Page 47 of Sniper's Pride

Griffin didn’t speed up when she started to shake. Or when she started to sweat, her face red and her hair damp.

He didn’t pick up the pace when she begged. Or when she stopped begging and tried to do it herself, rolling her hips against him and trying her best to speed them both toward that edge.

He went slow. So deep it almost hurt, then out again, over and over. Until he wasn’t sure which one of them he was driving insane.

Mariah shattered again. She wrapped her arms around him, tried to climb him and control him, but all she did was toss herself over that edge again.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, you’re killing me.”

But Griffin kept it slow.

Because he could. Because he had made an art out of waiting.

Because this was a lesson, for both of them.

And because he shouldn’t have allowed this to happen in the first place, and he had no idea if he would ever allow himself to do it again.

He drank up her responses like the whiskey he no longer indulged in.

Each time she broke into pieces and shattered in his arms, he took it in and gloried in it. And only when she was mindless beneath him—only when he was crazy with the scent of her skin, the clutch of her body, and his name on her lips—did he allow himself to break.

Griffin dropped his head down, clasped her hands in his, and let himself go.

At last,something in him roared, as he hurtled over that cliff.

And lost himself completely.

•••

It could have been days before Mariah came back to herself. Years, maybe. She was surprised to find Griffin stretched out there on the bed beside her, more astonishingly perfect than she’d imagined.

All the lights were still on, so she indulged herself, turning on her side and letting her gaze trace over him. His beautiful brown skin was like satin to the touch, and he had what she instantly determined to be the perfect amount of hair dusting his chest, then starting again below his navel. He lay with one arm beneath his head, and she didn’t know how she knew when he shifted to alertness, because he didn’t move.

One moment his eyes were closed, the next they were open. And on her.

She could have felt shy, maybe even awash in regrets, but she didn’t. Maybe that would come later, when she had time to process this.

But she doubted it.

She reached over and traced a tight ridge sculpted into his abdomen, and took it as a triumph when he didn’t tense.

“How long has it been since you last let yourself lose control?” she asked.

She felt his gaze on her like a new heat. “There are a lot of ways of losing control. Are you talking about my temper? Do you want to know the last time I let myself get mad?”

“If that’s what comes to mind as you lie here naked, in bed with a woman. Sure. Let’s talk about your temper.”

“The last time I lost my temper was when my fiancée and my best friend informed me that, really, they would rather be married to each other than have anything to do with me.”

He propped himself up on one hand and faced her. And his gaze was no less intense than it had ever been, but this was different.

It took Mariah a moment to realize that there was no trace of iciness in there. At all.

“Ouch,” she said, noting that he didn’t seem particularly messed up about it. She suspected that meant it had happened a long time ago. “Is that the last time you had sex?”

His mouth curved. “I spent a good while making my own bad decisions.”

“I’d say you were entitled to some bad decisions.”

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