Chapter 28 #2
"That's it." My voice is gravel. "Take all of me."
Her inner walls contract, and I feel her start to climb toward release. Her nails rake down my chest. Her rhythm falters, becomes desperate, and I know how close she is. I shift my angle, grip her hips, and drive up into her with a precision that makes her whole body jolt.
A small moan spills from between her clenched teeth. "Oh, yeah. Nick, I'm—"
"Let me hear you."
She tips her head back and cries out with the force of her climax.
Her pussy clamps down on my cock, tiny, pulsing contractions that drag a hoarse shout from my chest. Her body arcs backward, taut as a bowstring, my name breaking apart in her mouth.
And the sensation of her coming undone around me—that relentless grip milking my shaft—rips my own orgasm loose before I can brace for it.
I come hard. Buried to the hilt, flooding her, my hands locked on her hips as pleasure explodes through me. I hear myself growling her name while my cock pulses inside her and the world outside this cabin ceases to exist.
She collapses against me. Her face presses into the crook of my neck, her breath ragged and hot against my skin, her heartbeat slamming against my chest where our bodies are still fused together.
I don't pull out. I can't. My arms close around her back, one hand cradling the base of her skull, the other pressed flat between her shoulder blades, and I hold her against me while our breathing slows and our pulses find each other and settle into the same cadence.
The yacht rocks beneath us. Gentle. Steady.
The creak of rigging somewhere above deck, the lap of water against the hull, the muffled percussion of halyards against the mast. Sounds I've known since I was a kid on these waters, sounds that meant survival long before they meant peace. Now they mean her. They mean us.
I press my lips to her temple. Her hair smells like sea salt and tropics and something underneath that's purely Avery. Warm, sweet, indelible. Carefully, I roll her over until she’s beneath me, our bodies still joined. I’m not ready to leave her yet. Not even close.
But as I hold her close and begin a slow tempo inside her, my mind returns to the promises we made each other on the deck this evening.
"You said something in your vows." My voice is quiet, roughened by what just passed between us. "You said love doesn't have to be safe to be worth it."
She lifts her head. Her eyes are luminous in the lamplight, searching mine.
"I spent thirty-three years believing the opposite," I tell her.
"That the only way to survive was to never need anyone enough to be hurt by losing them.
" I trace the line of her jaw with my thumb, the one that bears no scars.
"And then you walked into my life and made that impossible.
You made me need you. You made me terrified of losing you. And you made that terror worth it."
Her hand rises to my face. Her palm cups my cheek, and I turn into the touch the way I always do, seeking her warmth the way a man seeks oxygen.
"You're not going to lose me," she says.
"I know." And I do. Not because I'm arrogant enough to think I can control the future, but because this woman just stood on the deck of this sailboat and vowed herself to me with the same courage she's brought to every impossible thing we've survived.
That kind of love doesn't break. It bends. It holds.
Her fingers trace idle paths across my sternum, and I catch her hand, bring it to my mouth, and kiss the gold band on her finger.
We move together in the quiet. No urgency this time, just the slow, deep rhythm of her body beneath mine, her hips rising to meet each unhurried thrust. Neither of us speaks.
There's nothing left to say that our bodies aren't already saying.
The steady pulse of my cock inside her, her warmth pulling me deeper, the way her breath hitches every time I bottom out and hold there. This is all we need right now.
Her legs wrap around my hips, drawing me closer, and I feel her tightening around me again. Building quietly, like a tide. My own release gathers too, inevitable and unhurried.
When she comes, it's gentle. A soft gasp, her back arching, her pussy clenching around me in slow, rhythmic waves that pull me over the edge with her.
I bury my face in her neck and let go, spilling inside her with a groan that vibrates against her throat.
No frenzy. No desperation. Just the deep contentment of being exactly where I belong.
I ease out of her carefully. She makes a small, reluctant sound, and I press my lips to her forehead before settling onto my back and gathering her against my side.
Avery's breathing deepens against my chest. My hand rests on the curve of her hip, my scarred fingers against her smooth skin.
I lie there in the dark and listen to the ocean and the slow rhythm of my wife's heart, and I think about the man I was before her.
The man who almost didn't survive his own darkness.
Who once considered ending it all but was kept alive by a portrait painted by a woman he hadn't yet met.
This is the life I never dared dream I could have. This woman. This moment of hard-won quiet, with the wreckage of the past behind us and something new and precious growing in the shelter of her body.
I pull her closer. The ring on my left hand gleams faintly in the dark.
She was wrong when she said we rescued each other. She’s strong enough. She would have survived without me. I was the one who needed something only she could give me.
Avery rescued me. And every day since, she gives me a reason to become someone worthy of that gift.