God, he felt so animal, so animal, so animal, sinking her into the hot tub naked, lifting her out just enough to rub her breasts with snow while she writhed and half-fought and entirely yielded, sucking the snow off her nipples, sinking her down again, wallowing in sensations until there was nothing left of them but senses. Until they were nothing but animals. Utter animals.
He did try the snow on her sex. He’d kept her in the hot tub a long time by then, until they were both much too hot, and he laid her back on the edge of it and watched her face and watched her sex as he rubbed a finger of snow up those intimate lips. She shivered and clenched and tried to fight it, and he parted her and slipped more cold snow with his finger deep inside her. She flinched, trying to get away—but not too hard, oh, no, she let him hold her down, panting and panting. God, she liked it when he controlled her. It always drove him crazy, how much she liked that. He bent and took her with his mouth again, sucking all that coldness away. She winced into it so much and she melted afterward so well that he did it over and over, even testing a snow-cold thumb on her clitoris, feeling vaguely, satisfyingly cruel, utterly, evilly delicious as she flinched and melted, flinched and melted, let him conquer all cold, let him make her come.
He loved taking her in that hot tub and snow. He did all kinds of things to her in that hot tub. He hadn’t thought he had so much animal in him. He hadn’t known that so did she—melting into him, rounding into him, arching into him, wallowing in him as if she never wanted to climb out of the sensuality of it enough to let her brain turn on ever again.
He put his mouth to her and sucked her humanity straight out of her. Made her scream. God, but he loved making her scream.
Loved the helpless, violent convulsions of her, how she became so weak and vulnerable in his hands, loved petting those out and driving her up into them again. He loved it probably past any kindness, because he drove her into exhaustion and then had to carry her to the bed.
And he took her one last time there, while she was almost asleep, just lax and willing, took her just because they were in a bed, a big king marital bed, and he wanted to make it his bed, their bed, and even though he had just come not long ago in the hot tub, the need to take her again rose up in him, too strong. He didn’t care if she half-dreamed her way through it. He had taken her plenty of times in his dreams, in the past year and a half.
Her turn to let him into her dreams.
Exhausted with all that animal sex, she didn’t seem to mind, her body still willing, easy, her arms sliding loosely over him but still holding him as he took her, her body curling into him when he was done, as they both fell asleep.
And that was the most beautiful thing of all, to sleep in a big bed together again.
He hadn’t always realized this, back in the days when their future could only hold bright, happy things, but to sleep together in a bed together might very well be so beautiful that if it was all the beauty his life could hold—he would still take it.
Chapter Eight
Waking was sleepy, happy, and then it shocked through Kai that the long body lying so close to hers wasn’t a dream, and she held herself still, heart in her throat, as if that dream might catch her and turn into a nightmare.
The potential nightmare slumbered, though, beautiful. A lithe, long, muscled body, warming all the space under the covers. He wasn’t eating enough, she thought, and touched his wrist, there were the tendons were so relaxed now in sleep. Of course, he wasn’t. He was probably swimming at lunch and running again in the evening, going rock climbing on weekends, playing Ultimate relentlessly—anything but sitting down at the kitchen table and . . . and—eating cold cereal by himself?
Of course he was.
Grief squeezed her again for all the hurt she had done him. But she realized she no longer wanted to shut him out of her life so that she didn’t have to deal with that grief. Whether the grief had just grown more manageable with time, or whether her heart had grown stronger from all it had had to learn to bear, she did not know, but she breathed through the wave of grief quietly, letting it subside and just rest there, not trying to heal it or stop it or chase it away. Just letting it be. It was there. It would always be there. If she left it alone and did not worry at it, maybe it would take a nap.
That was one thing she had learned over time. Grief was exhausting. And sometimes even the biggest grief in the world exhausted itself, like a big, bad, ugly winter that finally, even if it was late June by then, had to lay itself down and let a few daffodils push up through its weary snow.