Page 75 of Searching for Valor

Rylan’s breath hitched as Izzy’s lips skimmed over a particularly sensitive spot just below his collarbone. His hands flexed on her hips, fingers digging into her skin. “Izzy...” Her name was a plea and a prayer on his lips.

She lifted her head, meeting his heated gaze. Slowly, deliberately, she reached for the button of his jeans, popping it open. The sound of the zipper seemed overly loud in the charged quiet of the bedroom. Rylan lifted his hips, helping her slide the denim down his legs.

He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her breath caught as his cock sprang free, thick and hard and perfect. She wrapped her fingers around him, and Rylan hissed out a breath between his teeth.

She stroked him slowly, reveling in the velvety steel of him, the way he throbbed in her hand. A bead of moisture gathered at the tip, and she leaned down, flicking her tongue out to taste him. Rylan groaned, low and deep, his hips jerking up involuntarily.

She took him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the sensitive head before sinking down, taking him as deep as she could. Rylan’s hand tangled in her hair, not guiding her movements, just holding on as she bobbed up and down, hollowing her cheeks to increase the suction.

“Fuck, Izzy,” he ground out, his voice a gravelly rasp. “That feels so good. Too good. You gotta stop, darlin’, or this is gonna be over embarrassingly fast.”

She released him, but replaced her mouth with her hand, giving him a long, hard stroke that made his eyes roll back and pulled another groan from deep in his chest.

She grinned at him. “Do you have any condoms?”

His eyes flew open. “Oh, fuck.” He sat up abruptly and reached for the nightstand, rummaging through the drawer. “Oh, fuck,” he said again with feeling. “It’s been… a while.”

Izzy couldn’t help the small surge of satisfaction at that admission. “For me, too. I’m on the pill,” she offered. “And I had a clean bill of health at my last physical. I haven’t been with anyone since.”

Rylan cupped her face, his thumb sweeping over her cheekbone. “I’m clean, too, but I don’t want you to feel pressured. We can wait until we have condoms.”

In answer, she straddled his lap, teasing his tip through her slick folds. They both groaned at the contact. Then, with agonizing slowness, she sank onto him, taking him into her body inch by delicious inch.

Rylan’s head fell back against the headboard with a low groan, his hands gripping her hips almost hard enough to bruise. “Christ, you feel incredible.”

So did he. Better than she imagined. And, oh, had she imagined. Over and over and over again. She’d worn out the batteries in her vibrator with her visions of him, but no fantasy came close to the real thing, to the hot, hard length of him stretching and filling her so perfectly. She took a moment to adjust, reveling in the exquisite feeling of fullness, of being so intimately joined with this man who was beginning to mean everything to her.

Then she began to move, setting a slow, torturous rhythm, rising and falling above him. She braced her hands on his chest, rolling her hips in a way that made stars burst behind hereyelids. He met her thrust for thrust, his pelvis grinding against a sweet spot with each deep stroke.

The pleasure built quickly, coiling tighter and tighter low in her belly.

Rylan slid his left hand between their bodies, and his fingers found her clit. He circled the sensitive bundle of nerves in time with their movements, and Izzy felt herself teetering on the edge.

“That’s it, darlin’,” he rasped, his eyes locked on her face, drinking in every flicker of pleasure. “Let go. I want to feel you come around me.”

The deep timbre of his voice, the intensity in his gaze, and the steady pressure of his fingers were her undoing. She shattered with a cry, her inner muscles fluttering and clenching around him as ecstasy burst through her body in searing waves.

He growled and surged up, switching the positions so fast her head would’ve spun if it wasn’t still reeling from the orgasm. Suddenly, she was on her back, Rylan looming above her, his hips still driving into her as he chased his own release. His eyes were molten gold, boring into hers with an intensity that stole her breath. The headboard cracked against the wall with every snap of his hips, and she held on for dear life, meeting him thrust for desperate thrust. Her nails dug into his shoulders, likely leaving crescent-shaped marks, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Everything narrowed to the coiling tension building inside her again, impossibly soon.

The second organism sizzled through her, bright and shocking like a lightning strike. She screamed through it, her heels digging into his ass as she urged him deeper, harder, faster. She was lost to the sensation, to the primal need to be filled and claimed by this man.

Rylan’s rhythm began to falter, his thrusts growing erratic. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breath hot against her skin. “Fuck, Izzy. I’m gonna… I can’t… ”

“Yes,” she gasped, clenching around him. “Come for me, Rylan. I want to feel you let go.”

A few more deep, hard strokes, and he was there, his body going rigid above her as his release pulsed hot and thick inside her. Her name tore from his throat with a hoarse groan, and he buried his face against her neck, his hand tangling almost painfully in her hair. She held him through it, stroking soothingly over his sweat-dampened skin as he shuddered and pulsed within her.

She couldn’t deny it any longer. She was in love with him. Deeply, irrevocably in love. If she was honest with herself, she had started falling before he ever really knew her name, back when she was just a deputy on the periphery of Redwood Coast Rescue.

Finally, Rylan’s body relaxed, his weight pressing her into the mattress in a way that felt safe and right.

He lifted his head to look down at her, his eyes soft and sated, a small smile on his lips. He brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “You okay?”

She leaned into his touch. Even though they were still intimately connected, she couldn’t get enough of his touch. “More than okay. That was...”

“Earth-shattering? Life-altering? The best sex you’ve ever had?” he suggested with a playful grin.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him this relaxed, this unfiltered, this… joyful. She blinked against the rush of happy tears and swatted his chest, hoping to distract him so he didn’t see the sheen in her eyes. “All of the above. Definitely the best sex I’ve ever had.”

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