20
ISLA
She said it and meant it. No qualifiers. No escape hatch built into the word in case she needed to take it back in the morning. Stay. One syllable standing between her and every instinct she'd spent years obeying.
He looked up at her from the chair. Gray eyes dark in the fading kitchen light, his jaw tight, his hands resting on his thighs like he was holding himself in place. She was close enough to see the pulse in his throat.
"Isla."
"Don't talk yourself out of it." She put her hand on his jaw. His skin was warm, stubble rough against her palm. "I'm done pretending this isn't what it is."
"What is it?"
"Something I'm not afraid of."
He turned his face into her palm. Pressed his mouth against the center of it. The contact was small, deliberate, and it sent heat straight through her wrist and down into her chest. She felt the breath he took against her skin.
His hands came up to her hips. Not pulling. Holding. His thumbs pressed against the ridge of bone through her shirt andshe felt the controlled strength in his grip, the effort it took him to keep still while she stood between his knees with her hand on his face.
She stepped back. His hands dropped. She saw the flash of protest in his eyes and smiled at it, which surprised even herself.
"Come with me," she said.
She walked to the bedroom door and didn't look back. The weight of his attention followed her through the doorway like heat from an open furnace. The bedroom was dim, the last evening light coming through the single west-facing window, the bed made because she always made it, the quilt her grandmother had sewn folded at the foot.
She pulled her shirt over her head and let it fall. Reached behind her back and unhooked her bra. Let that fall too. Stepped out of her jeans and underwear together and stood in front of the window with the lake light on her bare skin.
She felt confident, calm and nervous all at once. Isla turned slowly, already feeling Rafe’s eyes before she fully even turned around.
He'd stopped moving, just standing in the doorway. His eyes traveled down her body with a slowness that was almost physical, a weight she could feel on her breasts, her stomach, the curve of her hips. His mouth had parted slightly. His hands were braced on the doorframe and the tendons in his forearms stood out sharp under the wave tattoos.
She watched him harden through his jeans. The visible evidence of what looking at her did to him sent a pulse of wet heat between her thighs that made her press them together.
"Get over here," she said.
He crossed the room in two strides. His hands found her waist, lifted her, and she was airborne for half a second before her back hit the mattress. The bed protested with a creak that neither of them acknowledged. He was standing over her,pulling his shirt off over his head, and she propped herself on her elbows to watch because the view deserved her full attention. Broad chest, scarred in places, the kind of body that came from years of physical labor rather than vanity. A dark trail of hair below his navel disappearing into the waistband of his jeans.
She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him down onto her. He caught himself on his hands, his body covering hers, the heat of his bare chest against her breasts making her arch up into him. She could feel him through the denim, hard against her inner thigh, and she rocked her hips to press closer.
His mouth found her neck as his teeth scraped along the tendon below her ear. She gasped, her hands fisting in the sheets. He kissed the hollow of her throat, the ridge of her collarbone, the space between her breasts, each point of contact deliberate, tasting her skin like he was memorizing the geography of it.
She got her hands between them and worked his belt open. The button, the zipper, her fingers shoving denim down his hips while he shifted his weight to help. He kicked the jeans off the rest of the way and she felt him against her, hot, hard, the length of him pressing against her slick folds with nothing between them now.
"I don't want to wait," she said.
She reached down and wrapped her hand around him. He was thick in her grip, the skin smooth, the heat of him making her palm tingle. She positioned him at her entrance and pulled him forward with her heels against his lower back.
He pushed inside her and she gasped. Not from pain. From fullness. The stretch of him filling her, inch by inch, slow because he was watching her face while he did it. Reading her the way he read weather, every shift, every reaction. When he bottomed out she felt him everywhere, deep, heavy, the pressureof him against her walls sending sparks through her pelvis that radiated up into her belly.
He held still. Forehead against hers, both of them breathing hard. His heart was pounding where his chest pressed against hers, fast, urgent, at odds with the stillness of his body.
He pulled back slowly. Almost all the way out. Then pushed in again, deep, the stroke long enough that she felt every inch of him dragging against her, the friction lighting her up from the inside. She moaned, the sound pulled out of her involuntarily, and his grip on her hip tightened.
He set a rhythm. Slow, purposeful, each thrust deliberate enough that she could feel the shape of him inside her, the way he angled upward at the end of each stroke, pressing against the spot that made her vision blur. This was different from the counter. The counter had been desperate, half-clothed, adrenaline and rain and the storm outside driving them together. This was him choosing to take his time. Choosing to feel her rather than race toward the finish.
She ran her hands up his back. Felt the muscles flex with each roll of his hips, the power coiled in his body, the restraint it was costing him to keep this pace. She dragged her nails down his spine and he groaned, his hips stuttering, the sound vibrating against her throat where his mouth had returned.
"Harder," she said.
