“I can’t.”
“I know you can.”
“Just you now,” she whispered, because he still hadn’t let go.
He didn’t reply.
“Rafael,” she whimpered into his chest, not even sure what she was asking for. Mercy?
“You take your husband so well.” His voice was velvet, fingers tracing long, lazy lines down her spine, coaxing sensation from skin that shouldn’t respond.
Bea lifted her mouth to his chin, a soft, helpless decision. “One more.”
Rafael flipped her, guiding her onto her hands and knees. He covered her from behind, one hand curling over hers on the sheets as he slid in again, the angle stealing her breath.
Her cheek pressed into the bed. His arm snaked around her waist, taking most of her weight while also holding her against him. He moved slowly, almost indulgently, holding himself back, extending the moment as though he wanted to live inside it.
“I might just stay here,” he said darkly.
He could. She wouldn’t survive it. She whimpered.
His thumb found her again, patient and unrelenting, returning again and again until her moans became guttural.
That’s when his pace changed, control giving way to urgency. Each stroke drove the sensation higher, until she splintered beneath him. The moment she came undone, he followed, a harsh sound torn from his throat as he came hard.
This time, he let her sleep.
RAFAEL
The first thing he registered was her hair across his throat. The second was the soft weight of her limbs on his body. Bea was curled into him as if sleep itself couldn’t convince her to let go.
For a while he just lay there, memorizing this moment.
His wife.
Carefully, he lifted her leg away, and shifted down her body, shoulders easing her thighs apart. He kissed from the delicate skin behind her knee upward, until he found her with his mouth.
It didn’t take long before she stirred, her thighs tightening instinctively. He kept going until they loosened, and finally let go entirely.
Her hands shot down, threading into his hair—not to push him away. Just to hold on.
“You going to make a habit of this?” she rasped, fully conscious now.
Rafael looked up. His mouth curved against her skin. “Do you want me to?”
In answer she dropped her head back onto the pillow and pulled his hair. He liked when she did that, liked the way she tried to stay quiet and the way she never could. He liked everything about her, especially the surrender that always found her in the end, sometimes in her body, sometimes in the words she couldn’t keep in.
He lingered, indulgent, long enough that the air itself held the scent of her need. Rafael kissed his way up her body, until she felt exactly what was coming. Then he entered her, slow enough to see her pupils dilate.
Her walls cinched around him hard, dragging a curse from him. Every time, she wrecked him. Her eyes fell shut, as if what she felt demanded darkness.
Rafael kept the rhythm steady, breath close to her ear, feeling the change in her body before she could speak it. Her fingertips dug into his forearms, and he adjusted just enough to draw that broken sound from her again.
She broke faster than he’d meant her to, and she clamped down around him so hard he had to grit his jaw. Her neck tipped back like an offering, and he caught the smooth column of it between his teeth, leaving a small mark of possession.
He didn’t move until her breathing began to steady. Then he shifted her onto her side and held her. Her skin was damp, she was spent.
He wasn’t.
