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Zaxx groaned and rolled over, putting her beneath him, settling between her legs. She rocked her hips up, pressing herself hard against him. He twisted his hips, grinding back.
Then, because he was in no mood to rush, he ducked away from her seeking mouth and began a slow journey downward. First, tiny nips along her jawline, then a suck of her earlobe into his mouth. Then down her neck, laving spirals with his tongue to the notch between her collarbones.
Beneath him, she moaned and writhed, her hands searching, scratching, pulling. Every sound from her, every movement, every touch, filled his senses and pushed that snug languor of the first moments farther away. But before he lost himself to need, he wanted to make her ravenous for him.
He reached her beautiful breasts and claimed one, sucking the nipple between his teeth, lifting his head to stretch it until she made the particular sound, a short, gasping cry, that meant he’d found the perfect balance of pleasure and pain. When he heard it, he eased off, soothing that tender place with feathery kisses. Then he claimed the other breast and honored it the same.
Her body flailed desperately, arching, twisting, kicking, pulling. “Fuck me,” she begged on a breath. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
“Oh, I’m gonna fuck you, babe,” he murmured with his lips on her firm, flexing belly. “I’m gonna imprint myself on you.”
She laughed softly. “Promises, promises.”
“A solemn vow,” he said and buried his face between her legs.
She hooked her legs over his shoulders, squeezed her thighs around his head. Zaxx loved this so damn much, the taste and scent of her, the feel of her muscles clamping him to her while she rode his face like a jockey at the Preakness. He stayed on her, the position and tempo he knew she wanted until she broke apart around him, flinging her body and his around so much that he threw an arm out and grabbed the side of the mattress to make sure they didn’t go flying off the bed again.
The second her climax downshifted to recovery and her thighs relaxed, Zaxx surged up and pushed himself into her. She’d gotten an IUD about a month earlier, and they’d both been experiencing the myriad, magnificent pleasures of condom-free, worry-free sex for the first time.
Myriad, magnificent pleasures.
Gia sucked in a hungry noise as he pushed in and sank deep. When she reached between them, he grabbed her hands and held them around rods in her wrought-iron headboard.
He’d never restrained her before in any way. Brilliant green eyes peered up at him, questioning. He peered back. “I got this.”
No challenge, no snark. Gia simply studied him for a second or two, and then her eyes fluttered closed and her body relaxed.
She wasn’t submitting; Gia never submitted.
She was trusting, and that was miles better. Light-years better. Her trust had remade his image of himself.
Zaxx held that trust in both hands and proved himself worthy. He poured his whole self into her, moving at first with slow determination, but speeding up with each thrust, as the feel of his body sliding with hers, of her heat surrounding him, closing around him, arching against him, drove him steadily to desperation.
She came again, quickly. He held back as long as he could, finally giving in when there was no more choice not to.
As always, afterward they were sweaty and spent, lying in a languid tangle. Maybe the room was still chilly, but within their flannel nest it was warm and a little humid. Zaxx pulled out and shifted to tuck her under his arm, along his side, and then couldn’t imagine ever wanting to move again.
“Move in with me,” Gia murmured, her lips and breath dancing through the hair on his chest.
At first, lost in his sated stupor, Zaxx only hummed a question. “Hmmmm?” Then her words sank in, and he found the strength to lift his head. “What?”
She let her head fall back so their eyes could meet. “Move in with me.”
The sleepiest kind of exaltation rolled slowly throw his veins, but he pushed it down before it woke all the way up. “I don’t want to make any change that could blow us up. I am very good like we are. You already said you need space. Don’t give that up to try to do something for me.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t. But you spend most of your nights here, anyway, and I love having you here. I get cranky when I can’t work, but I figured that out.”
“Yeah? How?” Not ten feet away was her desk and all her carefully sorted mountains of books and papers—not to mention the stacks downstairs.
“I talked to my mom about making my old bedroom my office. That’s a totally dedicated space that I can keep everybody out of and be completely alone when I need to be. I can arrange all my work exactly right, and there’s a really cool window seat that always was my reading nook. I used to pull the curtains shut and disappear from the world. I can still do that. It’s even big enough to sleep in, if I’m feeling hate-the-worldy and don’t want to rub my grump all over you. It's private space, and that’s all I need. And when I’m in my office, this space will be empty of me, so you can have your own time. When you need more than that, you have your room at the clubhouse. We can keep our own spaces and share this one.”
She rose to rest on an elbow. “I love you, Zaxxon. Being with you is ... my blood feels fizzy. I’m so happy with you, in a way I had to explore and define before I could recognize it. I know I said I need to live on my own, but what I really need is a place to be when I need to be alone. It took me a while to see the distinction there. The way things have been between us since we first said we loved each other, I never imagined anything like this for me. I learned what this kind of love is by loving you.”
Zaxx stared at her while his mind and heart shifted things about, reorganizing the map of his life, reshaping the form of his self.
He’d been with Gia about as long as he’d ever been with any woman, but every time before, things had run their course by this point. Always there was something about him they were unhappy with, something they wanted to change—and the reverse was true as well. All his relationships before had worn a blister where they rubbed each other wrong.
With Gia, the course seemed endless. He could not imagine a time when he would not be completely captivated by her, entirely besotted with her, filled to the brim with awe and respect and love and soul-settling satisfaction.
