Page 72 of Hazard a Guest
He kissed her again. He tasted her. He moaned, whisper-soft, against her lips. “Fine,” he breathed between kisses, between strokes of his hand, “I’ll allow it. But …”
“But?” she breathed, her own fingers gripping at his shirt, pulling at the seams, desperate to remove it.
He shook his head, withholding his flesh from her, kissing around the curve of her cheek to breathe warm air into her ear, to send gooseflesh scattering down her arms and over her whole. “Tell me you love me,” he whispered, gentle and firm all at once. “Tell me you love me the way I love you.”
She released a sound like a growl, a catty little tone as she shoved at him and pulled him closer too. “You know I do,” she groaned as he withdrew his hand, as he pulled away, as he loomed over her, still smiling, still dimpling down at her. “You already know.”
“I want to hear it,” he insisted with a raise of his dark brows, fingertips trailing up and down the thin, hungry flesh of her thighs. “In lieu of a proposal.”
“In … in lieu,” she stammered, shoving herself up to jerk loose the ties at the back of her dress, to draw it over her head, to cover her own grumbling submission in the face of this demand. “Are you litigating our lovemaking?”
He nodded, thumbs brushing over her, teasing her, tormenting her. “Yes.”
She glared. She steamed. She wanted. And then, when it was clear he meant it, she deflated. “Fine.”
“Fine,” he agreed, watching her, those silver eyes scraping over every exposed inch of her skin, that smile still hovering on his lips, those thumbs still teasing in agonizing arcs.
She huffed. “I love you,” she said, offering it like a defeated general offered a sword. “I love you so much, it’s stupid and reckless and awful. Now take your shirt off before I die.”
He did. He grinned and he retreated, relishing in his own victory.
He took all of his clothes off, and he did it slowly. He let her watch. He let her hunger, piece by revealed piece of his extraordinary body. And then he was over her again and there was nothing left between them, not declarations, not uncertainties, and certainly not clothing.
“Please,” she breathed, sliding her bare legs along his, her lips grazing the warm curve of his throat. “Joe.”
He met her eyes. He groaned. He gave.
He always gave, didn’t he? But this time he gave and took all at once. This time it was equal giving and equal taking and perfection in every facet. This time he filled her, he took her, he claimed. He accepted what he was owed, what he had earned, every time he slowly, deliberately, pushed himself inside her.
Finally, she would have thought, could her mind form words.Finally, he is fully mine. Finally we are one thing, one desperate, aching thing.
She fell back on the pillows, allowing herself to be towered over and taken. She enjoyed it. She surrendered to it. She watched.
He had never been so beautiful, so devastating, so undeniably desirable. He watched her back; he enjoyed every stroking claim, every collision of their wanting, every debt of the long, long pain that comes from the intersection of desire and distance.
She clung to him, rising up to meet him where he was, claiming his mouth, touching his hair, tasting his tongue.
She could taste in him all the things that made him whole, the sea salt of his journey and earthen core of his origins, the heat he restrained and the cool balance he offered. He tasted of himself, Ember thought, and nothing had ever been more intoxicating.
She hooked her legs over his, planting her feet in the mattress, and met him at every wave, at every motion of it. She told him again, two times, three times, “I love you.” She told him until he could not doubt it ever again. She told him and she told herself, “I love you.”
The shutter of his lashes, the delicate beading of sweat on his brow, the flex of his muscles as it happened—all of these things and none of them overwhelmed her. She watched, but more than that, she saw. She saw him.
And it was the seeing that sent her in a final gasping crash over that very edge she’d once feared so very much, steeper than the tallest cliff at Blackcove and deeper than the very sea floor.
She went willingly and dragged him along with her, her hands consuming every available inch of his warm, golden skin.
When he fell, she caught him. She caught him and bore him all the way back to earth. She wrapped him in her arms and realized with a sparkling wonder that she’d never have to let him go.
He’d be in her arms forever.
CHAPTER 25
For the second time, she stayed.
Joe didn’t tumble directly into oblivion this time, no matter how welcoming his body made the prospect in the wake of release. Knowing he could stay here, touching her, seeing her, breathing her in, was a powerful thing, a thing that outweighed any simple physical instinct like that of sleep.
Throughout the night they talked more, touched more, made love again and again.
