I nod raggedly. “Yes,” is all I can manage.
“Why?”
I sob. “I—I don’t know!”
I’m losing the ability to control my movements, my building, fragmented, stuck orgasm ramping up into madness, into wild fury, making me shake all over, making my movements tremulous and desperate. Every muscle trembles, and I try to stay synched to his thrusts, but all control is gone, and I even need him for this—to take control.
He does.
God, he does.
He growls, and I feel him shudder and now I know it’s time—I’m about to get exactly what I’ve been begging him for.
His grip on my hips tightens and I know I’ll have marks—he yanks me backward and pounds in. I cry out, sob with each powerful thrust.
Again, again, and again, each movement more raggedly powerful than the last.
His grunts are nonstop, feral and wild.
He drives into me, grunting and groaning, cursing—and now the sounds become my name, chanted like a prayer: Laurel—Laurel—LAUREL!
I’m clamping around him, clenching, squeezing so hard I feel every inch of him.
“RYDER!”
“God—Laurel!”
I’m there, finally, but still teetering on the razor edge. Waiting, waiting, waiting for him. One last time, he slides into me and I ache, squeeze around him, shaking all over, sobbing, trying to push back into his thrust.
Ryder comes with a roar.
I feel it, feel him pulse, and he slams deep, stays there, pushing deeper and deeper. He can’t go any deeper—yet I still need more, want more. I come around him, trying to scream but I’m too breathless, my lungs are empty, the oxygen forced out of my lungs.
How long does our merged orgasm last?
I lose track.
All I feel is him, all of him.
Finally, he gasps as if undone, and sags backward. Falls to his side, panting as if he just ran a hundred-meter dash.
I fall onto the bed as he releases me, and I’m still trembling, spasming, shaking, jerking with waves of orgasm. Ryder gathers me in his arms and holds me tightly, our breathing matched—even the ragged gasps for air are united, merged, becoming one.
“Ryder…” I whisper, lips brushing his beard, seeking his face.
“Hmmm?” he asks, vague with delirium.
I find his cheek, kiss just above his beard line, then alongside his nose, and then the other cheek, and his ear, nibble his earlobe and then kiss his shoulder and lick his neck, tasting the salt of his sweat.
Finally, I touch my lips to his.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I feel his lips curl in a smile, and I look up to see him looking at me with a puzzled, happy grin. “Thank you? Why are you thanking me?”
I cup his face. “Just…for you.”
He shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“This whole thing has been like some teenage boy’s wet dream. You send me pictures of your tits, you FaceTime me topless, you invite me over and let me use your spare key—you ask me to wake you with sex? I come in here and find all these candles lit, rose petals everywhere, and you, naked—the most beautiful woman I’ve ever fucking seen in my life, and you’re waiting for me? I get to put my mouth on you and taste your sweet, perfect pussy? And then I get to watch you come? And seriously, Laurel, the vision of you having an orgasm is pure sex, pure, raw erotic perfection. The way you moan, the way you move? Fuck, I could come without touching myself, just from that. And then, Laurel…and then you beg me to fuck you, and when I do, you make me come so hard I think I saw heaven.”
I blink up at him, utterly melted. “You saw heaven?”
He grins, a bright, brilliant, ten thousand megawatt smile of utter joy. “Yeah, Laurel, I saw heaven—You, and me, coming together…that’s heaven. I watched you come apart for me, and that’s heaven. Us, together—that’s heaven.”
I bite his lower lip, lick it where I bit down. “You’re a poet, Ryder.”
He shakes his head. “No, you just inspire it in me.”
My heart is exploding, shattering with a happiness I didn’t even know was possible. “Ryder, I—” I swallow hard, keeping my eyes on his. “I fucking love you, Ryder.”
He chokes, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard anyone say in my life.”
He nuzzles against me, hiding his face in the inky mass of my hair.
I pull away, look at him. There are wet streaks on his face, and I wipe at them. “Don’t you dare hide that, Ryder.”
“It’s fucking embarrassing,” he mutters.
“It’s not.” I kiss him, a dozen quick pecks to his face, and then a slow kiss on his lips. “Talk to me.”
“I just…” He sighs, composing himself. “I never thought I’d hear that.”
I frown at him. “But—”
“She never said it. She talked about things she loved about me, and I knew, in the rare moments she was lucid and made sense and was anything like even-keeled; I knew she felt it, somewhere in there. But she never said it.”