Page 16 of Final Drive

I laugh, and his mouth touches the side of my neck.

Since the claiming there’s been a pull between us, a low constant hum that gets louder when we’re apart. I can feel it now in the way something in me settles as soon as his body meets mine.

“You’ve been wound tight since dinner,” he says.

I turn in his arms with water running down between us. “You can feel that?”

“I can feel everything lately.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“I’m aware.”

His thumbs move once over my hips. For all the heat in his eyes, he waits, and I realize that’s what he’s doing. Waiting for me.

I close the space between us.

“I feel it too,” I tell him. “When we’re apart, it’s like something keeps pulling tighter.”

“And now?”

I take a second to notice. “Quiet.”

He lets out a breath, forehead coming down against mine. “Yeah.”

We stand there for a moment with the water falling around us, and then his mouth finds mine and the gentleness goes out of it.

Jackson kisses the way he rows, relentless and total. His hands move over wet skin and pull me closer until there’s nothing left between us, and I hold his shoulders for balance as he walks me backward into the cool tile.

His mouth moves down my throat, teeth grazing the skin below my ear. “Been thinking about this since practice.”

“Apparently.”

One hand closes around my breast, his thumb moving over my nipple until I arch into him. The bond hums between us, carrying his want into mine until I can’t tell whether the sharp pulse low in my stomach started with him or me.

“Jackson.”

He lifts his head.

“Stop thinking about it and do something.”

His mouth twitches. “Bossy.”

“I’m literally your coxswain.”

That almost gets a smile out of him. Instead he drops to his knees.

He looks up at me with water running down his face, and this is a man who does not bow to anybody, who guards himself like a locked room. Seeing him there for me hits somewhere deeper than it should.

He lifts one of my legs over his shoulder and opens me to him. “Hold still.”

Then he buries his face between my thighs.

I cry out and grab for the wall, but there’s nothing to hold on to, so my hand ends up in his wet hair. There’s nothing tentative in the way he uses his mouth on me. His fingers dig into my thigh while his tongue works over my clit, steady and deliberate, until my hips start moving against him despite the order to hold still.

His hand tightens.

“Oh, fuck.” My head goes back against the tile. “Jackson.”