Her hand found his hard length through his trousers, and the sound that left him was low and primal. She worked her hand slowly and felt him stiffen against her.
“Ava.” Her name came out rough.
“Aye?”
His hand closed around her wrist and held it still. “Nae yet.”
He stripped the last of what lay between them until they were fully naked. Then he notched his full length against her entrance. She exhaled slowly at the weight of it.
He held himself there for one moment, braced above her, and looked at her face. “Are ye ready?”
“Aye,” she responded without hesitation.
When he pressed forward, she felt the stretch and sucked in a sharp breath.
He paused.
She shifted her hips slightly, and he moved again, deeper this time. She turned her face into his shoulder with a sound that she would have been ashamed of a week ago.
He stayed still, letting her adjust to his size.
God.
Then he began to move.
He was slow at first, each stroke deliberate. Her hands found his back, and she held on while the pace built slowly and relentlessly. She could hear her own breath break and hitch with each snap of his hips. She tilted into him. He changed the angle, and she gasped and dug her fingers into his back.
“There,” she breathed. “There, daenae stop.”
He did not stop.
The room had narrowed to sensation, to his body and hers, to the heat building between them with nowhere left to go. She could feel himeverywhere. She could feel the restrained force as well and the effort it cost him to hold back.
“Ciaran.” His name came out wrecked.
“Aye. Let go,” he murmured against her hair.
His pace quickened, and he pressed his forehead against hers. She looked up into his face and saw his self-control cracking at the edges, and felt her own break entirely at the sight.
“Ciaran!”
He drove forward once more, and his breath came out in a rough, broken sound against her cheek.
Ava felt the force of her own release tear through her at the same time she felt him shudder and grip her hard, both of them locked together for one breathless moment before it broke and rolled through them in long, pleasurable waves.
For a long while, neither of them moved.
She could still feel him inside her. She could feel his heartbeat where their skin pressed together.
Slowly, her fingers uncurled against his back. They lay together for a long while after, the bed tangled, the room warm, their bodies still joined. Ava traced a line across his chest with one finger and felt him shiver beneath her.
“I love ye too,” she said.
His arm tightened around her at once.
She tilted her head up to look at him. “But only if ye daenae mean to send me away again after I give ye a child.”
Something in his face changed, then softened. “I couldnae even if I wanted to.”
