She wanted that release.
She wanted it now.
God, if she had to wait she might not survive it.
Fingers curling into the sheets beneath her, she held on tightly. She thrust back to him, panting for air, as flames burned through her system, licking across her flesh and attacking the rapidly rising sensitivity of her clit and the aching depths of her overstretched vagina.
As she fought to break the bonds holding her to reality and to jump headlong into the flames, she felt Jed above her. His lips were at her neck, stinging nips and heated kisses attacking the bend of her shoulder a second before he caught the tender flesh between his lips and delivered a heated kiss that became a catalyst to pure ecstasy.
The explosion tore through her.
Rapture ripped her from her place in reality and threw her headlong into the cataclysm of flames awaiting her. Destructive, the tidal wave of pure ecstasy overwhelmed her; as she flew through that place of searing sensation, she found the man who had taken her there.
Piper felt him inside her, covering her, not just taking her body, but sinking inside her soul.
His groan echoed around her.
His cock buried deep one last time, pulsed and throbbed; then her muscles clenched around him further as he found his own release.
Crying out his name, locked in a world of blinding color and overwhelming rapture, she could do nothing but trust him to hold her, to keep her secure as the pleasure pounded through her, tore past the deepest reaches of her heart and invaded the very depths of her soul.
She was his.
There was no denying it. There was no fighting it.
She belonged to him.
But as she felt him sinking inside the abyss with her, Piper knew he belonged to her as well.
He was hers.
There was no denying her, just as she knew there was no longer any chance of denying him.
For the first time in her life, she knew exactly what it meant to belong.
Now if she could just live long enough to enjoy it.
TWELVE
“What now?” With a towel wrapped around her, her damp hair lying along her shoulders, Piper stepped from the bathroom after showering, the reality of the danger facing her threatening to overwhelm her optimism.
The chest-tightening panic was returning, waiting, preparing her for Jed to walk away. . . .
Like her father had walked away and left her, her mother, and her sisters unprotected and alone. Just as she was afraid Tim and Dawg would walk away.
Was that why everything inside her shut down whenever she and Dawg moved toward a confrontation? To prepare her heart, to steel herself against the abandonment?
“We wait and see,” he answered, the towel he’d wrapped around his waist earlier still in place.
He hadn’t dressed.
Heated need for his touch was threatening to weaken her need for answers as she watched him toss their dirty clothes into the hamper next to the bathroom door.
“Since when do you sit around and wait on anyone or anything, Jed?” she asked, frowning at the feeling that there was much more going on than simply waiting. “What are you and my brother up to?”
Tightening in response to some imperceptible feeling of dread, her heart began to beat at a sluggish pace.
The impending panic was a result of the look on his face, the darkening of his navy gaze that made his eyes appear almost black.