Page 82 of Zorro

“Not to judge you. Not to offer advice. Not even to get what I need. I just want to support you. To do that, I need to understand you.”

She looked down at him, wide-eyed. Vulnerable. Real.

That scared the hell out of him, because beneath the calm, he couldn’t help wondering. I didn’t fix this. Does that mean I didn’t earn it? Am I still worthy even if I didn’t save the day?

His heart labored with those thoughts, working overtime to assemble some kind of plan.

“Everything?” she whispered

His breath released, slow and heavy from the tone of her voice. Open…and scorching at the same time. She shifted, a slow, seductive awareness gradually gripping him like her eyes had the power to restrain him. Her legs dropped down, her core now wet and pulsing beneath his throbbing dick.

She bent to his ear, her hot, erect nipples sliding against his chest. She started whispering, “I had this dream about you…you were fire….”

Her words made him arch, his breath to hitch. “You said I ache for you in a place where my armor can’t hold you back. You were right.” Her flattened palms slid down his ribcage. He watched as she licked her bottom lip, and his dick thickened in response to the desire darkening her eyes. His cock throbbed and ached, her wet center a liquid, velvet tease.

He groaned softly at the way she dropped her armor, so beautiful in her exposure. “The flames whispered your name…Mateo. You told me you were going down on me,” her breath hitched. “My hips lifted against my will, hands fisting in the sheets of fire. My moan fractured my shame.” She brushed her lips against his jaw. “I arched into your mouth, into that heat, the wet scorch of your tongue doing all the wicked things I so desperately dreamed about. My hips begged, my soul burned.”

“Goddamn…your shame? Fucking tell me about that,” he rasped out, his chest heaving, his face contorting at the pleasure of her words, her body, the heart of her his for the taking. “Tell me,” he urged as he rolled with her, surging down her body, needing the taste of her desire on his tongue. She cried out as his mouth clamped down, his tongue swirling and his lips suctioning.

She gasped, the sounds she made spurring him on. “I was mortified by how I’d treated you.” He sucked her again, her breath compressed when he used his tongue. “Oh, fuck, Mateo…Crushed by how much I wanted you.” She rose up, her hips begging him the way she’d said they had in her dream. He slipped two fingers into her and her hips jerked. “Shattered by the memory of a man…” Her moan was deep, at the double assault on her senses, and she panted, “…who had become both my desire and my torment.” Her hand buried in his hair, tightening painfully, her hips helplessly undulating against his mouth. “Every beat of my heart…Mateo…oh, please, fuck…that beautiful mouth…was a reminder of the disdain I’d carried for men like you, men who took my husband’s life.” Her breath caught on a sob. “I need you inside me now.”

He couldn’t deny himself her tight heat. He rose, spreading her legs wide to accommodate the fit of his hips while Everly locked her knees against his waist to give him better leverage. The head of his dick slid along her sex, meeting nothing but slick velvet bliss. He drove into her, hard and deep, the force of his penetrating thrust met with her equal force.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she arched her lower body and moaned softly as he surged infinitely deeper. She caught her breath as he reared back, onto his knees, dragging her pelvis against him so he could watch his body take hers, a sexy as hell position.

“Is this what I did in the dream?” he said, fierce and gravel rough.

She groaned, clenching her inner muscles around him. “Yes, your thrusts were so hard, a penetrating need that burned from your exquisite erection to the heart within me, drowning me in black fire and glittering darkness.” He almost came at the feel of the softest, tightest, hottest sheath, groaning and instinctively thrusting into her…over and over and over again. Not enough as his body urged him to move harder, deeper, faster, and take them both over the edge.

His hips bucking at her words, she arched her back, her exposed breasts jutting forward. His thumb grazed her clit, and his mouth wanted to taste those velvet tips.

He leaned forward and captured her taut nipple, working her sweet nub over. He sucked her and grazed her with his teeth, doing the same with the other breast.

“Mateo, querido.” Her breathing quickened, escalated, and so did the long, smooth pumping of his hips, and the friction and the pressure of his thumb against her clit. Her orgasm built, climbed as he lifted his head from her breasts so he could watch the slow, dazzling way she came apart only for him.

He slowed his thrusts, but not his thumb. “Come for me, Everly…you fucking beauty,” His Spanish was guttural. “Mine,” he whispered. “All mine.”

Her lips parted, but before she could let loose a cry of pleasure, he covered her mouth, kissing her as hard and deep as their bodies were fused, and groaned right along with her as they both crashed over the edge of a stunning, spine-tingling orgasm.

Long minutes later, her warm sigh drifted along the side of his neck while her hands caressed up and down his damp back. “You are so addicting,” she murmured huskily.

The emotion that swelled in his chest at that moment was raw and possessive, and incredibly real. He could pass out from this overload.

The sheets were still twisted around their legs. Her breath had finally evened, but her eyes hadn’t closed. She lay half on her side, one hand near her face, the other on his chest as if she couldn’t bear to be separated from him, like it might keep her tethered to something real.

Zorro didn’t move.

He watched her for a long moment, then exhaled through his nose, quietly. The tension hadn’t gone. It had just shifted. From desperate hunger to something heavier. Realer.

“I need you to tell me everything,” he said, voice low, raw around the edges. “Just pour it out, babe. No edits. No professional tone. No goddamn apology.”

She blinked, slowly. Her eyes were glassy, rimmed with emotion she hadn’t voiced yet.

“I mean it,” he added. “Right now, we’re in our three-foot world. Yours and mine. That’s it. That’s all we see. We’re goddamned going to focus until we’re fucking blind, okay?”

Everly swallowed hard.

“You know the concept?” he asked. “SEAL doctrine. When the chaos goes loud, when the shit hits and everything around you turns into smoke and screams and hell, you narrow it down. Three feet. That’s all that exists. Your weapon. Your next breath. Your teammate’s shoulder. Nothing beyond it. You survive like that.”

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