“She’s still not a fan of me, huh?” He laughs into the curve of my neck and rubs my back soothingly.

“She’s not exactly a fan of me right now either, but she’ll come around.”

“I hope she does, but if she doesn’t, we’re still happening.” His expression sobers. “Too many people, too many times, have come between us. Not again.”

This man, this beautiful, unattainable man is mine. And he loves me like a Mack truck—the huge ones that just keep coming and don’t stop for anything in their path. Being the object of such singular focus can be overwhelming, but it’s also the best feeling in the world.

“Are you saying you want this for good?” I ask, more confident than I’ve ever been.

“For good?” He frowns and gives a quick shake of his head. “For good is too sanitized. I want your dirt and your pain and your darkness. Your weakness and your flaws.”

He sprinkles kisses over my cheeks and nose, leaving adoration everywhere he touches me.

“I don’t want you for good, Banner,” he says. “I want you forever.”

I gasp at hearing the future in his words, of the picture he’s painting.

“I love you,” he tells me again. “I didn’t even think I was capable of saying that, much less feeling it, but I feel it for you.”

He shifts to look down at me.

“I couldn’t say that word even to myself for a long time because I thought I had to be absolutely sure of you.”

“And are you?” I slip my arms around his waist. “Sure of me, I mean.”

“Yes, but mostly I’m sure of myself. I love you, and even if you didn’t love me back, I would still want what’s best for you.” He flicks a look over my shoulder at the closed hospital door. ”I think that’s the way he loves you. He loves you enough to let you go.”

“And could you let me go?” I ask, mischief and hope twined around the question. “If I tried to get away?”

He looks down at me, those glacially blue eyes glinting with the possessiveness that I never thought I would want but from him turns me on.

“Why don’t you try to get away from me again and we’ll find out?”

We both laugh into a tender kiss because we know how much he enjoys the chase.

And that I’d let him catch me.

39

Banner

Girl, you better wake up! The world is watching and waiting!

Before I can grab my phone and silence the app, a muscled forearm reaches across me, plucks it off the bedside table, and hurls it into the wall.

“Uh . . . maybe not the best way to silence my phone,” I mutter into my pillow.

“I thought it was quite effective.” Jared’s deep, sleep-roughened voice rumbles from his chest into my back. “Every morning with that damn app.”

Shout out to shatterproof cases.

“You’re sleeping in,” he says. Under the duvet, he pulls my back into his chest, anchoring us together.

“I need to get up.” My protest is relatively weak because I’m exhausted and have worked out early every morning and worked late every night this week. Spending a Saturday morning in bed with Jared does hold some appeal.

“I think you should stay in bed,” he says, his whisper finding its way through my hair into my ear.

An impish smile sprouts on my face, and I say the words that started it all for us more than ten years ago between spin cycles in a deserted laundromat.

“Convince me.”

The husky chuckle breezing my neck holds sweet memories and makes dirty promises. He charts a course of kisses over my shoulder and arm. At my back, he lavishes me with his open mouth, licking gently down the shallow groove covering my spine. He shoves the duvet off the bed and the cool air sprays goose bumps over my skin. He turns me to my back, standing on his knees and looking down at me.

It’s just passing dawn, and early morning sunlight filters through the windows. Not fully bright yet but enough light to illuminate the man above me. Enough to see the emotion I was afraid to name and so was he. His love is so evident. It’s wordless but articulated in the reverent touch of his hand at my throat. It’s passionate in the fingers gliding over my ribcage, stealing down my hip and across my thigh, making their inexorable way to my pussy.

“Oh.” The one word precedes my indrawn breath as he strokes the tight knot of nerves budded inside.

Eyes never leaving mine, he finds my breast with his other hand, palming, squeezing, kneading, collaborating with the steady, sensual rhythmic torture between my legs. His fingers don’t just thrust inside me. They search, seeking my pleasure and my secrets. Desire blossoms like a morning glory opening to the sun streaming through my bedroom window. In a matter of moments, I come, shameless, stretching my legs wide, pulling my knees high, wantonly wringing every ounce of gratification from the orgasm that I can, exposing myself completely to his touch and his sight.

“I want you,” I pant, snaring his eyes with mine as the wave recedes, ebbs. “Inside me.”

He’s discomposed. His breaths ragged, heaving his chest with deep rises and falls just from touching me until I came. Simply from watching. Want and need twist, turn, gleam feral in his stare. The hunger there is a beast, and I am its singular focus. I feel the exhilaration of being hunted, pursued. The promise of being caught and taken. His control hangs by a gossamer strand, and when I reach up to grab his cock, that control snaps.

He slides his thumb from my soaked folds to the tight, puckered hole below, lubricating me, preparing me.

“I want this.” He growls it. Grits it between his teeth.

I nod. It won’t be the first time he’s taken me that way. It’s always rough and rides the fine line of pain and bliss.

And I always beg for more.

Still standing on his knees, he stretches to the bedside table to grab the lube, and I take advantage of his preoccupation to lean up and take his cock into my mouth.

“Dammit, Ban.” He squeezes the small bottle in one fist and tangles the other in my hair falling forward, curtaining the work of my lips around him. The bottle falls to the bed, discarded and forgotten. Both his hands cup my head as he pushes himself deeper into my mouth, down my throat. I choke a little from the aggressive thrust.

“Breathe,” he commands, but doesn’t let up, doesn’t pull back. He never does. He knows I don’t want him to. I drop my jaw to accommodate the thickness, the raw thrust of his dick scraping inside my mouth and stretching the walls of my throat. He groans, drops his head back. Witnessing the abandoned pleasure on his face has me chasing my own high again. I slip my hands between my legs, stroking myself in sync with each of his powerful strokes.

“I don’t want to come like this,” he says, jerking out and leaning down to capture my jaw in one big hand. With his thumb, he rubs the faint trail of pre-cum into my swollen lips and then kisses me, sipping his own saltiness from my mouth.

“Lie back.”

I do. He grabs the lube again and drags me over the decadent cotton of our sheets to the edge of the bed. He stands at the foot, holding my stare while he anoints the tight hole with cool liquid. He pulls my legs straight up against his chest, stroking the sensitive skin inside my thigh.

“Tell me if it’s too much.”

His jaw clenches, the muscle pushing against the tanned, golden-stubbled skin. He eases into my ass by centimeters. The wide head forces its way in, and my breath catches. This is always the hardest part, that first breach. The thick, welcome intrusion. The pinch of pressure is a forerunner for the unbearable pleasure of his cock caressing the network of nerves cloistered in my ass.

“Oh my God.” I swallow and arch my neck, begging the air for breath. He starts slow, watching my face for signs of pain, discomfort. He begins cautiously, but every stroke in and out whittles his care, his consideration.

Until the beast just wants to fuck.

He’s gripping my thighs to his chest and pounding into me with piston force. My body mourns even the millisecond he leaves to pull out and celebrates the fullness every time he slams back inside.

”Open it for me,” he says, his voice desperate and commanding.

I know what he wants and cup my butt in both hands, stretching, pulling the cheeks apart to make his way easier.

“Shit,” I gasp. It’s intense. The penetration so deep, I shatter inside with every thrust.

Taking control, he pauses only long enough to drop my legs from his chest and let them fall open, and pushes my knees up to my chest. He watches himself going in and out, biting his lip, gripping the inside of my thigh just below the knee. I know what’s next, and I don’t think I can take it.

His thumb revisits my pussy, gently at first, almost an apology for neglecting it, then his jaw hardens and he presses his palm flat over the open lips, passing his hand across my clit over and over. I involuntarily close my legs against the devastating pleasure.

“Stop. Open,” he orders abruptly, pressing my legs back wide and my knees back up. He strokes my clit and sinks his thumb into my pussy, all the while pounding into my ass. The orgasm rises from muscles coiled tight at the base of my spine and explodes over my back, a meteor shower raining down my legs, winnowing through my feet and toes. This feeling possesses me until I scream and thrash my head and grip the sheets.

“Dios. Dios,” I slur, spent, even as he maintains the vigorous pace. Sweat drips down the chiseled workmanship of his chest and abs. His damp hair curls.

How long has he been fucking me? I hope it never ends.

“God, I’m close,” he grunts. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He pulls out and splashes a hot stream onto my ass and along the backs of my thighs, on my belly. His head flings back, proud and leonine, and then he looks at me, ownership in the gaze that takes in the creamy rivulets decorating my body.

And then he rubs it in.

I close my eyes, blocking all extraneous stimulus and every sense but touch. The world narrows to the ridges of his finger pads massaging his essence into my skin. He rubs it into the swollen lips between my legs and roughly over my nipples, melding us in the most primitive way. When the pleasure is too much to contain, I come again. Differently. Soundlessly. Noiselessly. My whole being sighs. My body with the release of such passion, it steals my voice. My heart, which for one devastatingly gorgeous moment, stops, pauses in my chest in reverence. And my soul stills, quieted by the presence, the possession, of its mate.