Page 41 of Desired

He kissed his way down her body while she pulled at his hair and said his name once like a complaint and once like something else, and when he settled in she came up off the bed on her elbows just to look at him, then gave that up as a bad position and went down flat again, one hand finding the headboard instead.

She was not quiet.

He'd have grinned about it if his mouth hadn't been busy.

There wasn't a neighbor for three hundred yards and the one at three hundred yards was a porch light, and she filled up his dark little house with his own name, rising, breaking, her thigh going taut under his palm and her hand coming down off the headboard to fist in his hair and hold him exactly where she needed him while she shook, and he stayed and gentled her through the long fall of it until her hand went slack.

"God," she said to the ceiling, wrecked. "Okay. The wedding was fine, but that."

"That was the reception," Mason said.

She laughed, breathless.

"Cocky."

"I'm right."

"You'll be insufferable about this."

"I plan to be."

She hauled his mouth down to hers before he could enjoy himself too much and got the rest of his clothes dealt with in a manner that suggested the slow part of the evening had concluded.

When he finally moved over her she stopped him, one hand flat on his chest, and he held there without question, braced, breathing hard, every muscle asking him to move except the one that mattered. She looked up at him in the window light a long moment, her eyes going over his face slow, like she was reading him by hand.

"There you are," she said, soft, like she'd found something.

His throat worked.

"Here I am," Mason said, rougher than he sent it.

She took her hand off his chest and put it on his jaw, her thumb brushing the edge of his stubble, and he leaned into the touch before he leaned into her. He kissed her once, slow enough to make her smile against his mouth, then came into her with exquisite patience, giving her time for every inch, letting her feel him until he completely filled her. She drew a breath that trembled all the way through her, her eyes never leaving his, and whatever sound she made then he made the answer to it.

She smiled then, small and private.

"What?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing."

"That's not nothing."

"I just..." Her fingertips stroked lightly over his jaw. "I really like you."

He laughed once, quiet and helpless.

"Good," he said. "That'd be awkward otherwise."

She laughed into his mouth, kissed him again, and after that there wasn't much talking that held together.

There was her, moving under him and then insisting her way up on top of him, sitting back in the window light with her hair down over both of them like a curtain when she leaned in, watching him for a second before she moved again, enjoying every visible flicker she could coax out of him. There was him smiling despite himself when she caught him looking. There was her smile in answer.

There was him saying her name into her throat like it fixed something.

There was the long climbing middle of it where everything narrowed down to the roll of her hips and his hands full of her, her breath going ragged and his control going the same way, and her leaning down at the end of it, her forehead on his, everything they had moving together, and coming apart around him with his name in her mouth for the fourth time that night, and Mason went over right behind her, holding her hips hard enough to apologize for later, saying something into her shoulder that had no words in it at all, which was as honest as he'd been all day.

She collapsed onto his chest and stayed.