Page 174 of Through the Water

“Please,” she begged, looking up at me with drowsy eyes. “Make love to me.”

“I hope you’re comfortable because I’ve got eight months to make up for.” I felt around in the nightstand and then muttered a curse.

“What?”

Frustration crept into my voice. “I don’t have a condom.”

Ari shrugged, displaying a hint of a grin. “And?”

“And… I want to make love to you.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, cursing myself for not having a sixth sense about her coming home early.

Now, no one would be coming at all.

She sat up and placed a hand on my bicep. “So, make love to me without one.”

“I’ve, uh—” I swallowed, feeling the undeniable need to put her mind at ease. “I just want you to know I’ve never been with anyone without one.”

“Can I be your first?” she asked, pulling her lower lip between her teeth.

I nodded dumbly and positioned myself at her entrance, unable to resist taking a bite from her breasts, thrust up at me in offering.

“Please,” she whispered, legs spread and red hair completely untamed. Wild. Mine.

Ari gasped when I entered her, and I lowered my head to capture her mouth. If I thought she felt good before, nothing came close to the feel of sinking into her body bare.

I angled her hips upward and thrust, completely filling her in one stroke. Her tight muscles clamped down, and I shuddered as the first waves of her orgasm broke.

She dug her fingernails into my shoulders with a cry, meeting me stroke for stroke as she rode it out. I wanted it to last, but the sensations of her spasming left me greedy and beyond any form of reasonable restraint.

I drove into her body twice more before pushing deep and flooding her body with my seed. When my arms gave out, I collapsed against her chest, fighting to catch my breath.

Ari stroked my hair, and I drifted off in her arms, our bodies still connected. She was my safe place, and I was hers.

We laid together like that for a long time, before she sleepily asked, “What do you think Bailey and Morgan are doing right now?”

After pressing a kiss to her throat, I rolled onto my side, bringing us face to face. “Well, he offered to drive her to Georgia’s. But, if he’s got a brain cell in his head, they’re back at his place, doing this.”

She laughed and snuggled against me. Our legs were tangled together, my hand draped across her hip. It was a nightly routine I’d missed fiercely when we apart. We fell into a comfortable silence again, not quite awake but not yet asleep.

“There’s an expression in French, tu me manques which, when literally translated means, you are missing from me,” she whispered.

“I like that,” I said softly, turning the phrase over in my head. I’d felt Ari’s absence like the loss of a limb or vital organ. She was the piece of me I hadn’t known I needed, but one I couldn’t live without.

“And I don’t know that there’s a more accurate description of how I’ve felt when we’re apart. It’s why I came home, Killian. Because you were missing from me.”

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