Page 25 of Fighting Gravity

He protested with words, but he was just as quick to get at his belt and zipper as she was. Gloriously free, Tate drove his cock into her mouth with a groan. He was not treating her like glass yet she still felt precious.

Tate was delicious. Perfect. He touched her tenderly while moving insistently. His fingers ghosted her nipples and back, but she wanted more. She wanted him inside her still-pulsing body. The sound of Tate losing control unraveled her own.

Rosie didn’t think. She let go of his cock and shimmied out of Elle’s borrowed romper. She pushed him down onto the bench. Tate didn’t even stop to admire her like she knew he wanted to. He ripped her underwear to the side and gripped her ass with enough force to leave marks. “For the last time, are you sure?”

Rosie sank down on him, unable to answer, to breathe, as he filled her. If she moved at all in this perfect moment, she’d obliterate.

Their quick breaths mingled as they stared at each other. She drowned in his eyes, her entire body awake and connected to his. He broke first. Tate kissed her with complete tenderness, like his straining cock wasn’t buried inside her for the first time. Feeling utterly secure yet entirely powerless, Rosie’s eyes fluttered closed as he stroked the nerves in her body with his tongue. When he bit her bottom lip, she inhaled sharply.

“Thank you for trusting me,” he whispered. “Now, write this ending however you want.”

Nodding, Rosie channeled every encounter she’d ever wanted to be more into her movements with Tate. She allowed abandon. And without having to ask, he granted her basest desires. He met every thrust and kissed her until she was made of sensation.

She began to soar again, her eyes flying open as his mouth met her nipple. He kept his gaze on her mouth as she screamed his name and pulsed around him.

Tate didn’t die like he’d predicted, but he came just as loudly, driving up into her so hard she thought she’d break. She wished she would. He’d broken her in every other way. Beautifully broken pieces were all she had left.

14

If Tate could have picked a reassurance that Rosie trusted him, falling asleep in his arms would have been at the top. She dozed against him, snoring softly, holding his hand. Then she curled next to him on the bench with her head on his thigh. Tate covered her with a blanket and waited for Elle and Chen to arrive. Elle had sent a text saying they were on their way.

Chen burst into the cabin red-faced and loud. “You wanna do something about this?”

Tate quietly filled them in on the steps they’d taken. Chen paced, looking as menacing as the gregarious man could. He was seemingly unhappy with inaction. Elle took a seat on Tate’s other side. “Nothing happened? You didn’t find her half-dressed in the hallway?”

He shook his head. The night would have ended very differently if he had. “She figured it out herself and we left.” He didn’t mention Rosie’s panic at not being able to find her friend. That knowledge wouldn’t change the outcome. It would just add to Elle’s guilt.

Elle’s posture relaxed. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

“It’s my pleasure to take care of her.”

The most pleasure he’d ever been gifted from a single encounter, actually. Tate could not have predicted the explosive end of their evening after its silent beginning. Then the solid wrench that was the date rape drug, three four-letter words that splintered him with rage. Turning to look at her curled form, hair falling like fiery silk around her face, the muscles in his body screamed at him to keep her safe. That she was his to protect.

Rosie deserved the gentlest treatment. Except when she insisted otherwise, like she had at The Saloon with words, and an hour before in movements of her body. And here he’d thought she couldn’t be forceful. Maybe forceful wasn’t the word. More like persuasive.

Tate had never seen anything sexier than Rosie in rapture from the movements of her supple, magnetic body. His dick disappearing between her lips was a close second. He fucking hoped giving in to what they wanted hadn’t ruined them both.

Very soon, they were back in Victory, landing smoothly at the hangar. As much as Tate wanted to bring Rosie back to his place and continue taking care of her, if she was going to wake up in his bed, it would be because she chose to be there. Instead, she went home with Elle.

Tate didn’t hear from her the next day. He hoped she was just sleeping off a mostly shitty night, but unease had settled in his stomach. Sex with Rosie—fuck,everythingwith Rosie—was better than he could have imagined. Deeper, somehow. Almost too deep. He hoped his worst-case scenario for the latter part of the night, that she felt he’d taken advantage of her, hadn’t come true. He should have fought harder, but he’d been powerless against the woman from dreams he didn’t know he had.

For the first time, he was doubting his path. Maybe Tate didn’t want to take his place in line. Maybe he wanted to take a chance with Rosie. A real one.

Quinn plunked next to him on the couch in the living room at the villa, a steaming mug of tea in hand.

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” she said, reading from the screen. “Really?”

“Afraid so.”

She shrugged. “Guess I shouldn’t complain. Sitting down to watch a movie feels like a luxury these days.”

It would, for his work-addicted cousin.

“I loved the books as a kid. The movies might be fun.”

“I just started the series,” Tate told her. “I got as far asPrisoner of Azkaban.”

“What, no more biographies on Kissinger to be found?”

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