He gave her harder. His restraint slipped another degree, his hips driving into hers with more force, his hand gripping her thigh to hold her open. The sounds coming from both of them filled the small bedroom, skin against skin, ragged breathing, his low groans mixing with her sharp gasps every time he bottomed out.
Outside, the storm had gone quiet. She could feel it distantly, the pressure system over the lake dissolving, the rotation she'd built dissipating into ordinary wind. Her power wasn't leaking this time. It was still. Settled. As if the part of her that controlled weather had looked at what was happening in this bed and decided everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.
She pulled his face to hers. Kissed him deep, messy, tasting herself on his mouth, and the intimacy of that sent a bolt of heat through her core that tightened everything. She was close again. Could feel the second orgasm building, heavier than the first, deeper, fed by every thrust, the weight of him on top of her, the sound of her name in his mouth, the extraordinary, terrifying, chosen truth of what was between them.
"Isla." His voice broke on her name.
"Don't stop."
He shifted his weight to one hand. The other slid between them, his thumb finding her clit, pressing in tight circles that matched his thrusts. The dual sensation shattered what was left of her control and she came apart, the orgasm tearing through her so hard she arched off the bed, her body clenching around him in waves that she could feel pulling him deeper.
She heard herself cry out. Felt the release flood between them, hot, slick, soaking them both just like the last time, her body responding to him with an intensity that was purely, unapologetically hers. She clenched around him again and again and felt him lose his rhythm, his hips driving into her erratically, his growl building in his chest, his wolf so close to the surface she could almost feel it.
"Come," she whispered against his ear. "Let go."
He slammed into her one last time and broke. She felt him swell and pulse inside her, the heat of him spilling deep, his body locking against hers, every muscle taut. The growl ripped out of him, low and primal, vibrating through her chest where theywere pressed together. His face was buried in her neck and she held him there with both arms, held him through every wave, felt his release pulse inside her until he had nothing left.
They stayed intertwined, his weight on top of her, heavy, grounding, real. Both of them breathing like they'd been underwater. The bedroom was dark except for the faint glow from the stove through the open door, the rain a soft murmur on the roof now, almost done.
She ran her fingers through his damp hair. Felt his breathing slow against her neck. He was still inside her, softening, and she didn't want him to move. She wanted to stay exactly here, in this bed, in this choice, with this man who'd walked into a storm to remind her she was strong and then let her prove it on her own.
He pulled back just enough to look at her. His gray eyes were dark, spent, open in a way she'd never seen. No calculation. No careful restraint. Just him.
"You're extraordinary," he said.
"I know."
His mouth twitched. He kissed her forehead. Rolled to the side, pulling her with him, her back against his chest, his arm across her waist. His heartbeat settled against her spine, the same steady rhythm she'd felt before, the one that matched the lake on a calm morning.
The storm was over. Outside and inside. The air through the window smelled like wet earth and pine and the particular clean that came after a front moved through. Her hands were warm. Her chest was full. The charge in her blood was gone, not suppressed, not compressed, simply absent, like a fire that had burned exactly as long as it needed to and then banked itself without being told.
She pressed back against him. His arm tightened around her.
"Stay," she said. For the third time. Because some words got truer every time you said them.
"I'm here," he said. And for the first time since she'd known him, it didn't sound like a man talking onlyb about tonight.
29
RAFE
It was early, the light barely through the windows, the lake still carrying the glassy quality of a morning that hadn't decided what kind of day it was going to be. Rafe sat at the table with his boots on, his jacket over the chair, and told Isla everything as she made coffee. Malrick's cleared-out room at the Hargrove farmstead. Garren's confession about the thin man with the satchel. The artifacts. The plan to trigger a catastrophic storm that would wreck the Ashvane and prove the stormcaller was a danger to every vessel on the river.
She listened the way she did everything. Once the coffee was done, she turned her back against the counter, both hands around her cup, and her blonde hair still messy from the bed.
"Artifacts from my past," she said when he finished.
"That's what Garren said. Objects connected to stormcaller magic. Things that could trigger a fear response strong enough to break your control."
"And if my control breaks, the weather does the rest."
"That's the theory."
She drank her coffee slowly. "My mother had a bracelet. Silver, with fae-weather markings etched into the band. She saidit was a resonance piece, something stormcallers used to amplify their connection to atmospheric pressure. It was supposed to stay in the family." She paused. "I left it behind at Ardenmere. In the cottage we'd been renting. I left everything behind."
"And if Malrick found it."
"If he found it and brought it close enough to me while I was already emotional, the resonance could amplify whatever I was feeling. Double it, maybe more. It would be like someone turning the volume up on a frequency I was already broadcasting." She gazed out the window. "It wouldn't control me. But it could push me past my threshold before I knew what was happening."
