How much more I want from her than this.
You’re mine, I want to say, but can’t, because she isn’t.
With deliberation, I suckle her, reach up with both hands, and firmly pinch her nipples.
“Connor,” she says, stiffening.
“Yes, sweetheart,” I whisper, watching her face. I return to my sucking.
She says my name again, a fractured sound, cut off at the end when she cries out, her body taut as a piano wire, her arms outflung, still entangled in her jacket.
With convulsions that shake the bed, she orgasms in my mouth.
Thunder booms. Lightning flashes. The first of the rain begins a soft, drumming song against the roof.
And for the first time in my adult life, I discover the true meaning of the word yearning.
This—this moment, this feeling—is everything I didn’t know I wanted or was missing, made all the more agonizing by the freezing realization that it’s precisely this that Tabby doesn’t want.
At least not with me, for longer than one night.
She’s crying a soft repetition of oh God oh God oh God, still straining against my mouth, her heels digging into the mattress, hands bunching the covers in her fists, and I can no longer wait.
“I need to be inside you,” I say, my voice rough with desire. When she whispers, “Hurry,” her hips still undulating, I don’t hesitate.
My wallet is on the nightstand beside the bed. I reach for it, fumble out a condom, fling the wallet aside. With lightning speed, I roll it down my engorged, aching cock. Then I take my erection in my fist, pull her toward me with my other hand wrapped around her hip, and slide the head between her soaked folds.
I drop my weight to a hand, planted on the mattress beside her. Moaning, she cants her hips higher, using her thighs to lift her bottom off the bed, grabs my ass with both hands, and pulls me inside her body. Deep.
Slick, tight heat, still rhythmically spasming—I can’t help myself. From my throat comes a loud, broken moan.
We stay locked like that for what feels like forever, suspended, unmoving, until finally the pulsing inside her pussy slows to a stop, and she collapses back against the bed, taking me with her.
I adjust my weight so I’m fitted more comfortably against and inside her, push her hair off her damp forehead, and give her a deep, heartfelt kiss. When I break away, she looks up at me through her lashes.
“Oops,” she murmurs, smiling bashfully.
I’m so fucking helplessly charmed I might as well attach some strings and a pair of handles to my back, give them to her, and let her make me dance.
“Good?” I ask.
Her bashful smile takes on a hint of playfulness. “Mmm. I don’t normally kiss and tell. Sorry—come and tell.”
“But for me you’ll make an exception.”
Gorgeous, mussed, flush with afterglow, Tabby says, “All right. For you I’ll make an exception.” She looks deep into my eyes. Then, softly, “It was very adequate. Thank you for your services, soldier.”
I chuckle. “Adequate, was it?” Flexing my pelvis, I make a slow circle, feeling that small stud of metal pressed right above where our bodies are joined.
Her eyelids flutter. Her fingers, still dug into the flesh of my ass, twitch. “So very, very adequate,” she breathes, arching.
Watching her reaction, I want more. I slide my hand down her thigh, feeling her muscles flex under my hand, and pull her leg up so its wrapped around my waist. It changes the angle between us, opening her slightly, allowing me to press deeper inside. I slide in and out, then back in again, amazed she’s allowing this, wishing it would never end.
Tabby, so beautifully responsive to me, wraps her other leg around my waist and rocks her hips. “Almost…mediocre,” she says between breaths.
The feel of her rocking against my cock, using her hands and hips to manipulate my body to her own pleasure, is so hot and amazing, I shudder. Tabby looks up at me with dark, half-lidded eyes.
And then I’m fucking her. Slowly, deeply, the entire time staring down into her eyes. She stares back at me in a hazy sort of amazement, like she can’t believe it’s happening either.
It’s intense. Intimate and personal. Quiet, unlike the beat of my heart, which is deafening.
Her brows pull together. She whispers, “Lírio,” and I’m almost out of my mind with masculine pride.
“Already?”
She nods, biting her lip.
“You’re so goddamn perfect.” My voice is hoarse, the words torn out of me against my will. “Sweetheart. I want…I—”
Tabby kisses me, swallowing my words and the emotion that’s threatening to drown me.
It’s never been like this for me before, the pleasure of the physical act of sex overwhelmed by a sheer enormity of feelings. Part of me hopes it will never happen again. I’m a soldier. A mercenary. A Marine with twenty-three confirmed kills. And yet, with her, I’m as weak as a newborn baby.