I hold the angle and work her there, relentless, my thumb finding her clit and circling in tight, slick strokes while I driveinto her at a pace that has the headboard knocking against the wall.
She comes apart.
The orgasm tears through her like something with teeth. Her whole body locks, her back arching off the mattress, her inner walls clamping down around me so hard I see white. The sound she makes starts as my name and shatters into something wordless and animal, and her nails rake down my back hard enough that I feel skin break.
I don't stop. I fuck her through it, every pulse and clench, my forehead pressed against hers, my eyes on hers, watching every second of her unraveling.
Her body jerks with aftershocks. The oversensitivity makes her whimper, and the sound of Kenna whimpering with my cock still inside her destroys what's left of my control.
The orgasm hits me like a freight train. It starts at the base of my spine and detonates outward. I bury myself deep and lock there, coming with a groan that I muffle against her neck because the sound of it would've been loud enough to bring someone to the door.
My hips jerk in hard, involuntary thrusts. She holds me through it, her legs tight around my waist, her hands in my hair, her body milking every last pulse until I'm empty and shaking and collapsed on top of her with my face buried in her neck.
After, I don't pull out. I stay buried inside her, my weight on my forearms, my mouth against the curve of her throat. Her pulse hammers beneath my lips, fast and hard and gradually slowing. Her hands trace the muscles of my back with the slow, dazed movements of someone coming back from a long distance, and when her fingers find the scratches she left, she presses them gently and I shudder.
"Colt." She says my name into my hair, quiet and wrecked and tender, and the tenderness undoes me more completely than the sex did.
I shift onto my side and pull her against me, her back to my chest, my arm locked around her waist. I'm still half-hard inside her, and the intimacy of staying connected while we come down is something I didn't know I needed until this second.
"Grant would kill me," I say into her hair.
"Grant would say it's about time somebody loved you who could keep up."
I press my mouth to the curve of her shoulder. Her skin is damp with sweat and tastes like salt and heat and the desert night coming through the gap in the curtains.
"I'm not going to say it yet," I tell her. "The word. I'm not there. I'm close, and you probably already know it, and I'm not ready."
"I'm not asking you to be ready." She laces her fingers through mine where my hand rests on her stomach. "I'm asking you to be here. Which you are."
"Which I am."
The room settles around us. The hum of the air conditioning is low and constant, and through the gap in the curtains, the lights of the parking lot cast a faint amber glow against the ceiling. The Sonoran Desert stretches beyond the motel in every direction, dark and patient.
I hold Kenna, and for the first time since Grant died, the wanting doesn't have teeth.
It has roots.
15
KENNA
Iwake up in Colt's bed with his arm locked around my waist and his breath warm against the back of my neck. The first coherent thought I have is that I am in very serious trouble.
Not the Merrick kind. The other kind. The kind where you wake up with a man's body curved around yours and your first thought isn't about the case or the evidence or the federal investigation. Your first thought is about the way he said your name last night, low and rough against your skin, and how you'd like to hear it again before you've finished your next breath.
I lie still for a minute and let myself feel it. The weight of his arm. The heat of his skin against my back. The slow, steady rhythm of his breathing. The soreness between my thighs that feels less like aftermath and more like a signature.
Then I ease out from under his arm, find my clothes on the floor, and pad into my adjoining room to grab my laptop and notes. There's work to do.
When I come back through the connecting door, he's awake. He's propped against the headboard with the sheet pooled at his waist, and the scratch marks I left on his back are visible when he reaches for the glass of water on the nightstand.
The marks are angry red lines, parallel tracks down each shoulder blade, and the sight of them does something to my stomach that has nothing to do with hunger.
"Morning," he says. His voice is rough with sleep.
"Morning." I hold up my phone. "I need to make a call."
"It's barely dawn."
