"Last time was fast," I say. "This isn't going to be."
"Is that a promise or a threat?"
"Both."
I push the shirt off her shoulders, follow the fabric down her arms with my hands, leave the bra for now. Kiss her throat, the hollow beneath her ear, the place where her jaw meets her neck and her pulse beats the loudest. She makes a sound that's halfway between impatience and surrender.
"Grant."
"I said slow."
Her hands come up to my chest, fingers curling into the front of my shirt. She pulls, and the snaps give way with a series of metallic pops. Her palms flatten against my bare skin, and I feel the contact everywhere, a full-body current that makes my muscles tighten.
She pushes my shirt off, and her fingers trace the scar along my ribs from the Tucson ride, the one that left me held together with surgical wire. She bends, and her mouth follows the path her fingers traced. My hand finds the back of her neck, holds her there while the sensation carves through me.
Then she bites the skin just above my belt, and my control fractures.
I haul her up by the hips and her legs lock behind my back, fingers in my hair pulling hard enough to sting. The kiss is open-mouthed and fierce, all teeth and tongue and the kind of hunger that scares me because I can't contain it, can't channel it into something manageable.
I drop her on the bed, and the iron frame groans under the impact. She reaches for me, but I pin her wrists above her head, one hand holding both of hers against the quilt.
"Stay."
"Try harder."
I do. With my mouth on her skin, with my free hand unhooking her bra and peeling it away, with my teeth on her nipple hard enough to make her arch off the mattress. She fights the grip on her wrists, not to escape but to test it, to test me, andwhen I don't let go, the sound she makes vibrates through her whole body.
"You like this," I say against her skin.
"I like that you're not gentle."
"I don't know how to be. Not with you."
"Good."
I release her wrists long enough to strip her jeans and underwear down her legs in one pull. She's bare on the quilt, flushed and breathing hard, watching me with those amber eyes that don't flinch from anything. I unbuckle my belt, shove my jeans down, and her gaze drops. Her lips part. The hunger on her face feeds something dark and territorial in my chest that I stop trying to fight.
I spread her thighs with my knee and settle between them, my weight pressing her into the mattress. She hooks one leg over my hip, tries to pull me closer, but I hold back. I let the head of my cock slide against her, through the wet heat of her, not inside. Not yet.
"Grant." Her voice is raw. Stripped of the armor she wears everywhere else. "Please."
"Please what?"
"You know what."
"I want to hear you say it."
Her jaw tightens. Defiance, even now. Even pinned beneath me with her body begging for something her mouth won't ask for. I drag the head of my cock over her clit, slow and deliberate, and watch her composure crack.
"I want you inside me." The words come out rough, almost angry. "Now. Right now."
I slide into her in one long stroke and her back bows off the mattress, a sound tearing out of her that hits the walls and comes back to both of us. She's tight and hot and drenched, andthe feel of her body gripping me, pulling me deeper, makes my vision narrow to the two of us and nothing else.
I set the pace. Slow and deep, each thrust deliberate, bottoming out and holding there long enough to feel her pulse around me before pulling back. The iron bed protests every movement, a steady metallic groan that keeps time with us. Her fingers dig into my shoulders, nails cutting crescents into the muscle, and the sting of it sharpens everything.
"Harder," she says.
This time I give it to her. I grip the iron headboard with one hand and drive into her with the full weight of my hips, and the bed slams the wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. She wraps both legs around my waist and tilts her pelvis, takes me deeper, and the angle change pulls a groan out of me that I feel in my teeth.
