“I want everything.” Her hips roll again. Slower. “Keep up.”
I take what she’s giving and let her set the pace. But I want her undone.
My thumb traces the crescent mark. The crimson pulses beneath my touch, brightening with each stroke, amplified by the springs’ magic until the glow bleeds out across her skin. She arches into my hand. Her groan is raw and ragged. I lean down. Close my mouth over the mark. Suck.
Her hips falter on me.
“Don’t,” she breathes, but her voice is already breaking.
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t make me come yet. I had a plan.”
“What plan.”
“I was going to wreck you first.”
I laugh against her skin. It shudders through both of us where our bodies are joined. “Try harder.”
She does.
Her fingers grip my hair. Pull my mouth back to hers. Tongue against mine. Her hips speed up, fast and tight, taking me at her angle. Her muscles work around me. Her rhythm now. I follow it.
The heat where I’m buried. The pressure low in her body. The coil pulling tighter with each stroke.
I let her have it.
In the compound, we stole hours between crises. Against the desk, we had minutes. Here, in the mountain’s heart, there’s no alarm. No timer. The only thing after this is more of this.
She runs me right to the edge.
Then I take it back.
I lift her off me, ignore her protest, and turn her so her hands brace against the pool’s edge with the water at her hips. She looks back at me over her shoulder, hair wet, mouth open.
“You’re cheating,” she says.
I slide one hand around her hip, then between her thighs, and the other up her spine to settle at the back of her neck. She shudders under both at once. I press her down a fraction, angling her, and slide back into her in one slow stroke that takes her until she has nowhere left to go.
She lets out a gasp.
I move. Hard now. The angle giving her everything, my hand on her clit and my hips driving against hers, and the water churning in waves around our bodies. Her forearms slip on the pool’s edge and I catch her, wrap an arm across her chest, palm pressed over the mark where it blazes hot under my hand.
“Maximus.” Softer. The edge stripped out. “Please.”
I press my mouth to the back of her neck. “I have you.”
“Don’t stop.”
“I won’t.”
I increase the pace. Faster. Rougher. My fingers work her clit in tight circles in time with my thrusts, and her thighs are shaking, and her hand reaches back to grip my hip and pulls me into her on every stroke. Taking more than I’m already giving.
Her head drops forward. I press my mouth to the curve of her throat. The pulse there hammers under my lips. Our hearts pound in the same rhythm.
“Close,” she breathes. “I’m close.”
“What about your plan?”
