Page 83 of A Reign of Roses
My Kane. Who had suffered so much.
Had endured such torment to find me—
Kane reared his head back and wiped a hand down his cheek before yanking it in front of him to examine the moisture there.
His cheeks were still flushed with exertion, lips full and parted and wet, but when his eyes found mine they were gutted. “Are you…crying?”
My cheeks heated. “Please, Kane, please don’t stop.”
That would have been more painful than anything. To be parted from him in this moment.
Kane’s eyes welled with empathy and he slowed his hips but didn’t withdraw. Instead, he brought his forehead to mine and closed his eyes, sucking in a jagged inhale.
“I’m here. You’re here, and we’re together,” he mumbled, rocking his hips a little as if he weren’t fully in control. “Arwen, I love you. I’m here.”
“I love you, too,” I said, beginning to ache around him, craving the rhythmic pounding once more.
I raked my fingers through his hair again and again, and arched into him a bit.
Kane needed no further urging. He resumed his thrusts, slower this time and more deliberate. He angled himself again until I was grinding against his body with each plunge, over and over and over—
My voice was rough as I said, “Harder.”
He groaned. I whimpered with the sound.
Kane braced one hand on the gnarled trunk behind me and the wood splintered under his grasp. He pushed into me with unspeakable roughness. So hard, so brutal, it was just shy of painful.
“More,” I breathed. “Harder.”
“No,” he grunted.
The place where our bodies were joined had drenched my thighs, my skirts, and I mumbled something incoherent around the wet, slapping noises that I was sure all of Shadowhold could hear. I shook and bucked, trying to wring myself out atop him, chasing that pleasure, that building—
“Please—”
“Just breathe,” he soothed.
I tried to listen to him, tried to slow myself down, but the pressure was too great. I was racked with a need that was stuck at the top of a towering cliff, begging to plunge off the other side. My nipples were too tight, my core clenching and shuddering, the pleasure almost mindless,merciless, and still I couldn’t, I wasn’t—
“You’re almost there, bird,” Kane coaxed. “Don’t force it.” Hethrust into me with a ruthless rhythm and brought a hand down to massage that spot where I craved him.
“Oh, Stones,” I groaned, slamming my head back into the tree.
“Yeah?” His voice was so strained I wondered if he was fighting to stave off his own climax, waiting for me.
“Yeah,” I whined in answer.
He slowed his hand and I nearly screeched.
I’d do anything to come. Deplorable things. I’d crawl through the snow below us, beg on my hands and knees like an animal. I’d—
“Just a little more,” he breathed, taking my earlobe in between his teeth and biting just this side of roughly. Then he thrust into me once more and Iexploded.
My climax seized me like a ferocious undertow as I tensed and spasmed, nearly ripping Kane’s shirt from his body in my white-knuckled grasp. Shattering, sobbing, splitting in half—
Kane’s fierce grunts as he finished inside me only pushed me further over the edge as we came apart together, sighing and groaning into each other until we were both heaving heaps. Thoroughly spent.
Even after our panting had subsided and he grew soft inside of me, we stayed like that. After we detangled just long enough for him to withdraw and tuck himself back into his pants. After I was empty and sore and could feel his release leaking down my thighs. Even then, he held me tight to his chest, leaning us against the sturdiness of the tree.
