Her fingers claw and loosen, her jaw drops, her voice goes high for a beat and dissolves, her hips lose rhythm for two strokes and then find it again, and when it passes she clings, breathing in little stutters that lengthen under Roman’s steady hand.
I hold her there, straddling me, both of us slippery with heat, my breath ragged, my control intact by a thread.
I kiss her slow and filthy and grateful and tell her, “You did so good for us.”
I keep her open and adored, the room a low thrum of breath and praise and wet, satisfied sounds, the storm pressing its face to the glass, the fire sighing, her breath warm against my mouth, my hands heavy at her hips, the night wide open and waiting.
8
MARISA
The kitchen holds us like a warm hand.
The counter is cool under my palms.
The fire breathes from the great room, orange and steady.
The storm hushes the windows, a white noise that makes every breath louder.
I am inside heat and citrus and the taste of chocolate that still clings to my tongue.
I am held at the waist, the shoulder, the jaw.
I am kissed until my knees forget their job and then reminded how to stand by hands that know when to steady and when to let me sway.
Cruz is in front of me.
Roman is at my side.
Deacon is a quiet wall at my back.
They are different kinds of gravity and somehow all of them pull me toward the same center.
I am open and shameless with them now.
I have already given.
I have already taken.
I am still shaking from the last slow wave that moved through me and left me bright.
I can feel my heartbeat where our bodies meet.
Nothing in me is cold.
“Look at me,” Roman says, his voice a warm order. He tilts my chin with two fingers. “Breathe.”
I do, because he asks.
Deacon’s hand settles at the base of my neck, not heavy, just certain.
Cruz smiles at me like sunrise, then kisses me like he means to gather every small sound I have been too careful to make.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, mouth close to mine. His breath is cinnamon and heat.
“You.” The word is small and sure.
He laughs under his breath, sweet and a little wrecked. “Me you will have.”