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Laid bare underneath him, breasts bouncing, sweaty curls clinging to her neck and face, Rowan had a rare moment of self-consciousness. “It’s not”—her breath hitched in her throat—“polite to stare.”
His laugh was short and explosive, ending in a low growl tempered with an edge of agony. “Ah, I’m not staring. I’m—memorizing.”
Rowan’s head snapped back against the pillow, her body clenching desperately against his as another orgasm shatteredthrough her. Her legs fell bonelessly from behind his back, opening like a book with a cracked spine. The sensations were so intense, her feet scrabbled against the sheets.
Something—tears, sweat, both—ran a wet course down her cheekbones and pooled behind her earlobes.
As she returned from orbit, Harrison lowered his body fully onto hers, wrapping his arms around her back. The weight of him stole her breath. He socketed himself to her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, exhalations shallow and hot, condensing on her skin. With a convulsive, rumbling moan, he began to thrust, his hips taken by a rhythm he could no longer control. Rowan burrowed her fingers into his back and turned her head to bite his earlobe, sucking it into her mouth. She drew her legs up again and sealed him to her as he rode her hard.
Goose bumps rose down his back and across his ass. He pressed his face into the pillow beside her head. Arms tightened around her. Fingertips dug into her scalp where he cradled the back of her head. His anguished moan was muffled—he was biting the pillow. It was the sexiest sound Rowan had ever heard.
The pattern of his thrusts abruptly lost all finesse, turning erratic, and his moan escalated into a grinding, wordless exhalation. He pumped and jerked hard against her as he came, bouncing them both against the mattress with the force of it, draining himself to emptiness.
They lay there until Rowan’s hip joints began to ache, and tears and sweat dried to salt.
When he finally did move, Harrison was gentle as he slid his arms from beneath her, lowering her to the mattress. The sheets were damp against her back.
He propped up on elbows and took her mouth with a gentle, melting kiss. A shocking contrast to the athletic sex of moments ago. The kisses were almost shy. Exploratory, tender. Nuzzling noses and mingled breath and gently sliding tongues.
Rowan braced for the spark of panic. The inevitable sensation of being trapped below the body above her. The need to flee.
It never came.
Harrison’s biceps framed her face. As he delicately drew curls off her sweaty forehead, he remained inside her, still as hard as when they’d begun. When she realized she’d been making little dreamy swirls against his back with her fingertips, she allowed her hands to fall away limp against the mattress. A look loaded with emotion passed across his features as he gazed down at her. Then, without a word, he lifted himself away and padded to the bathroom.
Rowan removed the damp pillow from behind her hips and popped up to watch him walk away. The flex of corded muscle bracketing his lower spine and the hollows at either side of his perfect butt cheeks made her mouth go dry. She flopped back to the bed and blinked at the ceiling.
By now, she should be gathering her clothes from the floor, desperate to avoid conversation of any kind. She should want to urge him to leave, or be planning her own quick exit, even though this washerroom.
Rowan had no idea what came after this.
As though he’d heard her thoughts from the bathroom, Harrison looked around the doorjamb and said, “Don’t get up. Not yet.”
“When this finally happens, it’s going to last,”he’d said, months ago.“We’re going to linger afterward. For hours.”
She drifted her fingertips across her bare belly, and chose lingering over leaving.
The light in the bathroom clicked off. “You didn’t get up.” He climbed back into the bed and palmed her hip, gathering her against his side. Her head rode the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, and his heartbeat was a slow throb againsther temple. Tentatively, she traced a fingertip along the ridges of his rib cage.
Lying here with this man, Rowan understood how people fell in love. She’d thought she’d loved Noah, but that had simply been bastardized infatuation. Lust and fascination were feelings she’d experienced since then, but they were trivial compared to the intangible sense of contentment she experienced now. Somehow, lingering here with Harrison felt far more intimate than any physical sexual act. She felt bone-deep safety andrightness.
The dominant scientific part of her brainknewher body was marinated in an ocean of hormone-induced bliss. What she felt now had to be chemical—an organic cocktail of sexual satisfaction. Anything more was a social construct designed to attribute meaning to the more primal, messy instincts of human attraction.
Sexwas what people truly loved. Pleasure was power.
Why, then, in that moment, did she feel so weak?
Oh.There it was, the low hum of anxiety she’d been anticipating. Rowan sat up and faced him, using a forearm to push a heap of curls from her face.
“I’m not staying in the valley.”
“You’ve mentioned that.” Harrison propped up on an elbow.
“You’re not staying either.”
Long silence. Then, “Probably not.”
“Okay.” She clutched a pillow to her chest.
