His hand slid between us. Found the place that was swollen and aching. The moment his fingers made contact I saw stars. He stroked me in time with his thrusts, precise circles that tightened something inside me like a coil being wound past its limit.
"Come for me." He whispered against my mouth. His forehead pressed to mine. "I want to feel you. I want to watch you."
The orgasm hit like a wave crashing. My whole body clenched around him and I cried his name with my eyes on his because he’d asked me to look at him and I did, I let him see all of it, the pleasure ripping through me in pulses that made my legs shakeand my vision blur, and his face while he watched me come apart was the most intimate thing I’d ever witnessed. Awe. Hunger. Tenderness. All of it at once.
He felt it. Groaned. His rhythm stuttered, his grip on my thigh tightened. Two more strokes, deep, desperate. He came with my name on his lips, his eyes still locked on mine, and I watched him lose control the way I’d lost it, his face open and wrecked and beautiful, and neither of us looked away.
He collapsed beside me and pulled me against him, both of us trembling, breathing like we'd run a marathon. His face pressed into my neck, arm heavy around my waist, skin hot and damp where it met mine.
I ran my fingers down his spine. He shivered and pressed closer.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. The rain tapped the windows. His breathing slowed against my skin. His hand traced lazy patterns on my stomach, his fingertips light, exploring without agenda.
"It feels wonderful." He repeated it into the quiet, his lips against my shoulder. The wonder in his voice was unmistakable. "The way I can feel you everywhere. On my skin. Inside me. Stay," he whispered.
"I’m not going anywhere."
I'd never felt this safe with anyone. The thought scared me more than anything Tobias ever did, because he was the one who taught me that safety was a lie, something offered with one hand and taken back with the other. But Jace's arms were around me and his heart was beating steadily under my palm, and I wanted to believe this time was different so badly that the wanting itself was terrifying.
I closed my eyes and let the warmth take me under.
Three days in that cabin and I discovered the following about Jace Hunter: the man was insatiable.
Not just physically, though in that department, he was a revelation. A man who’d spent his entire life avoiding touch and given permission to touch, made up for lost time with interest compounding daily.
He was curious, attentive, and treated my body like a project he intended to master. Nothing missed. Nothing rushed. I was starting to understand why his assistants kept quitting. If he brought this level of intensity to everything, the man was genuinely exhausting.
But the insatiable part wasn’t only about the bedroom.
He was insatiable with closeness. He read on the couch and pulled my feet into his lap without asking, just reached over and lifted them like that was where they belonged. He cooked breakfast and stood behind me while I poured coffee and rested his chin on my shoulder.
He’d find me in a room and stand close enough that our arms touched. When I showered, he’d knock and hand me a towel through the crack in the door, his fingers lingering on my wrist before he walked away.
Jace Hunter was also insatiable with words. Not a lot of them. But the ones he chose landed differently now.
"Your hair is in my coffee." He said it while I was leaning over his shoulder to read his screen, and he didn't move away. Just looked at the strand floating in his cup and then at me, and the fact that he didn't fish it out with a napkin felt like a declaration.
"You left a sock in the hallway." He was holding it between two fingers with the expression of a man caught between affection and sanitization. Affection won. Barely.
"Come here." From across the room, for no reason. Every time, my stomach flipped like I was sixteen and not a grown woman who should be immune to a man in a sweater saying two words.
On the second afternoon, I was on the couch when I noticed his laptop open on the desk. The screen showed something that looked like a game environment, a massive open-world landscape with mountains and forests and ruins that stretched to a digital horizon. I walked over and leaned in.
"Is this Ethereal Vanguard?"
He looked up from the code he was reviewing on a separate screen. "The current build. I’ve been working on the narrative modifications."
"This is the one getting adapted into movies, right? The Meridian deal?"
"If the deal survives. The narrative team keeps revising the romance arc and it's still not right." He pushed back from the desk, and when he looked at the screen his whole demeanor loosened. The set of his jaw softened. His shoulders dropped a fraction. On the monitor behind him I could see a rendering of a world built in impossible color, mountains and light and architecture that looked like someone had poured years of their life into every pixel.
This was what lived underneath the CEO. "The game means something to people. Gamers built lives inside that world. The movie adaptation has to honor that or it shouldn't exist."
"What’s wrong with the romance arc?"
"It’s too clean." He frowned at the screen. "The developers think it’s perfect. The focus groups say it’s compelling. But it doesn’t feel real. The healing journey is too smooth. Nobody recovers from trauma in a straight line. There should be setbacks. Regression. Moments where the character thinks they’re better and then something triggers them and they’re right back at the start."
He handed me a controller. "Play it. Tell me what you think."
