Page 111 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

I put my mouth on her.

I took my time. Slow, deliberate strokes with my tongue, learning her rhythm the way I learned it every time, as if it were the first time, because the sounds she made when I found the right pressure and the right pace were different every time and I wanted every single one. She gasped. Her hips lifted off the bed and I pressed them down with my forearm and worked her with a patience that was calculated to destroy her.

“Please,” she breathed. “More. Please.”

I gave her more. My fingers sliding inside her, curling forward while my tongue kept working, and the combination made her whole body arch off the bed. Her hands found my hair and gripped, pulling, and I groaned against her because the sting of it sent a bolt of heat straight through my core.

I built her up slowly. Deliberately. Every time she got close, I eased back. Changed the pace. Shifted the pressure. Drew her to the edge and held her there until she was trembling, until her thighs were shaking against my shoulders and her breath was coming in broken gasps and my name was the only word she could form.

“Sawyer. Please. I cannot. Please.”

I did not let her fall. Not yet. I brought her to the edge again, then pulled back, and she made a sound that was half scream and half sob, a desperate, wrecked sound that told me she was exactly where I wanted her.

“Beg me,” I said against her skin.

“I am begging. Sawyer, please. I need to. Please let me.”

“Again.”

“Please.” Her voice cracked. Her back arched. Her fingers tightened in my hair until the pain was exquisite. “Please, Sawyer. I am yours. Please.”

I gave her what she needed. Increased the pressure. Curled my fingers against the spot that made her vision go white. And she shattered. The orgasm tore through her with a violence that bowed her body off the bed and ripped a scream from her throat that she caught behind her teeth. Her body clenched around my fingers in waves that I felt in my own pulse, and I held her through it, my mouth still on her, drawing it out until she was shaking and gasping and pushing at my head.

I crawled up her body. She grabbed my face and kissed me, tasting herself on my lips, and the raw hunger in that kiss burned through whatever patience I had left.

I positioned myself at her entrance. Looked into her eyes. Blue met green in the candlelight, and the love in her gaze, open and unconditional and fierce, was the most powerful thing I had ever felt.

I pushed inside her.

Slow. One long, devastating stroke that buried me to the hilt, and the sensation of being inside her, surrounded by her, connected to her in the most fundamental way two people can be connected, made my arms tremble and my breath stop and my vision blur.

“Move,” she whispered. “Please.”

I moved. Slow at first. Long, deep strokes that pulled almost all the way out before pushing back in, each one drawing a sound from her that I cataloged and kept. I watched her face while I moved inside her. The way her eyes fluttered. The way her lips parted. The way her expression shifted through shades of pleasure that made me feel like the luckiest man alive.

I increased the pace. Harder. Deeper. I hitched her thigh over my hip and the angle changed and the next thrust made her cry out, loud and sharp, and I covered her mouth with mine to swallow the sound.

“Harder,” she gasped against my lips. “I want to feel you everywhere.”

I gave her harder. Driving into her with an intensity that shook the bed, that made the headboard hit the wall, that turned the slow tenderness of the beginning into something primal and consuming. She matched me stroke for stroke, her hips rising to meet mine, her nails raking down my back in lines of fire.

I pulled out. Flipped her onto her stomach. Gripped her hips and pulled her up to her knees and entered her from behind in one hard thrust that made us both groan. The angle was deeper. More intense. I could feel every inch of her around me, tight and hot and pulsing, and I gripped her hips and drove into her with a rhythm that was relentless.

“Oh God,” she gasped into the pillow. “Right there. Don’t stop.”

I did not stop. I reached around and found the spot that made her lose her mind, working it with my fingers while I drove into her, and the dual sensation pushed her over the edge again. She came with a scream that the pillow barely muffled, her body clenching around me so tight that my vision went white and my rhythm stuttered.

I pulled her up. Her back against my chest. Both of us on our knees, her body seated on mine, and I wrapped one arm around her waist and the other across her chest and moved inside her from this angle, deep and grinding, our bodies rocking together.

“Come with me,” she whispered. “Sawyer. Come with me.”

I buried my face in her neck. Drove into her one final time, deep and hard and absolute, and came with a groan that I pressed into her skin, my arms locking around her, my body emptying itself into hers in waves that seemed to go on forever.

We collapsed. Tangled. Breathing. Her body draped over mine, her head on my chest, our hearts hammering in a shared rhythm that gradually, slowly, came down.

I pulled the blanket over us. Held her close. Her finger traced the tattoo on my chest, the one from the military, following the lines she had memorized years ago.

“I love you,” she said. Quiet. Certain. The voice of a woman who had said the words before but was saying them now with a ring on her finger and a future in front of her and a certainty that had been earned through fire.