He gave her harder. The rhythm shifted, still controlled but deeper now, his hips driving into hers with more weight behind each stroke. The bed frame knocked against the wall, a quiet, rhythmic percussion that matched his pace. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, her breasts pressed flat against his chest, the slide of sweat-damp skin making everything more sensitive.
His lips found hers. The kiss was unhurried, his tongue moving against hers with the same slow intensity as his body,and the combination of it, his mouth claiming hers while he filled her over and over, shattered something she'd been holding together. She pulled away from the kiss to breathe and the sound that came out of her was raw, exposed, the kind of sound she'd never made in front of anyone because she'd never been this open in front of anyone.
"Right there," she managed. "God, right there."
He adjusted. Subtle. Shifted his angle by a fraction, hitched her thigh higher on his hip, and the next thrust went so deep she cried out. He did it again. Again. She started tightening around him, the orgasm building in that slow, deep way that started in her belly and spread outward, the kind that would destroy her when it hit.
The wind outside picked up. She felt it distantly, the way she felt weather when her connection was open, the lake surface going rough, the air pressure dropping over the cottage. She was leaking power. Her control was slipping the way it slipped when she felt too much, but instead of the panicked compression she'd normally use to contain it, she let it go. Let the wind move. Let the pressure shift. The sky could do what it wanted because what was happening in this bed was more important than what was happening in the atmosphere.
He lifted himself onto one arm. Looked down at her. His sandy hair had fallen forward, sweat darkening the roots, his gray eyes blown wide, his mouth swollen from kissing her. He drove into her and watched her face while he did and the intimacy of being watched like that, of being seen completely while she came apart, was almost too much.
"I can feel you," he said. Low, rough, his voice stripped down to nothing but truth. "You're close."
"Yes."
"Look at me."
She held his eyes while he thrust into her, deeper, faster, his hand sliding between their bodies to press his thumb against her clit. The pressure was exact, firm circles matched to the rhythm of his hips, and the last thread of control she had snapped.
The orgasm broke through her in waves. Not sharp, not sudden, but deep, rolling through her body the way a storm front rolled across open water, each wave stronger than the last. She clenched around him so hard he cursed, his hips faltering, his thumb still working her through it while she shook and gasped and soaked them both. She felt the slick flood of her release coating him where they were joined, running down the inside of her thighs, and the raw physical evidence of what he'd done to her only made the waves hit harder.
Outside, the wind whipped across the lake in a gust that rattled the cottage windows. She didn't care.
He growled. A sound that came from somewhere deeper than his chest, something animal, his wolf responding to the feel of her clenching around him. His rhythm broke apart. Three more thrusts, hard, urgent, his grip on her hip tight enough to bruise, and she felt him swell inside her and then spill, the heat of it flooding her in pulses that matched his groans. His body locked against hers, every muscle taut, his face pressed into her neck, breathing her name against her skin.
They stayed like that. Him on top of her, still inside her, both of them slick and breathing hard. The wind outside settled. The lake went quiet. She could feel his heartbeat gradually slow where his chest pressed against hers, the weight of him heavy but welcome, an anchor she hadn't asked for but no longer wanted to refuse.
He shifted and started to pull away.
"Don't," she said. Her hands found his lower back, holding him where he was. He stilled. He softened inside her, theintimacy of that almost more vulnerable than the sex itself. "Stay where you are. Just for a minute."
He settled back onto her. Kissed her shoulder. A small thing, barely a brush of lips, but she felt it everywhere.
The bedroom was nearly dark now. The last light had drained from the window, replaced by the deep blue-gray of evening, the lake visible as a faint silver line through the glass. She traced her fingers along his spine, slow, lazy, the sweat cooling on both of them.
Eventually he shifted his weight to one side, slipping out of her, and the loss of him. He lay beside her, one arm across her waist, his face close to hers on the pillow.
Something unspoken passed between them in the dim light, something both of them could feel. The wanting was easy. It had always been easy. Whatever was underneath it, the thing that made her power sharpen instead of scatter, the thing that made the wind settle when she stopped lying to herself about him, that was harder. That required something she hadn't given anyone in a very long time.
"Stay in the bed tonight," she said.
He was quiet for a moment. She could see him remembering the last time. The blanket on the braided rug. The closed bedroom door.
"You sure?"
"I didn't invite you in here to sleep on my floor again, Rafe."
His mouth twitched. He pulled her closer, her back against his chest, his arm tightening around her waist. She felt his breath warm against the nape of her neck. His heartbeat steady against her spine.
"Okay," he said. Quiet. Almost careful, the same way she'd said it to him in the kitchen the night he'd asked to see her.
She closed her eyes. The lake was still through the window. The wind had gone to nothing, the air outside as calm as she'dever felt it, and for once the quiet wasn't something she'd forced down. It was the presence of something she'd chosen.
21
ISLA
She woke to the weight of his arm across her waist and his breathing saying he was still asleep. She could feel the slow rhythm of it against her back, his chest warm where it pressed against her spine. His hand rested flat against her stomach, fingers splayed, possessive even unconscious. She lay there for a while, letting herself have the ordinary strangeness of it. A man in her bed. This man in her bed.
