As Sarah slipped out from under the covers, her elbow yanked backward, and a large, male body curved around her back.
Blaze’s lips pressed against her shoulder, and his whisper was gravelly with sleep. “You weren’t given permission to get out of bed, kitten.”
Blaze’s arms wrapped her up in warm sleepiness.
She should have gotten up earlier to fool him into thinking she wasn’t so gross. “I was just going to—”
“You weren’t going anywhere unless I gave you permission,” he muttered.
“I was going to make myself presentable,” she admitted.
“For what? More sleeping?”
“No, for—”
The words stuck in Sarah’s throat like trout bones.
Blaze whispered near her shoulder, “You don’t have to be a magical genie who wakes up freshly showered and perfectly coiffed. I’m too old, and I’ve been on too many tours of duty to be fooled that easily.”
“I wasn’t trying to fool you,” she whispered back.
“No, you were trying to be impossibly perfect, but you’re not. No one is. Stop pretending you’re perfect or trying to fool me into believing you are. I’m more impressed with the real you.”
“You don’t know the real me,” Sarah said. “No one does.”
Horror suffused her body down to her very cells that she’d said such a thing.
“Then show me,” Blaze said. “Don’t try to be what you think I want. Be the real you.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Do what I tell you, and we’ll see who you are.”
She rested while his hands roamed her waist and her breasts, gently arousing her, his palms rubbing over her bottom and hips until she tried to roll over, but Blaze gripped the braid at her neck so she was pinned against him. He guided himself into her from behind, his hardness deep inside and moving slowly as he reached around and massaged her with his fingertip, bringing her to an exquisite moment that floated, bobbing into ecstasy again and again as he stroked inside.
As the fog faded and Sarah’s eyesight cleared, Blaze kept the tension on her braid, pulling her head back against his shoulder. He growled, “Remember your safeword, kitten. I’m a possessive asshole, and you might need it.”
Her molten body spread out over the bed, flowing into the mattress, sated and exhausted. “Yeah, ’kay.”
But he was still inside her and still hard.
Blaze pushed her shoulder, rolling her face-down into the softness of the pillow, and took her again, her legs spread around his knees because she could barely move. He stroked deep into her, his heavy body grinding into her back and his hips against her bottom, biting her shoulders and the back of her neck so that the pain blended with the rawness between her legs and became intense sweetness. His rhythm hastened, drumming into her, and she was pushing back to take more of his steel inside as he thrust, grunting, and then her head was spinning. She was gasping as waves of pleasure pounded through her, a violent delight that had her clutching the pillow as he slammed into her one last time and collapsed, his heavy body covering hers and forcing her down. At the same time, she fell, gasping, trying to breathe as his hot breath panted against the back of her neck.
They’d come a long way from holding hands and talking while sitting on the bathroom floor.
Sarah had always imagined that relations in marriage would be restrained, even tender, but this was—a lot.
If every moment of their existence was going to be like this, with Blaze taking her every night and every morning when they woke up and every time they were alone in a garage and who even knew when else, well, Sarah was going to have to get used to it.
Later, when they were almost ready to leave the hotel, Blaze pushed Sarah up against the wall, pinned her hands over her head, and kissed her until her knees were floppy and only his hand on her face and jaw was holding her up so she wouldn’t slither into a puddle on the rich carpeting of the Ritz-Carlton.
When he broke away, he growled, “We have to leave,” more like he was talking himself into leaving than alerting her to the fact.
“Yes,” she said, still breathless, still shivering with want.
“Then let’s go,” he said, but he still hadn’t stepped away or taken his strong hand off the side of her face.
If anything, his grip lowered to her throat, and he was staring at his fingers splayed over her skin.