Page 145 of Her Wicker Guardian

Rachel braces her hands against my chest. “Okay?”

The word seems absurdly small for what it feels like to be inside her.

“Yes.”

She lifts her hips slightly and lowers herself again.

Pleasure surges through me, and the deep vibrating sound comes back louder than before.

Rachel repeats the movement, slower this time, letting me feel the wet drag of her body around mine. When she lifts, the pressure eases; when she sinks again, that hot, close grip takes all of me back. By the third time, I’m moving beneath her without deciding to.

At first, Rachel controls the rhythm, and I’m grateful because I couldn’t explain what I need if she asked me. Then my hips lift to meet her before I think to move them.

My hands grip her hips. The next time she rises, I follow.

Once we find the rhythm, I lose track of who begins each movement. Rachel lifts and I follow, then I rise beneath her and she comes back to me as if we have somehow learned this together. The chaise gives a little under us, the fine mesh beside my head stirs with the night air, and I can still notice those things even while most of me is consumed by Rachel. By the heat of her around me, the movement of her body, the fact that every time she lifts away, she comes back to me.

Then even the porch disappears.

There is only Rachel, the rhythm pounding at the center of my chest, and pleasure that keeps becoming larger than the body I have to contain it. I’ve never felt pleasure with my whole body before.

The sensation keeps building instead of easing. I don’t know what waits at the top of it or whether there even is a top. Rachel is everywhere inside the feeling: her hands on my chest, her body moving with mine, every motion feeding the next.

My hands hold her more firmly.

“Rachel.”

She looks down at me.

“Something’s happening.”

She leans down and places her lips near my ear. “I know.”

“I don’t know if I can stop it.”

“You don’t have to.”

I stop fighting the sensation.

The rhythm at the center of my chest strikes once, hard enough that the force travels through every crossing in my body. Beneath it, the hard shape I found the first night turns hot, and for one instant I see firelight and hear Rachel’s voice the way I heard it before I had eyes. Everything in me draws tight around one impossible instant. Then the sensation breaks outward through every strand at once while Rachel keeps moving around me. The resonance deepens until even the places where our bodies meet seem to pulse with it.

The sound that comes from me is deeper than any I have made before.

Rachel holds on to me, and I hold on to her while wave after wave moves through my body. My whole body draws tight around the pleasure, every strand of me straining toward her. My fingers lock around her hips. There is too much sensation to hold anything in my mind except Rachel: her warmth, our movement slowing together, her name somewhere in my mouth.

When the last wave finally eases, Rachel lowers herself against my chest.

She stays there for a moment, breathing hard, then lifts her head and looks down between us.

I follow her attention.

Something in the way she studies me makes me remember our earlier conversation. Human men. The opening I don’t have. Semen.

Rachel’s hand slides lightly over my stomach and lower.

“Huh. Nothing.”

Unease cuts through the afterglow. “Is that bad?”