Page 82 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“I was trying to protect you.”

“You left me.” He bit down on the curve of my neck, not gentle, hard enough to make me gasp, and the sting of it shot straight through me. “Do not ever do that again.”

He released my wrists and lifted me. My legs wrapped around his waist and he carried me to the bed and put me down on it, and the way he looked down at me, breathing hard, his eyes dark and burning, made every nerve in my body light up.

He pulled his flannel off. Carefully, because of the shoulder, but with an impatience that made the carefulness look violent. His shirt followed. Then he was leaning over me, one hand beside my head, his body caging mine against the mattress.

“You are mine,” he said. “Say it.”

“I am yours.”

“Again.”

“I am yours, Sawyer.”

He stripped my shirt off. My bra. His mouth found my breast and he was not gentle. He sucked hard, teeth grazing, his hand gripping my hip with a possessiveness that would leave marks, and I arched into him and moaned and did not care about being quiet because the need was too big and too urgent and I had spent twelve hours thinking I might never feel his hands on me again.

He pulled my pants off. Everything. Left me bare on the bed while he stood and unbuckled his belt with his good hand, his eyes never leaving mine, and the way he looked at me, like I was something he intended to consume completely, made my thighs press together and my breath come in short, sharp gasps.

He was over me again. His mouth trailing down my stomach, biting my hip, his hand sliding between my thighs and finding me already wet, already aching, and the groan he made at the feel of me was dark and primal and sent a flood of heat through my entire body.

“Turn over,” he said.

I turned. Face down on the mattress, my heart pounding, and I felt him behind me. His hand gripped my hip and pulled me up to my knees, and then his mouth was at the back of my neck, biting, sucking, marking me in places that no one would see but we would both know were there.

He reached to the nightstand. I heard the drawer open. Heard something slide, fabric maybe, and then his hand was gathering both my wrists behind my back. The fabric wrapped around them. Snug. Not painful. But firm. Holding me in place with a deliberateness that made my breath stop and my body flood with a heat so intense I felt dizzy.

“Too tight?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

He positioned himself behind me. I felt him at my entrance, hard and hot, and then he pushed inside in one long, deep stroke that tore a cry from my throat. The angle was devastating. Deeper than before. The fullness of him stretching me, filling me, hitting a spot that made my vision go white.

He held still. Buried deep. One hand gripping my bound wrists, the other on my hip, and I could feel him everywhere. Behind me. Inside me. Around me. The weight and heat and power of him consuming every sense I had.

“Move,” I gasped. “Please.”

He moved. Not slow. Not gentle. Hard, driving thrusts that rocked my entire body forward with each one, and the sound of us, skin against skin in the quiet room, was obscene and perfect. His hand tightened on my wrists, pulling my arms back slightly, arching my spine, changing the angle so that every thrust went impossibly deep.

“This is what happens when you try to leave me,” he said, his voice rough and broken. He drove into me harder and I screamed into the pillow. “You do not get to leave. You do not get to sacrifice yourself. You are mine, Chloe.”

“Yours,” I gasped. “I am yours.”

He leaned over my back. His chest against me, his mouth at my ear, and his hips never stopped moving. The pace was relentless. Punishing. The kind of pace that was not about pleasure alone but about reclaiming, about pressing his presence so deeply into me that I would feel him for days and remember with every step that I belonged to someone who would cross hell to bring me back.

The orgasm built fast. Too fast. The combination of the angle and the restraint and his voice in my ear and the raw intensity of being taken like this after everything that had happened was too much. I shattered with a scream that I could not muffle, my body clenching around him in waves that made him groan against my neck.

He did not stop.

He kept moving through the aftershocks, his pace unchanged, driving into me with a focus that was almost meditative, and the overstimulation hit me like a second wave. My body was trembling, hypersensitive, every nerve ending firing, and each thrust sent a jolt of pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain.

“Too much,” I gasped.

“You can take it.” His mouth found my shoulder. He bit down and the sting of it mixed with the pleasure and I moaned, long and broken. “You can take it because you are mine and I am not done with you.”

He pulled out. Untied my wrists. Flipped me onto my back, and before I could catch my breath he was inside me again, this time facing me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his forehead against mine. His hand found mine, fingers lacing together, pinning my hand beside my head.