Page 73 of Raven's Mark
Those words detonate in my chest.
I lift her off the stool and she wraps around me, legs locked at my waist, arms around my neck, her mouth hot and open against mine. The bedroom door hits the wall when I kick it open, and the morning light floods the room as I lay her back on the bed and follow her down.
This is different from every time before. The first night had been raw and urgent, driven by years of want and a war still raging around us. The night before the operation had been dark and claiming, fear and fury channeled into possession. This is neither of those things.
This is what happens when there's nothing left between us. No secrets. No walls. No mission waiting on the other side of sunrise.
I undress her slowly, peeling away the bloodstained shirt, the jeans, and my mouth follows the map of damage Harlan left on her body. The bruise at her temple where he slammed her into the doorframe. The raw welts at her wrists where the zip ties bit in. The shallow cuts carved into her forearms. My lips trace each one, pressing heat into skin that someone else tried to ruin, until every mark on her body has my mouth's memory instead of Harlan's knife.
She shivers under the touch, her fingers threading through my hair, and a small, wrecked noise escapes her throat that's pure trust and nearly undoes me. I unwrap the gauze from her forearms with careful fingers and press my mouth to the cuts beneath, tasting antiseptic and skin and the faintest trace of salt.
Her breath hitches on my name. Her hands go to my shirt and pull it over my head, her palms spreading flat across my chest, and the hunger in her touch tells me the tenderness has a shelf life.
I unclip her bra and close my mouth over her nipple, my tongue circling slow and wet while my hand works the other breast, rolling the peak between my fingers until she's archinginto me. She moans, low and breathless, and her hips grind up against mine with enough friction to make my cock strain against my jeans.
"I need to feel you." Her voice is choked, the words coming out barely above a whisper. Her fingers work my belt open and shove my jeans down, and when her hand wraps around my cock the breath punches out of me. She strokes me root to tip, her thumb dragging across the sensitive head, and the groan it pulls from my chest is raw and unguarded.
I catch her wrist and pin it above her head, not hard, just enough to still her. "You keep doing that and this ends before it starts."
Her gaze is hot with desire but the corner of her mouth twitches up as she replies, "Then stop making me wait."
I strip her underwear off and settle between her thighs, my mouth tracing a path down her stomach, over the curve of her hip, along the inside of her thigh where the skin is softest.
Her legs fall open and the scent of her arousal hits me like a fist. I press my mouth against her pussy in a slow, open-mouthed kiss, and the sound she makes is worth every year I spent in the dark without her.
Her fingers twine through my hair and hold my head in place. My tongue drags through her folds, flat and slow, tasting her from entrance to clit, and her hips buck hard against my mouth. I pin her down with one forearm across her midsection and take my time, circling her clit with the tip of my tongue, sucking it between my lips, sliding two fingers inside her while my mouth works her over. She's soaking wet and clenching around my fingers, and the sounds pouring out of her are hungry and beautiful and mine.
"God, Jesse, right there." Her hand fists in my hair. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
I curl my fingers against the spot that makes her body lock up and suck her clit harder, and the orgasm tears through her with a cry that echoes off the cabin walls.
Her thighs clamp around my head and her pussy pulses around my fingers and I ride her through every wave, my mouth relentless until she's shaking and gasping and pulling at my hair to bring me back up.
I strip the rest of my clothes and settle over her, the head of my cock notching against her slick entrance. Her legs wrap around me, her heels pressing into the small of my back. My forehead drops to hers.
"Look at me." The words come out rough and low.
Her dark eyes lock onto mine, and the vulnerability in them mirrors something I've never let another person see. I push inside her in one slow, steady thrust, feeling her stretch around me, tight and hot and wet, until I'm buried to the hilt. The sound she makes guts me. Half gasp and half moan, her back arching off the mattress as her body stretches to take all of me.
"You feel that?" My voice is stripped raw, all pretense gone. "That's where I belong. Inside you. With you. For as long as you'll have me."
"Always." The word cracks out of her on a breath, and her hips roll up to take me deeper.
I start to move. Slow and deliberate, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in with enough force to make her gasp. Every stroke is deep and thorough, and the wet sound of our bodies connecting fills the room alongside her ragged breathing and my own. Her nails dig into my shoulders and her body responds to mine the way it always has, arching and clenching and pulling me closer.
"You have no idea what you do to me." My mouth drops to the hollow of her throat, my teeth grazing her pulse point. " Being inside you. Feeling you come apart on my cock."
"Jesse." My name breaks in her throat when I hook my hand under her knee and push it higher, changing the angle. The next thrust hits deep enough to elicit a gasp, and her eyes go wide.
"Right there." She says between ragged breaths. “Right there Jesse. Oh God! Fuck me harder.”
I don't let up, holding the angle, driving into her with measured force that has the headboard tapping the wall. "I can feel you squeezing me. You're close."
"I'm so close." Her voice is shattered. Her hand slides between us, reaching for her clit, and I catch her wrist and pin it to the mattress.
"That's mine." I replace her fingers with my own, my thumb circling her clit in time with my thrusts, rough and precise, the way her body has taught me she needs it. "You come when I tell you, and you come on my cock."
Her walls flutter and clamp around me, her breath coming in short, desperate bursts, and the tension in her body coils so tight I can feel it in every muscle pressed against mine.
