Page 217

I’ve felt it through exhaustion and frustration, through grief, and through every ordinary day we’ve built between the bigger ones, until I stopped looking for the point where loving me would become too difficult.

There hasn’t been one.

I take his hand and lead him toward the bed.

Bane follows me without taking his eyes from me, and by the time I sit on the edge of the mattress, I’m already reaching for him.

His body presses mine into the sheets as he kisses me, gentler than I expect after the way he followed me across the room, so I push my fingers into his hair and pull him closer until the restraint breaks with his groan against my mouth.

He opens my shirt and I work my hands beneath his, and clothes begin disappearing between kisses until my shirt and bra are beside the bed and he’s tugging my jeans over my hips.

I lift myself to help him, impatient enough that his refusal to hurry makes me grip his hair when he bends over me again.

By the time he draws the last piece of fabric down my legs and kneels between them, every place he’s touched feels sensitized, and I spread my thighs before he can guide them apart.

His mouth touches the inside of my knee before traveling higher, kissing the sensitive skin of my thigh until his breath reaches the place I want him most.

One featherlight stroke of his tongue follows the seam of me, making my hips jump, and the tiny curve at the corner of his mouth tells me he noticed.

He does it again with more pressure, circling my clit with the tip of his tongue, refusing to give me enough consistency to anticipate what comes next.

His tongue works over me, his mouth sucks at my clit, and within minutes my thighs are trembling around his shoulders. I grab him, my nails digging into his skin, and his answering groan vibrates through me as he spreads my knees farther apart and keeps me open beneath him.

I lose track of everything beyond his mouth and the fingers gripping me open, and when two of those fingers push inside me, the added stretch sends my back off the mattress.

“Fuck, yes.”

The stretch tips me over before I can brace for it, and I come hard around his fingers, shuddering beneath him as a broken sound tears out of me.

Bane keeps fucking me with his fingers as his tongue stays on my clit, drawing the orgasm out until I’m trembling beneath him and fighting to catch my breath.

When he finally rises over me, his mouth is slick with me and his restraint looks close to gone. He kisses me hard enough to make my head sink into the mattress, and I taste myself on his tongue while my hands find his shirt.

My fingers barely cooperate, so Bane grabs the hem and yanks it over his head before dropping it beside the bed. His erection strains against his jeans, and he shoves them down along with his underwear.

Bane kicks his jeans away and covers me again, planting his hands beside my head as his muscles flex above me.

His cock presses hot and thick against my thigh, and I wrap my hand around him, stroking once before his hips jerk into my hand and his forehead drops against my shoulder.

“Emma.” My name comes out rough against my skin, carrying enough need to tighten every muscle in my stomach.

He nudges my thigh wider, and I roll fully onto my back.

His body follows mine. His cock drags across my skin as he bites my neck with enough pressure to pull a moan from me, and I arch into him because I need him inside me.

Bane positions himself between my legs and rubs the head of his cock through the wetness he made, circling and teasing until my patience disappears.

“I need you,” he says against my neck, the words dragged out of him with the same desperate edge I remember from our first time together, when he looked half wild because he couldn’t believe I’d said yes.

I wrap my arms and legs around him and pull him home.

Bane drives inside me with one long, relentless thrust, filling me so completely that we both gasp.

The stretch borders on brutal, exactly the way I want it, and I tighten my legs around him instead of asking him to ease up.

My nails bite into his shoulders hard enough to make him hiss, and he answers by fucking me deeper.

His hips slam into mine with enough force to make the mattress shift beneath us and the headboard knock against the wall, his arms braced around me while his body keeps me pinned beneath him.