed as I cry out his name into the quiet cottage.
He kisses the inside of my thigh while I come back to myself, his beard a gentle rasp against sensitive skin. Then he moves up my body, and I reach for him, wrapping my hand around his cock and stroking slowly, watching his eyes close and his breath go ragged.
“Come here,” I say.
He settles between my thighs, and I guide him to my entrance. We both go still for a moment when he presses in—that first slow stretch that I feel all the way through me—his forehead dropping to mine, my exhale matching his.
Then he moves.
Slow and deep, his body over mine, his weight a comfort rather than a demand. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer. He obliges, burying himself to the hilt and rocking into me with a steady rhythm that builds heat without urgency. I feel every stroke. I feel his hands in my hair, his mouth at my jaw, the catch of his breath against my cheek when I tighten around him.
“Look at me,” he says quietly.
I do. Those hazel eyes hold mine in the low light. Something passes between us that neither of us puts into words—something that doesn’t need them, that we’ve been carrying since somewhere around Day Three and will keep carrying long after I board that plane tomorrow.
It doesn’t rush. It builds slowly and true, and when I finally tip over the edge, I do it with my arms around his neck and my face pressed to his throat, his name a whisper instead of a cry. He follows me with a low groan, his hips pressing deep and stilling as he spends himself inside me, his arms coming tight around my back.
We don’t move for a long time afterward. Because tomorrow I leave, and tonight I want every last moment of him I can hold.
I don’t cry. But it’s close, in the best way—the kind of close that means something real is happening, that this isn’t something you just set down and walk away from.
I will come back here. I will come back to him. Whatever the senate decides. Whatever it costs.
I fall asleep still thinking it, his arms around me, the island quiet outside.
Chapter Eight
Wyatt
“It’s today, isn’t it?”
I don’t glance at the cunning woman when I drop my things on the counter. I wait for her to tally then and give me the damn receipt, but she doesn’t move a muscle, not until I lift my gaze to hers.
“What’s today?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
“Don’t play with me, you foolish boy. You know as well as I do that this afternoon, your girl is going to stand in front of a bunch of old farts and defend an island to which she owes no loyalty.” I shove my hands into my pockets, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of seeing me squirm under her accusatory eyes. She’s the only one on this island—hell, on the entire planet—who can make a grown man like me feel like a little boy again. Acca just has that air about her. And when I don’t respond, she clicks her tongue in disgust and turns away from me. “I’m not in the mood to sell anything to you today.”
“I’m pretty sure there is a law somewhere about denying services to customers.”
“When you’re eighty, you don’t care about rules.”
“You’re being childish.” Those brown eyes spin to me, and I fight down a wince. Jesus Christ, the woman must’ve been some kind of predator in her former life. If looks could kill—I pat my hands over my chest to see if I’m bleeding. “Look—”
“No, you look here, young man,” she hisses. “I have known you your whole life. When you first showed up here after the crash, you were all skin and bones, broken and mourning. You locked yourself in your parents’ cottage for days, and I had to drag my old bones up that hill to feed you.” Her eyes narrow on me, daring me to challenge her words, but I don’t. “For sixteen years, you’ve holed up on that hill, and every once in a while, I’ll send people up there to bother you—meet your quota of human interaction. And then this girl came into your life.”
“And you sent her to my cottage—”
