With an impressive display of muscle, he locked her to him and rolled over, never leaving her, his weight now pressing her into the mattress.
“You’ll take what I give you.” He growled into her ear as he resumed those slow, deep thrusts. The words should have bristled, but they didn't. He'd give her what she needed.
It felt so good.Hefelt so good. His weight pinning her to the mattress, the hard muscles of his back bunching beneath her hands as she explored all that hot, male skin.
She was on edge, desperate for more. So close…
“Please, Zach…”
He lifted his head, met and held her gaze; the intensity in his features stole her remaining breath. He surged deeper, harder, faster—giving her more, but still not enough to push her over. She tightened her legs around his waist, trapping him against her, as her hands slid to his ass and gripped.
“Come. Now.” His fingers found her clit, pinched, and his hips slammed into hers. She broke; pleasure cresting. Her inner muscles clamped down, squeezing and pulsing. He continued thrusting, prolonging her orgasm, as her body shivered and thrummed with satisfaction, until every muscle went limp.
But he wasn’t finished. His hand pressed against the small of her back, arching her, anchoring her in place as he stroked in and out of her, almost leisurely now, a look of pure bliss on his face.
She nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck and breathed him in—mahogany and teakwood and beneath that something human and warm—as his exhale stirred her hair.
We made it.
He checked in through touch rather than language—a pause, a look, a question asked through the tilt of his head—and she answered the same way, with her hands on his face and the curve of her body toward his. They found a rhythm the way they’d found everything else: without discussion, simply through paying attention to each other, and there were no more words. Only movement—the slick slide of him into her, hard muscle against soft skin.
She’d almost lost him. Lost this. Lost what they could be together. She tightened her arms around him, and with a mere flex of his fingers, he pulled her to him, eliminating that last fragment of space between them.
He knew. She didn’t need to explain it. He was there too, in whatever space existed between relief and recklessness and the animal certainty of being alive when you nearly weren’t.
When she broke apart again—slow and warm and complete, his name catching somewhere between breath and sound—he nuzzled her neck as he let go. Like he needed to be part of her. Both breathed heavily as their muscles relaxed, hearts competing to see whose beat the fastest.
“God, Zach, I love you so much.”
His arms squeezed impossibly tighter around her. “Never letting you go.”
He rolled them onto their sides, their bodies still joined. She draped a knee over his hip and snuggled her face into his chest. Listened to his heart rate come down.
Outside, the distant sound of birds began, the tentative reemergence of a world that had decided to continue.
She was so tired. The tired that lived behind your eyes and in the marrow of your bones, the kind that only arrived after something that had demanded everything from you.
Zach’s hand moved in her hair, combing out the strands. Slow, rhythmic. Like he was the one soothing her.
“You should sleep.” His voice was low and rough at the edges, the way it always was when he was closest to something real.
“Mm.” She didn’t argue. Couldn’t. She was already most of the way there; her body deciding before her mind weighed in. It had been a long night. “You too.”
“I will.”
She believed him. Zach said what he meant.
What hedidn’tsay, he wasn’t ready for yet. She understood that.
She shifted, resting her palm against his chest. Under her hand: the strong, steady beat of a heart that came dangerously close to stopping. Her fingers curled slightly, instinctively.
His arm tightened around her shoulders.
I’m here, that pressure said. In his language. In the only language he was fluent in: the language of presence, of showing up, of covering a door with his body and staying between her and the thing that wanted to hurt her.
He was here. He didn’t pull away. He kept her locked to him, with no distance between them.
She heard it loud and clear.
