Page 183 of The Best Shot

“Yasmine. Honey. Baby. Please.”

I could have strung this along, and he would have let me. But as much fun as this was, he was right about one thing. I did like him in control.

I leaned close enough for my mouth to brush his. “Now.”

His hands came off the couch. That was all the warning I got.

One caught the back of my neck. The other locked around my waist, and his hips punched up so hard I cried out. He tore the blindfold away and his mouth crashed into mine as he stood.

I grabbed his shoulders and locked my legs around his waist as he took us to the floor.

“Hale—”

He caught both my wrists, pinned them above me, and drove into me hard enough to knock every clever thought out of my head.

His patience was gone.

His hand closed harder around my wrists, his mouth found the side of my throat, and every thrust dragged a broken sound out of him that he had refused to give me on the couch.

“Yes,” I breathed.

His head lifted.

The look he gave me should have warned me.

It did not.

His free hand caught my thigh and drew it higher against his side, changing the angle until the next stroke made my vision flash.

A cry broke out of me.

“That all I get?” he hissed.

“Fuck me. Fuck me just like that. I want to feel you in my throat.”

He did it again.

The room fractured around us into cicadas, sunlight, the rough drop cloth beneath my back and Hale above me, done holding himself back.

The pressure built low and fast. I pulled against his grip, no longer sure whether I wanted my hands free or wanted him to hold them tighter.

He held them tighter.

His pace changed. Harder. Deeper.

His mouth came down over mine as I came apart beneath him, my body tightening around his, his name breaking against his lips.

His control went with mine.

A rough sound tore out of him as he buried himself deep and held there, his forehead dropping against my shoulder.

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

Then he released my wrists.

His hands slid beneath me, gathering me closer as he lowered his weight carefully, one arm braced beside my head.

We stayed like that for a while, breathing hard and sweating against each other as the room came back in stages. The cicadas first. Then the hammer lying where I’d dropped it, dust turning in the light from the window we still hadn’t finished framing.