Page 53 of Claimed on the Ridge

"Stop," I say. The word comes out rough.

She looks up. Her lips are swollen and wet. The sight of her between my legs, looking at me with that expression, is going to stay branded into my memory until the day they put me in the ground.

"Problem?" she asks. The innocence in her voice is manufactured, and she knows I know it.

"Come here," I tell her.

She rises. I pull her over me, hands on her waist, and she swings one leg across my hips. She is kneeling above me, braced on my stomach, and the heat of her hovers just above where I need her.

I reach between us and position myself. She sinks down in one slow, continuous movement that takes me to the base. The feel of her, wet and burning around me, forces a sound out of my throat that I couldn't have stopped with a gun to my head.

She plants her hands on my abdomen. She rolls her hips. The movement is grinding and deep, enough to reach every nerve, and her head tips back. Her hair falls down her spine. The firelight turns her skin to copper.

"You feel bigger from this angle," she says, and the breathless quality of the observation combined with the clinical phrasing is so Kendall that I almost lose my rhythm.

"Good."

"That wasn't a compliment. That was a field report."

"Noted."

I let her ride me. She sets the pace, and the pace is deliberate. Each roll of her hips pulls me deep, holds me there, then releases before she lifts to do it again. The wet friction of her body on every stroke keeps me right at the edge of rational thought. The control she's showing tells me she has been thinking about exactly this for longer than she will admit.

My hands settle on her hips. I don't change her rhythm. I follow it, pressing up to meet her when she drops, and the collision pushes her breath out in short, sharp bursts that match the slap of skin.

She picks up the pace. The rolls become lifts, her thighs working, her body rising until I almost slip free before she drops back down and takes me whole. The angle takes me deep every time, the head of my cock pressing against the end of her. She grips tighter with each stroke, building toward something she can't hold back.

Her breasts move with each lift. I reach up and cup one, my thumb rolling over the hardened nipple, and the contact draws a moan from her that vibrates through both of us.

She leans forward. Her hands shift from my stomach to the pillow beside my head, and the angle changes. My cock drags against the front wall of her on every stroke, and she gasps when it hits the right spot.

"There," she says. The word is barely audible.

I hold her hips at that angle. I plant my feet flat on the mattress and thrust up into her, keeping the contact against that spot. Her gasps become moans. The moans become my name, fractured and raw. Her arms are shaking. Sweat gathers in the hollow of her throat. I lean up, lick it, tasting salt while I fuck her at the angle that is taking her apart.

I can feel her tightening around me. The grip of her on every stroke gets firmer, more urgent, the involuntary clench of muscles building toward release. She is close. I can read it in the pitch of her voice and the way her nails are digging crescents into the pillow beside my head. I reach between us with my free hand and find her clit, slick and swollen. A few tight circles of my thumb in time with my hips and her whole body goes rigid above me.

My hand slides from between us to the place on her ribs where the bruise was. I press my palm flat against the fading mark. She feels it. Her eyes open and find mine, and the look that passes between us is too heavy for words. My hand covers the place Gary broke. I am inside her. She chose every part of this.

"I want to feel you come," I say.

She comes. The orgasm takes her whole body, clenching around me so tight I see white at the edges of my vision. Her back arches, pressing her ribs against my palm, and I feel the orgasm move through her body under my hand. She drops forward against me, face in my neck, and the sounds she makes against my skin are wordless and raw. They belong to me.

I wrap one arm across her back and thrust up into her through the aftershocks. She grips me in rhythmic pulses, and each one pulls me deeper into the territory past control. The friction of her around me, still contracting, still holding, is more than any amount of restraint can sustain.

I drive deep, as deep as I can get, and hold there. I come with my arm locked around her, my face pressed into her hair. The force of it bows my spine off the mattress. The sound I make against her throat is low and guttural, pulled from somewhere I don't let people see.

She stays on top of me. Neither of us moves. Her breathing comes in heavy pulls against my neck. My hand is still pressed against her ribs.

The room comes back in pieces. The fire has burned down to a deep glow. The sweat between our bodies is cooling where the quilt hasn't covered us. Her weight against me is solid and real, and the smell of her hair fills my lungs with every breath. Burning pine, clean skin, sex, and something underneath all of it that is just Kendall.

She shifts. Her lips press against the side of my throat, right over my pulse. The contact is deliberate. She is marking me back.

"Stay," I say.

She lifts her head. Her hair falls across my jaw, and the look she gives me is steady, spent, honest.

"I'm not going anywhere, Alex." She presses her palm flat against my sternum. "But if you snore, I reserve the right to reconsider."