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  “Laurel—” His voice is ragged, guttural. “Jesus, Laurel.”

  “I know.”

  He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.” He releases my breasts and cups my face instead; eyes closed, I still somehow unerringly know where his mouth will be, that he’s seeking mine, and we meet, tongues slashing and spearing, breath tangling in ragged gasps, huffing and groaning into each other’s trembling mouths as we sink and rise in perfect rhythm.

  I cling to him, only my hips, thighs, and ass moving as I ride him through my orgasm.

  He groans, grunts, his movements growing staccato, losing his so-far flawless rhythm.

  My own climax fades, but another is hard on its heels; I peer down at him and see the tight, contorted expression on his face, recognize instinctively the rictus of intensity, the contortion of concentration as he holds himself back.

  Oh, no.

  Oh no, no, no. That won’t do at all.

  I lean hard against him, pushing on his chest, and he falls backward. Pulling out of me briefly, he shifts further onto the bed, and then I move up astride him again. He moves, lifting up, seeking to change to a different position, but I push him back down.

  “No,” I whisper, straddling him, lifting up. “Let me.”

  “Let you what?” he grunts.

  I slide him into me, and now, accustomed to him, loosened by orgasm, still racked with the shivering pressure of another waiting to be drawn out of me, I take him fully into me in a single smooth glide. “Let me take you there.”

  He sinks down, relaxing. His eyes soak up my whole body, roaming my face, my loose, wild, ink-black hair, my breasts, my hips, then focuses on where we’re joined, watching as I lift up, watching himself sink into me as I lower myself onto him. His hands rest on my hips, and I lift up on my knees. I cup my breasts, lift them, and let them bounce as I fall onto him. I feel him throb inside me.

  “Oh god, Laurel.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nods, his hands tightening on my hips. “God, yes. So good.”

  I rise, fall, rise…fall—a slow stutter at the end of the rhythm. It’s all me—he’s still, so far, holding himself taut and tense, his eyes on my body as I move on him.

  “God, Laurel.” His voice is ragged with need.

  I see the need in him; I see it in every taut, tense line of his body. “What, Ryder? Tell me. What do you need?”

  His hands claw into the generous swell of my ass and he pulls me down onto him. “You said to let you, but…I—I can’t.”

  “Are you close?” I murmur, keeping the rhythm, the quick-quick-slow pattern.

  He nods. “Yeah—god, god you feel so good, Laurel.”

  “How close?”

  He groans, his hands beginning to control my movements, lifting me up and yanking me down. “So fucking close.”

  I lean forward; bracing my hands on his chest, I curl my legs beneath me, resting my ankles on his shins so all my weight is on him, on the place where we are joined.

  “Don’t move, Ryder,” I whisper. “Let me take you there.”

  He groans in something like agony. “I—fuck, I can’t. I need to—”

  I lower my torso against his, draping my breasts on his chest, I feel him gliding against me, hitting me just right, and the climax waiting pent up deep inside starts to rise, and my hands clench into the mattress above his head—I’m writhing on top of him, now, my whole body stretching and contracting and thrashing harder and faster and harder and faster.

  “Fuck, Laurel—Fuck, oh god—fuck, you feel so perfect, so hot, so tight, so wet.” His voice is breathless, guttural, a ragged whisper. “I have to move. I can’t hold still anymore.”

  I bite his lip, bury my face in his neck. “Show me,” I whisper. “Show me.”

  He snarls like a predator, one big, strong hand spearing into my hair and palming my cheek, ear, and jaw all at once—his other arm wraps like an iron bar around my ass, his hand seizing me with wild need. And just like that, I realized—

  I never had control.

  He was giving it to me.

  And now, he takes it back.

  Beneath me, he shows me how completely I am his. He kisses me, but it’s no longer just a kiss, no longer just an expression of desire and affection—it’s a claiming. His tongue spears into my mouth, searching my mouth and tongue and lips. His hips slam up into mine, driving himself into me, my ass slapping against his thighs. I cry out, the sudden ferocity of his powerful thrust sending me spiraling into a mad helter-skelter rush of orgasm—not a gradual falling over the edge or rising into it, but just there, immediate and nova-hot. I want to move, and my hips flex and push, but his arm keeps me in place and refuses to allow me the slightest amount of movement. He holds me against him and drives into me, snarling in my ear, thrusting hard and growling gutturally, wordless and crazed.

  “Ryder—” I gasp.

  He won’t let me speak, either. His kiss demands I breathe only him, take only his tongue, swallow his grunts and devour his snarls and taste the furious passion of his lips. The thrusting of his hips demands I accept him, demands that I writhe with him, that I whimper against his kiss and roll my hips and try to find his rhythm.

  His hand slides through my hair and cups the back of my head and crushes our lips together, but it’s not a kiss or anything like it, just our mouths fused and our mutual moans merging and tangling. My breath comes in ragged gasps between torn whimpers and shrill shrieks of agonized ecstasy—the kind of pleasure that is so furious and wild and deep and powerful that it almost hurts. I feel myself clenching around him, squeezing him so tightly every vein ripples through my spasming channel, so I feel every inch of him as he drives in with a resounding clap of flesh, the slaps growing faster and our cries and grunts and curses and whimpers and snarls louder and faster.

  I come, then.

  Like never before, with a white-hot shattering intensity—I come, and I weep with the fury of it.

  I’m not screaming, not shrieking or gasping—I am flat-out sobbing as I come around him.

  He pulls back. “Look at me, Laurel,” he commands.

  My eyes fly open, and I have to fight to keep them open.

  “Don’t look away, beautiful,” he murmurs.

  “I—I—Ryder…oh god oh god oh god, Ryder!”

  He is lost to the onrushing detonation of his orgasm, and I’m still clenching around him and he’s so thick inside me that I feel him pulsing as he unleashes inside me—I feel every last pulse and rush as he thrusts, and I come all the harder, feeling him like this. Instead of slamming into me harder as he comes, he gentles; it is a conscious thing, his eyes on mine. He trembles, shakes, his whole body shivering with exquisite control in the midst of utter release.

  “Laurel…” he gasps.

  Each slow, sliding thrust is a meeting of souls—I feel this. Our eyes are locked, hazel on green, each of us trembling. Shivering, he pushes deep into me, holding me against him and thrusting slowly but hard, so his thick spasming cock fills me to the brim, my channel clenching around him. Even his hips and thighs shake with his control, both of his hands claw into my ass cheeks, pulling them apart so he can thrust more deeply yet, and I’m rolling on him, grinding my hips, working myself around him to take every last shred of this mutual climax.

  Not once do either of us blink or look away—to do so is impossible.

  Finally, he sinks with shuddering relief to the mattress, wrapping me in his arms as I shake and quake with the aftershocks of my subsiding orgasm. He pulls out of me, and then I lie on top of him, heedless of the mess smearing against me, needing only the comfort of his arms.

  Needing momentary relief from the intensity of the moment, I lift up on an elbow and grin down at him. “Well. That definitely exceeded my expectations.”

  Ryder bursts into laughter, cradling me against him. “Oh god, Laurel. You are just…” He pulls my face to his for a brief, hot kiss. “You’re absolutely perfect.”

  Chapter 7

&nb
sp; The fact that we need to get up and get cleaned up can’t be ignored any longer. We’ve lain drowsing in the afterglow for I don’t know how long. Periods of silence and then chatting about random things have kept us occupied for at least half an hour.

  But the sticky mess between us has grown cold. Ryder sighs. “I need to clean us up.”

  I look up into eyes. “I was trying to think of a sexy way to say that.”

  He slips his arm out from under me and rolls away, chuckling. “How about we skip to the part of things where not everything has to be sexy?”

  He goes to the bathroom and closes the door, and I hear water running. When he comes back out, he’s discarded the condom and has cleaned himself up, and has a washcloth in his hand. He comes around to my side of the bed, perches on the edge and leans over me, using the warm washcloth to clean my belly and everywhere else, and then I take it from him and wipe myself, getting everything clean.

  I hand him the washcloth. “I’d say we’ve pretty well skipped to that point, Ryder. Nothing about cleaning up like this is terribly sexy.”

  “I’m glad,” he says, tossing the washcloth into the corner of the bathroom near the tub. “I like it like this.”

  “I’m not peeing in front of you yet,” I tell him as he climbs back onto the bed. “We’re not there.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay with that.” He glances at me. “That is a pretty big step in a relationship.”

  “Would it be weird or ruin the moment if I asked how long it took you and your ex to get there?” I say.

  He shrugs. “Not at all. We never really did, to be honest. Amy was always weird about that.”

  “I thought I was alone in that,” I admit. “Paul and I never did either. Paul was always very…private, about that stuff.”

  “What’s weird to me is how it feels to talk about our exes together,” Ryder says crossing his arms under his head. “It should be a turn-off, or tense or awkward, but it’s just not. And that’s a little unusual.”

  “You know, I feel the same! It’s nice, because I’ve never really had anyone who understood what I dealt with.” I sigh, turning to my side to look at him, tracing lines on his chest with a finger. “I think the reason it’s weird is because we’re kind of skipping the golden phase, the honeymoon phase or whatever you want to call it, where the other person is perfect and everything is amazing and it feels like a movie. We’re kind of skipping forward to things being…” I trail off, shrugging, unsure how to finish it.

  “Just…real?” Ryder says.

  I nod. “Yeah, just real.” He shifts closer, extends an arm, and I immediately snuggle into the crook of his arm and I find the perfect spot. “You give good nook, Ryder.”

  His arms tighten, wrapping me closer, twisting toward me so we’re partially facing each other, and his free hand slides to rest on the bell of my hip. “It takes two to nook. You’re pretty great at it yourself.”

  “Would you be mad if I fell asleep right now?” I say, drowsily. “Because I totally could.”

  “I’d be offended if you didn’t. That’s what nooking is for, obviously.”

  I let my hands wander his chest and stomach as I drift off. “Good. Because I’m not sure I can stop myself, at this point.”

  “I won’t be far behind you.”

  Silence ensues as each of us begins to drowse.

  “Ryder?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Thank you.”

  I feel his attention, sudden and sharp. “For what?”

  I smile against his skin. “For making me feel so beautiful.”

  His only response is to twist his head, press his lips to my temple, and kiss me.

  And that simple, sweet gesture…is my undoing.

  I’ve fallen. That kiss to my temple—for better or worse, it’s the tipping point of me accepting and embracing having fallen head over heels for Ryder McCann.

  I fall asleep smiling about it.

  We never closed the curtains in our room, so city light shines in, waking me.

  It’s still night—without twisting out of his arms, I can’t see the clock, but the sky beyond the window tells me it’s nearing dawn, because the blackness between the glassy pillars of skyscrapers is smudged with gray.

  I drowse, wanting to sink back into sleep, but I can’t quite fall back under the veil. And honestly, just lying here in Ryder’s arms is almost better, in some ways. He’s asleep, deeply, snoring softly, cutely. His arm is draped around me, resting on my hip. The blankets are up around my shoulders, lying across his chest, cocooning us in warmth.

  I’ve never felt so safe, so protected, so wanted.

  My chest aches with a feeling, a swelling, a soaring joy, a deep, abiding sense of peace and serenity that is at once comforting and energizing.

  My hand rests on his chest, and I give in to the need to just touch him, to express even to myself how pleasing it is to simply touch this man. I let my hand roam his chest, and he stirs but doesn’t wake. I explore the heavy muscle of his chest, the solid strength of his abs hidden under that slight layer of softness. The ridge of his hipbone. The firm breadth of his thigh.

  My hand brushes, quite by accident, his flaccid cock, and I grin to myself. It’s not often, at this stage of things, that you get to see a man like this, and I lift the blanket to get a peek.

  Ryder shifts, making a small soft sound in his throat and, as I watch, he hardens. I smile, realizing this has nothing to do with me—it’s just the nature of male biology…although the way he’s moving and shifting in his sleep makes me wonder if it’s got something do with his dreams. A smile touches the corners of his lips, and then vanishes, and he’s back under the veil of deep sleep again. Only now, he’s completely hard.

  I should let him sleep.

  It’d be selfish to wake up him up now.

  And then I laugh to myself, because if I know anything about men and male psychology, it’s that no man would ever, ever complain about being woken up for sex unless he was sick or so exhausted it was like being sick.

  Leaving the blanket pulled up around my shoulders, I rest my hand on his stomach, biting my lip as I argue with myself about giving in to the desire to just touch him.

  Who am I kidding? There’s no argument.

  Just a feeble attempt to make myself think my will is stronger than my libido.

  And it’s not.

  And honestly, why should I resist this? I’ve fallen for him, and I’m going to enjoy every moment of it for as long as I can. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll deal with that. I’ll lean on my friends and probably drink a little too much for a few weeks, and then I’ll pull myself out of it and carry on with my life.

  I shy away from trying to envision what it would look like and feel like if things “worked out,” whatever that would even mean.

  Instead, I just dive into the moment. Live in the present. Right now, I’m not going to fall back asleep. Right now, I’m consumed with desire. I want to touch him—I need to feel him. Where that goes, I don’t know. I don’t care. Sex, or something else, I don’t care. I just want him in my hand. I just want to touch him.

  I gather him in my hand, biting my lip in sheer enjoyment of the feel of his hardness, the thick, heavy girth. He lets out a sigh in his sleep, some part of his subconscious is responding to my touch. I’m tempted to just crawl under the blankets right now, but I resist.

  And then, once again, I ask myself why I’m holding back, what am I resisting? Why draw it out? Why hold back from what I want? I want to taste him, I want to feel him in my mouth and in my hands—I want to make him feel good, wake him up by making him feel better than he’s ever felt.

  I ask myself why.

  The answer? I want to erase everything that’s gone before. I want to be all he can think of, all he remembers. I want to make him feel better than he’s ever felt—for a lot of reasons. To know that I’m capable of that, that I can be that for a man. That he doesn’t need me in the way that Paul needed me, but that he wants me
and wants how I make him feel so badly that he can’t live without the way I make him feel. I want to know what it’s like to be desired just for who I am—and I get that from Ryder. He makes me feel beautiful. Wanted. Needed. Appreciated.

  Which in turn makes me want to do things for him—make him feel wanted and appreciated and desired and needed.

  During my whole relationship with Paul, sex was about him—keeping him sated, keeping him happy, keeping him sane. It was about keeping up with his demands in a desperate attempt to establish some kind of equilibrium, and I had this stupid idea that if I kept up with his sexual needs while he was in that needy, low-swing state, that maybe he’d think more about me and be more approachable and reasonable when he was in the upswing. Only, it never worked that way. And the sex was never…mutual. I worked hard to make sure I felt some kind of release from it, but it was never about me.

  Ryder makes it about me.

  Even when I showed him that my desire was for him, that I wanted something that would make him feel good, he turned it back on me, brought it back to me. Made me come more than I’ve ever come in my life in a single night—more in terms of both volume and intensity. He kissed me through it all. Looked me in the eye and never shied away or acted afraid of how intense it was. He demanded I keep eye contact as we came together, and I think he knew damn well the effect that would have on both of us, emotionally.

  I think he knew going into this weekend what would happen.

  Is that why I have his erection in my hand, contemplating crawling under the covers and taking him in my mouth?

  Is it for him? Or for me?

  Both.

  I want to know how I can make him feel by doing this. And I want him to know I want to make him feel that way.

  I look at his handsome face, younger-looking and vulnerable in repose. There are care lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. A slackness to his mouth, which can utter such sweet, funny, and sexy things. His beard is messy, tangled.

  He stirs, shifting, pushing his hips upward, the tense strain of his erection making him seek relief, even unconsciously. I slide my fist down his length, and he makes a sound in his throat, a soft, boyish murmur. I remain quiet; keeping my touch light and soft, I stroke him slowly. He huffs, sighs, and his hips flex upward.