I should pause, shouldn’t I?
I should take a moment, should think about what this means.
But I’m not someone who denies herself the things she wants.
And I want him.
So I lift my chin, gaze steady, and say?—
“I don’t run from the things I want.”
His breath catches.
His hands tighten at his sides.
And then?—
He lunges.
Chapter Thirteen
NO RUSH, ONLY HER
Ronan
Maya is perfection beneath me.
The firelight flickers, its golden glow licking over the curves of her body, casting soft shadows that shift and dance with every shallow breath she takes. Her bare skin is warm beneath my hands, fevered from our exertions, flushed where I have touched, where I have tasted. The evidence of my claim blooms in the form of bite-marks and bruises, the impressions of my fingers where I’ve held her down, held her open. She trembles—not from fear, not from uncertainty—but from the aftermath of pleasure, from the weight of my body pressing her into the blankets, from the slow, languid drag of my fingers tracing the length of her spine.
She is mine.
And yet?—
There is no rush.
I savor the moment, sinking into the eternity of her—of the soft, broken sounds slipping past her kiss-swollen lips, ofthe way her body reacts to every shift, every teasing stroke of my hands. She is a symphony of sensation, a slow, unraveling masterpiece I never want to stop discovering. Every inch of her is something new to learn, to worship. I could spend eternities here, mapping out the delicate tremors in her muscles, the flutter of her pulse beneath my tongue, the way she shudders when I whisper against her ear.
The red ribbons still tied around her wrists ignite something primal within me.
A symbol of the chase.
Of the catch.
Of the rightful claim I will make when the time is perfect.
But not yet.
I force myself to wait, to hold back, to deny the deepest instincts clawing at my control. My body screams for more—for completion, for the final act that would bind us in ways neither of us could ever undo—but tonight is for something softer. Something slower.
I deny her my knot, even as the hunger coils tight inside me, thick and molten, pressing against the edges of my restraint. Even as her body grips me like a vice, as if she could pull me deeper, demand everything. I feel it in the way she moves, the way she tilts her hips in offering, in the quiet, desperate need laced into her gasping breaths.
Tonight, she is soft sighs and breathless gasps, the whisper of my name on her tongue as I sink into her heat, slow and deep, stretching her around me.
This is home.
She is home.
I lick along the curve of her spine, tasting salt and heat, the faintest hint of sugar and wild berries from brunch still lingering on her tongue when I claim her mouth again. Her lips part beneath mine, her moan swallowed by the slow, consuming kissI give her. The sound vibrates through my bones, sinks into my blood, makes me ache with the need to hear more.