Page 76 of Thunder

I raise them. He runs his hands down my sides, slow, palms flat, and I flinch when he brushes the rattlesnake coiled on my left ribs. Still tender. Still healing.

His thumb traces the edge of it. "Mine," he says quietly. Like he's reading the ink aloud.

Then his hand slides lower.

He turns me around, gentle but firm, pressing my stomach against the counter.

I grip the edge.

The laminate's cold against my bare skin.

He unbuttons my jeans, drags them down over my hips with my panties in one pull, and I step out of them.

Naked. In my kitchen. In the late afternoon light slanting through the window, catching dust motes, and I'm shaking.

Not from cold, not from crying anymore.

From the way he's looking at me.

From the way his breathing's gone rough and uneven, the only tell he's got.

"Property of Thunder." He reads it off my lower back, voice thick. His thumb presses the script. I hiss—half pain, half something else. "Goddamn, rattlesnake. You walked around with my name on you for weeks. Let your daddy find it. Let the whole world find it."

"I wasn't hiding anymore," I whisper. "I was done hiding."

"Good." He leans in, mouth against my ear, and his belt buckle's cold through his jeans where it presses my bare ass. "'Cause I'm done bein' careful with you."

I hear the zipper. Hear him shove his jeans down.

Then his hands are on my hips, and he's lifting me onto the counter.

I sit on the edge, legs dangling, and he steps between them.

His shirt's still on. I reach for it but he catches my wrists, pins them behind my back with one hand.

"No. You just hold on."

He kisses my throat. My collarbone.

Takes my nipple in his mouth and sucks hard enough that I arch into him, a moan dragging up from somewhere deep. His teeth graze and I clench around nothing, empty and aching.

"Thunder—please⁠—"

"Tell me what you need."

"You. Just stop fucking making me wait."

He pulls back and looks at me.

Flushed, wrecked, tears drying on my face, sitting naked on my own kitchen counter with my wrists pinned.

I must look like a disaster. He looks at me like I'm the only thing keeping the sky up.

"Wrap your legs around me."

I do. He notches himself against my entrance and I feel the blunt head of him, thick and hot.

My body opens for him because it knows him, knows this, knows the shape and weight of him. He pushes in slow. Too slow. Inch by inch until I'm full and stretched and shaking.