Page 51 of The Phoenix Inheritance

Isobel’s head drops, giving me a whole new expanse to explore along her vulnerable neck.

“I can hold my convictions for a very long time when my mind is set,” she mutters with difficulty. “Probably…” My mouth on the curve of her nape makes her gulp audibly. “A month…” My fingers work their way down to her mound, slick and sweet as a honeycomb already. “Or a week…” I part the folds and search for her most sensitive spot. “A… day…”

When I twirl her bud she lets out a muffled whimper. “Alright, you win. Wouldn’t have… lasted a minute.”

A chuckle escapes my lips, but my mirth quickly dwindles with a sharp pang of need in my groin. I get to business before it’s too late for both of us, sliding into her entrance, enveloping myself in her pulsing core.

We’ve come a long way since our first time. Now her body is fine-tuned to my presence down to the smallest details, like the way she angles her hips just right to guide me. She doesn’t strangle my length with a death grip anymore, but welcomes me wholly, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for me to be inside her.

My heart swells. Isobel’s readiness wouldn’t be half as beautiful if I hadn’t experienced every single misstep that brought us here, moving with each other with all the familiarity of well-versed dancers.

I rest my head against her slight shoulder as ecstasy hits me, each wave threatening more perilously to push me over. When I sense the telltale signs of her release, I let myself go as well. My knees buckle, my mind collapses, but my instinct takes over just in time to grab her so we topple safely to the ground.

“I really am a great fisherwoman,” she eventually moans after a few endless moments of peace, disrupted by nothing but the flutter of butterflies and a few other colorful woodland critters.

“Hmm?” I manage, still bathing in the glory of our union.

Her arms curl around my shoulders, and I’m hit with a deep, perfect sense of belonging. As if all the years I lived before, even yesterday’s hardships, finally make sense now that I’ve reached this precise point in time.

“Look at this incredible haul I snatched for myself,” she whispers with a smile in her voice. “My parents would be proud.”

Only I can know the sadness that underlies those words, but uttered so lovingly, they bring a grin to my face as well. I turn to her and trace the slightly unbalanced slope of her nose, the contours of her eyes as sprightly as the sparkling waters of a lake, and the bow of her lips.

“You’re right,” I murmur huskily. “I think they would.”

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