Page 54 of The Final Cut

I grip her ass in my palms and lift her.

She gasps as I bring her down again, my body driving up to meet hers. The rain turns the world to sound. Water striking leaves. Water striking skin. Her breath breaking against mine. The wet slap of her thighs against me as I guide her rhythm, lifting and lowering, taking and giving with nothing civilized left between us.

Her legs lock around my waist.

“Hold on.”

She moves with me, awkward at first, then desperate, learning the balance of the boat and my body at the same time. Each roll of her hips sends heat snapping through me. Each soft, wrecked sound she makes goes straight behind my ribs and claws there.

I kiss her throat.

Her head falls back, rain running down her neck, and for one second she looks like something the swamp made and sent to ruin me. Fierce. Wounded. Alive. Mine in no way that can be caged and every way that matters.

“My little ghost,” I say against her skin.

Her hand fists in my hair. “Don’t make it sweet.”

“It was never sweet.”

“Good.”

I thrust harder.

The boat knocks against a submerged root with a dull bump. Reva laughs once, breathless and shocked, then moans when I hold her tighter and change the angle.

“That’s not funny,” I say.

“It’s a little funny.”

I bite the side of her neck, careful enough not to break skin, hard enough to make her clench around me.

Her laugh disappears.

The rain comes down in earnest now, soaking us through, turning her shirt translucent where it clings to her breasts, dripping from my jaw onto her collarbone. I slide one hand up beneath the wet fabric and cover her breast. Her nipple tightens against my palm. She rides me harder, both arms around my neck, mouth finding mine again and again as if she can put every unsaid thing there and make me swallow it.

I do.

I would take all of it from her if I could. Every memory that burns. Every closed door. Every hour in the closet. Every lie told in the name of keeping her breathing. I would take Cal’s wound, Delia’s chains, Shiloh’s bruised softness, Ever’s terror, Nash’s guilt.

I cannot.

I can take this, though.

Her body shaking around mine. Her rage turned to heat. Her need entrusted to my hands.

I slide my hand between us.

She breaks almost immediately, crying out into the rain, muscles locking, forehead dropping to my shoulder as pleasure tears through her. I hold her through it, thrusting shallow and slow until the worst of the tremors pass.

Then she lifts her head.

Her eyes are wet from more than rain.

“Come with me,” she says.

The words ruin me.

My hands dig into her ass. I drive up once, twice, burying myself as deep as the boat and her body and the angle allow, and the release hits hard enough to blank the marsh from existence. For a few seconds there is only her. Her arms around my neck. Her pulse against my mouth. Her body holding mine while the rain hammers down around us.