“Thank you, sir.”
“Fuck,” he said, slapping his palm down on the other cheek. “You’re mine.”
“Yes.” I nodded emphatically as I pushed back against him.
“You drive me half out of my mind, Gi.” He rubbed the sting away, pleasure singing through my veins and going straight to my head. I was drunk on him and the way he worked my body, and he wasn’t even inside me yet. “I need you on your hands and knees; otherwise, I might come all over this pretty ass just from watching you.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice. My knees dug into the mat as I balanced myself on my forearms.
“You’re so fucking perfect. I would burn the world down around us if you asked me to.” He smoothed a hand over my ass and positioned himself behind me, the thick head of his cock teasing my entrance.
“Never the world, but we can burn our enemies until they’re only ashes surrounding us.” I pushed back into him, but he stopped me as he gripped my hips. “Please, Merrick.”
“You’re going to have me coming already if you keep saying things like that.” He pulled in a deep breath, but before I could coax him to move again, he sank into me, his thick length filling me so completely I thought I was about to combust. He let me adjust to him before he withdrew and thrust again, his pace slowly increasing, building the inferno inside me with every stroke. “You were made for me, Gi. Or maybe we were all made for you.”
I loved that he included the others. Despite how possessive he was, he never made me choose, putting my happiness first.
Merrick reached a hand around my hip and circled my clit in time with every thrust into my soaked core. “I need to feel you come around me, baby.”
He pounded into me, and the rest of the world faded away. In this moment there was only Merrick and me, our bodies movingas one. Lust zinged through my body, the pleasure building like a tidal wave, ready to sweep me away any moment.
He sent me over the edge with one more brush of his fingers over my sensitive nub. My core fluttered around him, and pleasure scorched through my veins. Languid heat filled my bones, making it difficult to stay upright. Merrick read my body so well, his hand wrapping around my neck tenderly as he urged me up from my hands. My back pressed against the hard planes of his chest, the touch of his heated skin against mine almost enough to send me into another climax.
“You come apart so beautifully,” he said in my ear, sending a flood of warmth straight to my center as he kept up his relentless pace.
His hand flexed, reminding me he was still holding my neck in his desperate grasp. He didn’t squeeze, though, and the reassuring press grounded me, allowing me to let go of the strings tying me to reality.
His fingers glided down my chest to caress my breast, teasing my sensitive nipple until I was hurtling toward another orgasm. With his next thrust I was sent careening over that precipice once more, my pussy clenching around him as he groaned and his cock twitched. He ground into my soaked core, spilling his release inside me.
Merrick wrapped his arms around me, cradling me into his chest as if he thought I might disappear at any moment.
“You’re my everything, Giana.” He crooked a finger under my chin, his lips meeting mine in a feverish kiss. We shifted as though we had one mind, somehow barely breaking our embrace as we lay on the mats, our legs twined like we never wanted to be parted.
“I was nearly frozen in terror when I glimpsed the gun in that guy’s hand, Gi.” He leaned his head onto my shoulder, breathing me in. “He died too quickly.”
I exhaled a shaky breath and ran my fingers through his short blond locks. His shudder ran through me, sending a pang straight to my heart.
“I know.” An unbidden shiver ran up my spine, and he soothed a hand up and down my back like he could fight the fear off for me.
“I would’ve torn my own heart out to get to you at the penthouse.” His eyes closed, a furrow forming between his brows as if he were fighting memories that tried to drag him back there. “I didn’t want to leave you, even if it had killed me.”
I pressed his face between my palms, staying silent until he pried his eyelids open. Pain flickered in the hazel depths as they bored into me. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d lost you. Losing you would kill me just as easily as if Tommaso had finished the job.”
“Giana.”
“No,” I cut off whatever he was about to say. “For some reason you guys don’t seem to think I’d be just as lost without any of you as you’d be if you lost me.”
“I do know. And you’ve sacrificed enough for a thousand lifetimes already,” he said, stunning me into silence. “You spent six years with that bastard to keep us alive, so I need you to understand that this battle is not all on your shoulders anymore. We’re here to fight by your side and to hold you back when you want to face the firing squad alone.”
My eyes fluttered closed as I breathed him in, letting my head rest against his shoulder, and lightly trailing my fingers over the bandage. “I know you are. I know that I’m not alone anymore, but sometimes it’s hard to break out of that pattern.”
He smoothed his hand over my pulled-back hair, his fingers twitching around the scrunchie like he wanted to pull it loose to play with the strands in earnest. “I understand.” He exhaled a stuttered breath. “I have to work on the same thing—it wastorture having you all out fighting while I was stuck in bed—but we can help each other.”
“Agreed.” I grinned, pressing my lips to his in a tender kiss.
“I love you, Giana, more than words can ever capture. You are my heart.”
The weight of the world seemed to slip off my shoulders as his arms banded around me like he never wanted to let me go.
