"Tell me," I say.
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
Her chin comes up, defiant even now, even flushed and wet and spread beneath me with her thighs wrapped around my waist. "I want you inside me. I've wanted it for months. So stop talking and fuck me."
I line up and push forward in one long, controlled stroke, and the feeling of sinking into her, the tight, wet grip of her body taking me inch by inch, pulls a groan from somewhere deep in my chest.
Her legs lock around my waist, her nails dig into my shoulders, and the breath she lets out when I bottom out is a shuddering, broken thing that she couldn't hold back if she tried.
I don't move. I hold there, buried deep, feeling her pulse around me while I brace my forearms on either side of her head and look down at her.
Her hair is spread across the pillow, her lips are parted, and the expression on her face, stripped of composure, stripped of the clinical brightness, stripped of everything but want, is an image I will carry for the rest of my life.
"Boone." Her voice cracks. "Move."
"Say please."
"I have never said please in my life and I'm not starting now."
"First time for everything." I rock my hips, just barely, the smallest grind of pressure exactly where she needs it, and the moan she lets out is desperate and furious. Her heels dig into my lower back, trying to force a rhythm I'm not giving her.
"I hate you," she breathes.
"No you don't."
I pull back and thrust forward, hard, and her whole body jolts and her cry echoes off the bedroom walls.
I set a pace that is deep and relentless, the rhythm of a man who knows exactly what he wants and has the stamina and the discipline to take it. She meets every stroke, her hips rolling up to match me, her nails scoring lines down my back that sting and sharpen everything.
"Harder," she says, because this woman does not know how to stop pushing.
I grip her hip with one hand, tilting it to change the angle, and drive deeper. The shift makes her gasp and clench around me so tight my vision blurs. Her hand flies to the headboard and grips it, bracing herself, and I take what she's offering.
My mouth finds her throat, her jaw, the place behind her ear where her pulse pounds fast against my lips. I can feel her climbing, feel it in the tremor of her thighs and the way her breathing fractures into short, hitching gasps.
"Come for me," I tell her. My hand slides between us and my thumb presses against her clit, circling in time with my thrusts.
"Don't tell me what to do."
"Come for me, Ireland."
She shatters. Her whole body arcs up against mine and her inner walls clamp down and she comes with a cry that starts as my name and ends wordless and primal, her body pulsing in rhythmic waves that I can feel along every inch of me.
I hold the pace through her orgasm, driving her through it, and the tight, wet grip of her body and the months of wanting her that are burning through my bloodstream hit critical mass.
I bury myself deep and come hard enough that my arms shake, my face against her neck, her name on a breath that feels like it tears out of me from somewhere I didn't know existed. The release rolls through me in waves, and she holds me throughit, arms tight around my back, breath hot against my shoulder, both of us shaking.
She's still pulsing around me when I lift my head and look at her. Her eyes are half-closed and glazed and her lips are curved in the particular smile of a woman who got exactly what she wanted.
"Assessment?" she asks. Her voice is wrecked and lazy and still carries the edge that makes her Ireland.
"Comprehensive."
"That's not a grade."
"I don't grade. I monitor outcomes."
