Maxwell #2
But I don’t want to look at that memory. Not now.
So I tip onto my back and let myself float—throat and breasts bare to the sky, hair splaying out around me—slipping out of my thoughts.
It’s a well-practiced dissociation. Closing the door on the past is second nature to me. Only, with Ryder, that was a miscalculation. I never accounted for my past reaching into my present and dragging me back.
But I push that thought underwater too. Just for now. I seal all of it away and float.
When I come back upright, the air actually feels warm on my back. There’s heat in my cheeks, a glow of wellbeing temporarily overlaying the fatigue.
“Feel better?” Ryder asks me, like he can see it on me.
“Just what I needed.”
We drift together for a little while, getting closer, hands and knees brushing.
He grins and moves in, close enough that I can see the droplets on his lashes.
I study his face, how beautiful his skin actually is.
Zero pores. The bony definition of his straight nose, the rough cover of his short beard.
I have loved this man with everything in me that can love. His beauty makes me ache with longing. It feels impossible after everything I’ve gone through, but all I want is to be as close to him as I possibly can be. To fuse with him, somehow.
My hands settle on his huge shoulders and the familiarity burns through me.
God, there is something so comforting about the unbelievable strength of him, the power.
I could lose myself completely in his arms. I want to exhaust my body against his until the crawling under my skin is finally satisfied.
“Tell me what you need,” he says gruffly, dark eyes scanning my face like he’s trying to read my thoughts.
“This.” I lift hands to his face, cupping his cheeks, and gently kiss his brow.
“And this.” Then I kiss his mouth softly, just a brush of lips, and the shock of the Ryder of him pulses through me.
A taste of lake and breath and the bitter shadow of last night, and underneath it everything I have missed and grieved. He’s here and he’s real.
A soft exhale escapes me, and when I look at him, it’s like the resolve that’s been gripping him finally breaks.
He lifts a hand to my head and kisses me back.
His lips are strong and firm but soft, giving way to the gentle heat of his tongue, and the contact makes my heart rate soar, suppressed desire rising like a tide.
I pull myself flush against him, the feel of his body making heat bloom through my center, months of missing him collapsing into a single breath as we kiss.
My fingers trail down his chest, nails grazing lightly, and he mirrors my touch, tracing the line of my spine down to the water.
I find his wrist and drag his palm up my stomach.
We move together with the soft lap of the waves, adjustment and breath, push and pull.
My fingers dig into his shoulders as our kiss deepens, and then I wrap my arms around his neck and pull myself up against him until my thighs catch around his hips.
He pulls me in, hands cupping my ass, running his lips along my jaw and down my throat.
“I missed you so much,” I murmur. “I thought I would die without you.”
He looks directly into my eyes. “I would have searched for you until my last breath,” he says.
I bite my lip, struck with sadness at everything we’ve missed, and then shiver. Between us, heat traps in a humid bubble, but my back begins to register the cold.
“Come on,” he says. “You’re freezing.”
He turns, my legs still locked around him, and wades for the shallows.
The lake lets us go reluctantly. On the sand, he sets me on my feet and I sway, momentarily dizzy, my breath fogging in the warming air.
He scoops up the blanket and wraps it around both of us, pulling me in until our wet skin traps its own heat, the clean bite of lake still clinging to our lips and fingers.
“Better?” he asks.
“Better.”
I tilt my face up to him. His dark eyes twinkle down at me, he lowers his forehead to mine, and I exhale, murmuring his name before his mouth finds mine again—first tender, lingering, soft, and then slowly growing more urgent.
He cradles the back of my head, fingers slipping through my wet hair, and then pulls back.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says, like it’s the last line between control and losing himself.
“I need you,” I answer, certain and soft, and this time when he kisses me it’s completely unrestrained. A reclaiming.
His hands slide down my back, over the curve of my ass, pulling me tighter against him until the swell of his cock is pressing against my belly. My breath hitches and I circle his waist so tight not even a molecule of air could pass between us.
The blanket slips from his grasp and he breaks away long enough to catch it.
He shakes out the sand and spreads it flat, then pulls me down onto it with him.
The air is cool against my skin but my blood is boiling now, heating me from the inside.
I sling my arms around his shoulders as he lays me down beneath him, my back sinking into the fabric.
For a moment he just hovers there, taking me in, like he’s trying to fight his need for me before it wins—and then it does.
He crushes his body against mine, grinding the needy ridge of his erection against me as he kisses my lips, my jaw, and then down my throat.
The tension that’s kept us apart, that careful distance of not knowing how to find our way back, snaps all at once.
It’s like a wall coming down, everything we’ve held back pouring through the break.
I arch beneath him, rising to meet his mouth, breath whimpering as he makes his way down to my breasts and circles his tongue around one nipple, making it pucker and harden under his touch.
Then he works his way lower, over the concave hollow of my belly to the velvet skin of my sex.
He slides a finger between my folds and groans when he discovers how wet I already am for him, pushing the finger slowly inside of me, lowering his mouth to my clitoris.
One soft slide of his tongue and I gasp, knees falling open.
“Oh, Ryder.”
A low growl rises in his throat as he sets himself to softly licking me, his tongue moving with a delicate rhythm. He teases me with small, soft strokes, chuckling at the increasingly urgent whimpers escaping me, and then draws the tender nub of my clit into his mouth and softly sucks on it.
I gasp. It’s exactly what I need. He uses his tongue to make small laps under the head of my clitoris as he sucks it softly into his mouth.
My moans start increasing in pitch, and then—I break.
My back bows, hips lifting as I cry out in one long, sustained note, pussy pulsing against his tongue as I come.
He waits for a beat, giving me a moment to come down, and then he climbs over me again, bracing himself on his forearms. I smile up at him, flushed and spent. He’s so unbelievably gorgeous, my heart breaks just to look at him.
I can’t believe that he can still look at me like this, with nothing guarded left between us, after everything I told him.
He lines himself up against my entrance and pushes in, and I try to hold his gaze back, but my eyes flutter upwards as he threads fingers into my hair and buries himself to the hilt until we both groan.
He keeps his eyes on me as he fucks me, his expression burning, kissing me lightly sometimes until the pleasure is almost unbearable. We break apart, come together, and I’m fighting on every stroke to hold it together, to not come right away, to drag it out.
“Max,” he groans, finally closing his eyes. “Max.”
My breath catches, a hiss as I suck it in, and then my orgasm is breaking through me again, walls squeezing down on Ryder’s cock, pulsing as I come, and then he’s coming too, crying out, a loud, feral shout as he slams into me.
“Oh my God,” he rasps, breathless. And then he collapses, and I grunt before breaking into a giggle. The sound pulls a laugh out of him, too.
“Sorry, baby,” he says, lifting himself up on his arms.
“No!” I protest, wrapping my arms around his torso and pulling him back down. “I want your weight on me.”
He grins and gives in, flattening his body against mine. His cum is slippery inside me, but he doesn’t move, and I’m so glad he doesn’t spoil this moment of closeness. The pulse between us slows, syncing. For a long moment, there’s nothing but his heartbeat against mine.
Then the world starts to return—the air cooling against my skin, the sound of the waves breaking on the sand, a loon calling somewhere beyond the fog.
Awareness seeps back in. He eases off of me and reaches back for a corner of the blanket, pulling it around us both.
I curl into his chest, breathing him in, and close my eyes.
The world feels still. Just for a moment, I let the past be far away.