Page 48 of Sniper's Pride

He reached over, a look of intense concentration on his face, and traced his own trail between her breasts, then lower. He grinned with pure male satisfaction when she shivered in reaction.

“I’ve never found that entitlement gets anyone very far. What starts with entitlement ends in excuses. I decided I didn’t want either.”

“No entitlements, no excuses.” She studied his face. “But you’re okay with me being the enemy?”

“I don’t think you’re the enemy. Not my enemy, anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

Griffin sighed. He reached over and took hold of her, rolling until she was sprawled across his chest, and then held her there until she settled. She was unnerved by his casual strength, and if she was honest, fascinated by it. She piled her hands beneath her chin and gazed at him, trying not to think too much about how intimate this was. How... unmasked and vulnerable she felt.

“Control isn’t something I do,” he told her, his gaze intense and his voice serious. “It’s who I am.”

“Does it have to be all or nothing?”

He smoothed her hair back, focusing on the task as if it were the most important thing in the world.

“I’ve never known how to do anything halfway,” he said after a moment, and it sounded like a confession.

Mariah was enjoying all of this too much—Griffin stretched out beneath her, hard and warm. His gaze took in everything and still focused on her like she was the only thing in the world.

And the fact that she didn’t have to figure out a way to hide while he was looking straight at her. She could tell he liked the mess of it. The realness. The salt on herskin, the way her hair tumbled everywhere, the drag of her body against his.

He liked it—but she did, too. She more than liked it. It felt different from sex. It felt like some kind of sacrament.

His confession fit right in.

“I don’t think you’re all that different,” he was saying in his typical gruff manner. “You walked off that ferry like a queen. Now you’re running around with your hair wild and your feet bare, kind of like you’re trying to go full Grizzly Harbor. I might like to control myself, and everything else while I’m at it, but you like to disappear into whatever role you’re playing. And if you think about it, it’s really all the same thing.”

“I’m not disappearing,” Mariah told him, an odd certainty washing through her. “Maybe for the first time in my whole life, I’m not trying to disappear at all.”

“Good.” His gaze searched hers, and she wanted... too many things she didn’t know how to name, much less ask for. Especially when he stopped arranging her hair and ran his hand over her cheek instead. “You’ve got nothing to hide, Mariah.”

“Griffin,” she whispered. “Neither do you.”

She couldn’t have said if she leaned forward, or he did. But either way, they were kissing again.

And the heat grew quicker this time. From sweet to wild in an instantaneous blaze.

Mariah felt him stir beneath her and couldn’t seem to keep herself from rocking against that hard ridge. He let out a low noise, then rolled to the side to deal with the condom.

When he was done, he pulled her back on top of him. Griffin wrapped his hands around her hips, lifted her up,and then settled her back down against him so she could take all of him deep inside her.

“I should punish you,” she whispered, bracing her palms against his chest and letting her hair fall down to trap them. “I should slow it down and drive you crazy.”

Griffin’s grin edged toward cocky. “Go right ahead. If you think you can.”

She couldn’t.

Mariah moved over him, losing herself far too quickly in the exquisite sensation, the friction and the delicious fullness, and most of all the golden heat in that dark gaze he never moved from her.

And this time, when she broke apart, he flipped them over again, bracing himself against the bed so he could drive into her, swift and sure, until she was meeting him, crashing against him, and shattering all over again.

Only then did he go with her, his head next to hers and her name on his lips.

When she stirred again, the room was dark but Griffin was still there.

He pulled her against him, her back to his front, and took her that way, both of them coming hard and fast, a part of the inky darkness.

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