“It was a warning.”
I smile against her skin, then kiss the place beneath her jaw where her pulse is beating too fast to hide.
“Good,” I murmur. “I like knowing when I’m in trouble.”
Her laugh breaks halfway into a gasp when I move again, deeper this time, and she clutches at me like she has forgotten what she meant to do with her hands.
“There,” she says, rough and breathless. “That. Please.”
Everything in me goes still for half a second.
Not because she says it.
Because she trusts me enough to mean it.
I keep the same angle, the same slow pressure, watching her lose the last sharp edge of control one breath at a time.
I drive into her harder, faster. Her moans climb higher, her body arching beneath me, and I know she's right on the edge.
I pinch her nipple between my fingers, rolling the stiff peak. "Let go Pippa. You are safe with me."
She breaks apart with a shudder. Her walls clamping down around me, her body shaking, my name a whisper on her lips. I keep moving through her orgasm, drawing it out, feeling every pulse and flutter of her release.
And when she finally goes limp beneath me, her chest heaving, her eyes half-closed, I'm still hard inside her. Still in control.
"We're not done," I murmur, pressing a kiss to her jaw. "Not even close."
Her eyes flutter open, and a slow, exhausted smile spreads across her face. "Oh."
19
Chapter 18
Pippa
AJ's hands grip mywaist, and the world tilts. My shoulder meets the mattress, cheek pressing into the rumpled cotton, and I'm face-down before I can draw a full breath. The shift in position sends aftershocks rippling through my core. My body still humming, still clenching around nothing.
"Easy," he murmurs, his palm flat between my shoulder blades. The weight of it grounds me, keeps me from floating away on the residual tremors.
I try to push up, but his hand presses firmer. Not forcing. Suggesting. The distinction matters, even now. Especially now.
"Stay."
One word. Quiet. Absolute.
My spine surrenders against my will, melting into the sheets. The cotton is cool against my overheated skin, a contrast that makes me shiver.
His hands find my shoulders first. Thumbs digging into the knots I've carried for weeks, for months. The pressure borders on pain before it dissolves into something closerto relief. I didn't realise how tight I'd been holding myself until his fingers work into the muscle and I feel it release.
"You carry everything here," he says, thumb circling a particularly vicious knot at the base of my neck. "All that authority. All that control."
I want to argue, but his hands slide down my spine, pressing into the dip of my lower back, and the words dissolve into a low sound that's embarrassingly close to a whimper.
His palms map the landscape of me. The ridges of muscle along my sides. The curve of my waist. The solid strength of me pressed into the mattress beneath him.
When his fingers reach my hips, they linger, squeezing with an appreciation that feels almost reverent.
Almost.
