I writhed, dizziness rushing as I stared up at him towering over me.
His body was brimming with hard, cut muscle. Muscle that jumped and ticked and flexed, as if the desire thrumming in his veins stalked back and forth, a caged predator, searching for a way to be released.
My gaze traveled across the tattoo on his collarbone.
Relentless.
“Fight for me,” I begged.
He groaned when I said it. He scrambled to the side of the bed and onto his feet, ripping my underwear down my legs as he did.
And I felt it. Something came alive in that second. Something gave beneath the intensity that glowed and flamed between us.
Zee seemed almost frantic as he fumbled to get the button free on his jeans. He shoved them down his legs and kicked them from his feet.
The man was bare, and my chest stuttered beneath the magnitude of him. This gorgeous, gorgeous man.
“Tell me you need me, Alexis. Tell me you need this as fucking bad as I do. Tell me it’s okay. Tell me I’m not the only one who’s losing his mind.” The words grated, rugged and fueled by need.
Emotion thickened in my throat, so heavy, so right. “I need you.”
The last threads of whatever was holding Zee back snapped.
He was back over me, faster than I could make sense of it, his hands everywhere. Frantic and frenzied as they searched me out.
He ducked his head, snatching a nipple between his teeth, biting down before he lapped at it with his tongue.
I clutched at his hair, at his neck, at his shoulders, both of us in this desperate struggle to get closer to the other.
He edged back for the barest second, blowing air across the nipple that had just been in his mouth. That ball of need in my belly shivered and shook as he turned and did the same to the other.
Desire throbbed between my thighs. So bright. Too much. Overwhelming.
I was desperate for this man.
For his beauty and his touch and his everything.
“Tell me,” he said again, licking up the hollow of my throat.
I squirmed as his fingers tickled across my belly, the boy magic, inciting a storm. “I need this. I need you.”
Did he know?
I needed him to. “I need you more than anything I’ve ever needed.”
“Goddamn it, Alexis.” He rubbed himself at my center, my knees dropping wide, jagged pants escaping his mouth, my face back in his hands. The edges of everything shimmered with light.
He moaned, rocking, teasing me with bliss while he tortured himself with the unknown. “Tell me you’re on the pill. Tell me, Alexis. Tell me this is right. Tell me this is okay.”
I nodded frantically, gripping him by the sides of the face. “No fear. Just life.”
A growl pulled from somewhere deep inside him, and in a flash, he’d shifted, taking his cock in his hand, before he was there, the big head of him breaching that space I felt desperate for him to take.
A sharp cry jutted from my mouth as he took me whole in a single thrust.
Taking everything.
Light. Sanity. Mind.
Sucking me into that darkness that rimmed and rolled and spun around him, drowning me in the blackest night.
He was so big and overwhelming he burned, and I struggled to catch my breath, to adjust, to make sense of this feeling that swept through me with the power of a shock wave. This feeling of utter belonging that strummed through me like the passion of that song.
His song.
“Fuck.” Zee’s hand tightened on the caps of my shoulders, his chest quaking in spasms, jerking up and down in some kind of twisted restraint, those chains giving and giving and giving until the shackles fully snapped.
Broke.
Zee grasped me behind the knee, spreading me wide. His expression was savage. His eyes fierce.
He rocked his powerful hips.
Owning.
Taking.
Possessing.
My walls desperately clutched around him, the feel of him almost too much, too great, while the greedy part of me knew I would never get enough.
I grasped his shoulders as I struggled to meet him. His hips snapped and thrust and fucked, eyes narrowed and tight, holding me hostage beneath the demand of his stare.
He never looked away as he dominated every inch of me.
Relentless.
I understood it then. This masterful boy with his skillful hands, pouring every single thing he had into me. My body lit up beneath it, pleasure building with every surge of his body.
His pants were deep, guttural, wild.
He suddenly rolled us, pulling me on top, and jerked up to sitting in the same second. He twisted one hand up in my hair, the other burrowing into my hip as he guided me. Harder. Faster.
I panted as our bodies rocked and pitched, and my heart soared to heights too great, pleasure climbing right along with it.
“Lex…you…you feel so good. Too good. I can’t…”
Zee was back on his knees, taking me with him, both of us too lost to care we were at the edge of the bed, tumbling over onto the rug on the floor.
He pushed up on his hands, sweat slicking his skin as he drove us both toward the edge, his gorgeous body working over mine.
I’d always chased experiences. Wanted everything they had to offer. But somehow, I knew I’d never again have an experience quite like this.
“Alexis…baby…I—”
“I know.” It was a whimper.
He wedged his hand between us, fingers precise and perfect as he circled my clit. He coaxed me with those brilliant eyes while the rest of him coaxed my body into bliss.
Higher and deeper and faster.
And we spun.
Falling through a vacant space that belonged only to us.
Where the stars burned so bright they blinded.
Where the only thing I could see was this boy.
This brilliant, beautiful boy.
Zee increased his pace, every inch of him tight and rigid. His hips rocked mercilessly, and he clutched me by the shoulders, a shudder taking him whole as he thrust and held, his groan so deep as he spasmed and jerked.
My name a prayer.
He slumped forward. Both of us gasping. Panting.
Staggered.
Softly, I threaded my fingers through his hair.
I could feel him swallow. Could sense the wariness that threatened to seep back in.
He inched back to look at me, so tenderly it hurt. “Lex,” he whispered, as if maybe this too caused him pain.
The best things always did.
He shifted and pulled me to his side, adorning a bunch of kisses across the crown of my head, my hand resting on his chest against his erratic heart.
I peered up at him, and he laid one of those kisses against my forehead, his big hand running down the back of my head.
“Lex,” he whispered again, this time lower. Touching those secret places inside that he had just claimed as his own.
He took my hand, wound it in his, lightly brushing his lips across my knuckles. Those lips almost tweaked into a smile. “I lose my head when I’m with you.”
A wilderness of lights slowly flickered to life outside the bank of windows that overlooked the sprawling city below. They glowed against the canopy of night that hung like a warm embrace of protection.
In Zee’s bedroom loft, removed from the rest of the world, that was the way I felt—protected.