Page 98 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Lifting myself up by the elbows, I didn’t waste time before I tore off my shirt all the way, then rocked forward and grabbed the hem of his.
And as I pulled his shirt off him, I came face to face with all that glorious, tan skin stretched tight over his muscles. All that weight and power and bulk I wanted on top of me. Under me.Something.
I ripped my eyes from the line running between his abs, forcing myself to meet his stare that clipped the edge of my breath away.
“Are you sure, Rayna?” Coen asked, caution suddenly filling his voice. “I didn’t set this up to make you have sex with me. I just…”
“You what?” I asked, even as my fingers—trembling now, dammit—reached behind me to unclip my bra.
Coen noted the movement and had his hands behind my back in a flash, undoing the clips and throwing my bra overboard. In reality, it was probably falling to the carpet of his room, but right now it looked like it had disappeared in a flurry of mist.
Now my breasts were bouncing in front of his face as I crawled closer to him, settling myself into a straddle over his lap and grinding myself against the hardness that pushed up from beneath his pants. God, the pressure was everything—burning and sending flurries of white-hot pleasure and need shooting through me.
Coen’s eyes latched onto one of my nipples. “I’m just in your head so much,” he said through clenched teeth, as if it physically pained him to not have that nipple in his mouth, “that I wanted you to get a taste ofmymind. And what youdoto me.”
“Well, I’ve had a taste,” I managed to say. “And I want more.”
I scooted back a bit to work on the buttons of his pants, fumbling over the smooth edges, missing the slitted holes. Coen watched me with his head cocked and his eyes full of glittering amusement, refusing to help. As if my ability to unbutton him fast enough was the final test to prove that I was choosing this for myself.
“Bastard,” I muttered, earning a chuckle. That point between my thighs was screaming now, building with pressure and pain andplease, oh, please—
The impatience tore through me, and I ripped his buttons off completely. The sound of them clinking to the bottom of the boat couldn’t hide my grunt of frustration or Coen’s huff of laughter.
“Sorry,” I panted, even as I ripped open the rest of his pants, leaving threads dangling and the mass of him beneath me.
He was large and gleaming and… God, I didn’t know how I was going to fit all of him inside me. But I knew I needed filled, needed stretched, or else I would collapse in on myself.
“Don’t worry,” Coen breathed, “I’ll just return the favor.”
He did. He slipped his thumbs into either side of my waistband and jerked, splitting apart all the seams until my pants were nothing but shreds scattered around us. He did the same to the lace of my underwear, and suddenly there was no more fabric between us. Nothing to hide the glistening wetness already trailing down my thighs.
“Ahhh.” Coen spread my knees further apart, taking it in. “Look at you, beautiful hurricane. Such a wild, wet, greedy little thing.”
A blush flared bright and hot against my cheeks, but I couldn’t reply. Couldn’t speak. Could only position our two halves together and settle myself against his broad tip. He clutched my backside, his hands cupping each side of me, but didn’t pull me down.
That was my move to make. Right now.
“Oh, God.” The moan skated off my tongue as I lowered myself, impaling that slick, aching part of me with that hard, throbbing part of him.
It was burning. It was bliss. It was the fire in our veins, merging into one point. And when Coen’s lips brushed against the brand on my shoulder, when he finally lifted his mouth to mine again and our lips met, it unlocked something feral inside of me.
I let my body move how it wanted to, let my hips swirl and grind without thought. The boat began a violent rocking motion as Coen moved against me, too, as he drove upward, slamming himself into me again and again with groan after groan peeling off his lips. The clouds were condensing around us, and the stars were flashing quicker and brighter, more like strobes than twinkles now.
I’d wanted this for too long, I just hadn’t allowed myself to think…
To think I could have it.
Not when I still didn’t have all the answers about my blood and this island and the world. Not when I had been feeling as if something was missing inside me, and even Coen couldn’t fill all of it.
But with his calloused hands cupping me like I was simultaneously the strongest and most fragile thing he’d ever held, with every thrust that gave me the friction and fire I needed, those worries flaked away to the wind, the mist swallowing them as if they’d never been.
There was nothing but Coen and me, retracting and joining again and again and again in the space between stars—
Until the moon shattered above us into a million glowing shards.
CHAPTER
36
