Page 34 of The Secrets He Keeps

She arched, tipping her hips higher, spreading her thighs, giving more. Demanding more.

He set a rhythm to match the one she executed with her mouth and hands on his cock.

But soon it got to be too much for both of them. In unspoken accord, they shifted position. Erik climbed onto the bed, kneeling as Callista rose up to her hands and knees, turning her back to him.

There was a brief pause as he grasped her hips in his hands.

His erection bumped against her heated flesh, but he did not thrust forward. She glanced over her shoulder as he slid his hands up along her rib cage to her shoulders. There he gathered the full mass of her hair in one fist, twining its length around his wrist.

Then very gently he pulled her up to her knees until her back was flush to his chest. She tipped her chin up and turned her head to the side. He met her there with an open-mouthed kiss that made her bones melt. Their tongues tangled and their teeth nipped.

Wrapping his other arm snug around her waist, he held her against him as he scooped his hips and entered her in a smooth upward thrust. The sharp angle had him hitting all the right spots inside her, making her gasp and shudder. Another short, rolling thrust nudged his head along that sensitive inner flesh that made her thighs tighten and her low back bow.

Again and again, he thrust like that, while his mouth fell to her shoulder. He sealed his lips over the muscle there, sucking hard on her flesh, giving her the edge of his teeth and a hard pinch on her nipple as she gasped and strained and shook in his hold.

A fucking genius. No denying it.

And when he shifted his hold to grasp her breast, her body convulsed, on the verge of another climax. This one promising to be more intense than the last.

His growl at her ear made her tremble from head to toe, her body weakened by the sound of his possession. Bringing a hand up to rest around her throat, he deepened his thrusts and whispered darkly against her skin, “Come for me, Callista. Now.”

And she did. The pulsing pleasure overwhelming her like a tidal wave, washing through her, obliterating thought or resistance of any kind.

She’d never been with someone who so effortlessly took command of her body and her pleasure. Anyone who’d tried in the past had been efficiently and subtly redirected. No one had ever seemed to know exactly what she needed before she did herself. No one had ever touched her with such confident and focused intention.

But Erik did it effortlessly.

He was utterly attuned to her shifting needs as she was to his, she realized as they once again changed positions without having to speak. And as she looked down at him stretched out on the black silk while she straddled his lean hips and took him into her still throbbing body, she realized something else. Something that touched deep inside her.

Connection.

The acknowledgement was startling.

As she should have expected, he seemed to sense her sudden disquiet. While his stiff member throbbed inside her, he gently slid his hands up her spread thighs. Then he reached up with one hand to curl his fingers around her nape and pull her down to him. His gray eyes were dark and focused as he brought her mouth to his.

But he didn’t kiss her. He just held her there like that as she stretched atop his solid form, her lips hovering a breath from his, his cock buried in her pleasure-swollen heat.

And something pulled taut in her chest. It was a painful, breath-stealing force.

Her first instinct was to become angry at the intrusive emotion and her body tensed. But he wouldn’t let her retreat. Instead, he tickled his fingertips across her nape in a soothing caress while his other hand grasped firmly to her rear.

When he spoke, it was in a ragged whisper, words that soaked through her skin and snaked through her blood. “You know what this is, Callista. The truth is evident in your gorgeous eyes.”

A hard thread woven deeply into her being would have had her pulling away or scoffing some denial, but the rest of her trembled on the verge of accepting something impossible.

His eyes darkened even more. “Embrace it. Revel in it.”

Before she could reply, he pulled her mouth to his. The taste of him ignited red-hot flames in her belly. The swirl of his tongue erased any further thought. The power of his kiss claimed her as his.

Astonishingly, she allowed it.

She sunk into it and surrendered to it. But only for a moment. The feeling quickly grew too heavy, too consuming. The pull in her chest ached. She could not succumb completely, could not give herself over to whatever magic he’d conjured between them.

This was simple lust. An act of physical desire manifested. This was fucking and she knew fucking.

Pushing against his chest, she sat upright astride him and shook her hair out behind her as she rolled her hips to initiate a deeper, more intent rhythm. Sensation sparked and spread out to her fingers and toes. Closing her eyes, she focused on the pleasure, ignoring all else. There was nothing different about this experience than any other before. The man beneath her might be exceptionally—phenomenally!—skilled as a lover, but that was all this was.

Yet when he smoothed his hands up and down her thighs before kneading her hips with his strong fingers as a rough sound of pleasure sounded in his throat, she couldn’t keep herself from glancing down at him again.

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