Her hands went still. “Can it only be once?”
The sound he made, a mixture of laugh and groan, puzzled her.
“No. Not just once.”
“Then it can be quick this time.” Her need was now, now, now, so she pulled the belt free. “I want to know. It’s the first I’ve mated with legs.”
Breathless, next to desperate, he forced himself to stop. “The first?” Of course it was the first, for Christ’s sake. “Does that mean, you’re . . . Would it be like your first time? Ever?”
“Oh, you mean do I still have the shield?” She dragged him back again. “No. This part is the same. But the legs, the bed, your legs. It’s different. It’s new. I want you between my legs. I want you inside me, between my legs. I want to know, Sawyer. With you.” Filled with those wants, with those jolts, she took his mouth again. “Only you.”
She started to tug his jeans down.
“I’ve still got boots on. Wait.” He rolled, sat up. As he dragged violently at his boots, she reared up, circled him from behind, drove him closer, closer to madness with her mouth at his neck, her hands running over his chest.
Freed, finally, of boots, jeans, everything, he turned toward her. She stayed on her knees, her hair spilling like ink down her back, over one shoulder. Her gaze traveled down his chest, down. And she smiled.
“You’re beautiful, and strong.” Reaching out, she trailed her fingers over his shaft, made his blood thrum. A thousand strings plucked at once.
“This is pleasure?”
“I don’t think they’ve come up with a word for what I’m feeling.”
Still smiling, she lay back, her hair spread over the white sheets in long, rich rivers. A perfect gift, offered without guile or artifice.
“Mate with me, please. Put your pleasure inside me.”
She dazzled him, undid him, and in that moment owned him.
He lowered to her and, struggling to take care, to go slow in case she was wrong and it would be like her first time, began to enter the hot and wet.
“Oh. Oh.” Her fingers gripped his arm, nails digging in as she shuddered. And she cried out, with her eyes full of wonder. “But this . . . this comes at the end. It’s the end?”
“No, it’s not the end.” Every muscle trembled as he braced himself over her. “Do you want to come again? Feel that again?”
“I can? Yes. Yes.”
She made a sound, low in her throat, when he went deeper.
He held there, strained to just hold there until her hips began to rise and fall.
“I need to . . . I need to.”
“That’s right.” His lips skimmed light over hers. “Do what you need.” Then he used his tongue, roughened the kiss when she came again, cried out against his mouth.
He thrust once, hard, deep, and she gasped, she arched.
“Yes. Again. Again.”
So he rode her, fast, hard. Just let himself take.
She felt that ending that wasn’t an ending with him rise up in her again. As it flooded her, she threw her arms back, hooked her legs around his waist, moved with him, mated with him, flew along the wave, then the next.
Then what rose in her was more, more than pleasure and joy, more than all she’d ever known. She shuddered with it, and he shuddered with her.
When the true end came, it swept her into another world, one beyond beauty.
Even when he caught his breath, and that took a while, his heartbeat sang in his ears. When he rolled off her, she rolled with him, nuzzled up beside him.