Page 70 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

Then he pulled my shirt over my head.

Slowly. His hands gathering the fabric at my hips and lifting, his knuckles grazing my ribs, my breasts, my shoulders, leaving a trail of heat that made me shiver even as the steam warmed the room. The shirt hit the floor and he looked at me, and the expression on his face, raw and reverent and burning, made my knees weak.

I reached for his shirt. Pulled it up and over his head. Ran my hands across his chest, the scars, the muscle, the ridge of his collarbone where a tattoo I had memorized seven years ago still lived in black ink against his skin. He was warm under my palms. Solid. Real. The kind of real that anchored you to the earth when everything else was spinning.

He pulled down my shorts and underwear in one motion. Knelt in front of me to ease them past my ankles, and the sight of him on his knees, this massive, powerful man on his knees in front of me, looking up at me through the steam with those green eyes, made something inside my chest crack open.

He stood. Stripped his pants off. And then we were both bare, both standing in the steam, both breathing harder than the moment warranted, and the hunger between us was a living thing, pressing against the walls, filling the room the way the steam filled the room.

He stepped into the shower and held out his hand. I took it. The water hit my back, hot and perfect, and then his mouth was on mine and everything else disappeared.

He kissed me like he was trying to consume me. Deep and rough, his tongue sweeping against mine, his hands gripping my hips and pulling me against him so hard that the full length of his body was pressed against the full length of mine and there was no space between us, not a fraction, not an inch. The water poured over us and I could taste it on his lips, could feel it running between our bodies, warm and slick and making every point of contact feel amplified.

I moaned against his mouth. He swallowed the sound and gave me one back, a groan that vibrated through his chest and into mine, and his hands moved from my hips to my thighs and he lifted me. My back hit the tile wall and the cold of it against my wet skin made me gasp, and then his hips were between my thighs and I wrapped my legs around him and the press of him against my center, hard and hot, sent a shock through my body that made me cry out.

“Quiet,” he murmured against my mouth. “Emma.”

“Then stop making me loud,” I breathed back.

He almost smiled. I saw the ghost of it, there and gone, and then he shifted his hips and pressed into me. Slowly. Inch by inch. The stretch of him filling me was exquisite, almost too much, and I bit down on his shoulder to keep from making a sound that would wake up our daughter and the entire neighborhood.

He held still. Buried deep. His forehead against mine, his breath mixing with the steam, his arms braced against the wall on either side of my head. The water cascaded over his shoulders and down between us, and the sensation of being pinned between the cold tile and his hot skin with him inside me was overwhelming in the best possible way.

“Move,” I whispered.

He moved.

The first thrust was slow. Deliberate. He pulled back and drove forward in one controlled motion that hit a spot so deep I saw stars. My head fell back against the tile and my eyes rolled shut and the sound I made was not quiet, not even close, and he covered my mouth with his to catch it.

He set a rhythm. Hard and deep and steady, his hips snapping forward with a precision that matched everything about him, controlled and focused and relentless. The water made everything slick. His chest sliding against mine. His hands on my thighs, gripping tight enough to bruise. The wet sound of our bodies meeting with each thrust, obscene and perfect and making me lose my mind.

“Faster,” I gasped against his mouth.

He gave me faster. The rhythm shifted, harder, rougher, and every thrust pushed me up the tile wall and his hands hauled me back down and the friction of it, the water and the skin and the angle, was driving me toward the edge at a speed I was not prepared for.

“God, Sawyer.” My voice was barely a breath. “Right there. Don’t stop.”

He didn’t stop. His mouth found my neck, sucking hard enough to mark, and I clutched his shoulders and held on while he drove into me with an intensity that bordered on savage. The water pounded against his back. Steam filled my lungs. My thighs were shaking around his waist and my nails were digging into his skin and every nerve in my body was wound so tight I thought I might break.

He shifted his angle. Hitched me higher. And the next thrust hit something that made every muscle in my body seize.

I came apart. The orgasm crashed through me like a wave hitting a cliff, violent and consuming, and I bit down on his shoulder to muffle the scream that tore from my throat. My body clenched around him in spasms that I could not control, my back arching off the tile, my legs tightening around his waist, and he groaned against my neck and kept moving, kept driving through the contractions, prolonging the wave until I was shaking and gasping and clinging to him like he was the only solid thing in a world that had liquefied.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “Sawyer, I can’t. It’s too much.”

“You can,” he said, and increased the pace.

He was relentless. His hips pistoned forward with a force that I felt in my bones, and the overstimulation that bordered on pain tipped back into pleasure so fast it made my head spin. The second orgasm built on top of the first, layered, deeper, a pressure that gathered low in my belly and spread outward like fire.

“Come with me,” I gasped. “Please.”

He pulled me off the wall. Turned us so the water hit my back, warm and cascading, and pressed me against his chest. I held onto his neck and he held onto my hips and we moved together, foreheads touching, breath ragged, the rhythm broken and desperate and perfect.

He came with a groan that he buried in my hair, his arms crushing me against him, his body going rigid and then shuddering as he spilled inside me in waves that I could feel pulsing against my walls. The sensation of it pushed me over the edge again, a third time, a smaller one that rolled through me like an aftershock and left me trembling and boneless in his arms.

The water poured over us. We stood in the shower, holding each other up because I was not sure either of us could stand alone, and the steam wrapped around us like a blanket and the world outside the bathroom door ceased to exist.

He lowered me to my feet. Slowly. Carefully. Keeping his arms around me because my legs were not interested in supporting my weight. I leaned against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, rapid and heavy, gradually slowing.