Chapter 24
Isla
My eyes roll back, and my whole body starts to shake because I’m that close. Every muscle is drawn tight. One more second and I’ll—
Sebastian stops.
He pulls back. The air hits my skin where his lips just were, and I gasp at the sudden absence. My hips chase him of their own accord, but he’s already pulling back, sitting up on his heels between my legs.
“What was…?” I push up onto my elbows, my chest heaving, my vision swimming. “Why did you stop?”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes are dark, fixed on mine with a heat that makes my stomach drop. He reaches for the laces of his trews. His fingers work the ties loose, and he pushes the fabric down along with his braies, freeing himself.
My mouth goes dry. My eyes are fixed on him…there.
He’s much bigger than I expected, even though I felt him pressed against me. I knew he wasn’t small, but this is something else. I swallow hard and lift my gaze back to his face.
He watches my reaction. Something moves behind his eyes. Want. Need. A question he doesn’t ask out loud.
Then he crawls up my body, and I forget everything but him.
His muscled forearms brace on either side of my head. His weight settles over me, warm and solid. I feel the hard length of him nudge between my thighs, slick against my flesh. My breath catches.
I pull my legs up and around his waist, my hands sliding across his broad back. I’m vibrating with need.
So when he pushes inside me in one hard thrust, the world goes still.
He grunts.
All the air leaves my lungs in a moan. My back lifts from the ground, and my fingers dig into his shoulders. He fills me so completely, so deeply, that for a moment I can do nothing but hold on.
He holds himself motionless above me, his arms shaking with the effort of staying still.
My body is adjusting, stretching around him, the fullness of it overwhelming. Aside from the initial sting, it doesn’t hurt. On the contrary, every inch of me is singing.
I start moving against him, inviting him to take me like I need to be taken. He makes a soft grunting sound that tells me he needs me just as badly.
He presses his forehead to mine. “We need to be quiet. Anyone passing by could hear us.”
I nod, my hands sliding from his shoulders back to the broad planes of his back. His skin is hot beneath my palms.
Sebastian begins to move, and I have to bite back a deep moan.
He moves so slowly that it borders on cruelty. He draws himself almost all the way out, then eases back in with a roll of his hips that is deliberate and measured. His body is pressed flush to mine, chest to chest, his weight a welcome anchor. His eyes don’t leave my face.
A sound catches in my throat. Something between a sigh and a moan. He swallows it with a kiss that is soft and unhurried, matching the rhythm of his body.
He keeps the pace agonizingly slow. Long, deep strokes that have me writhing beneath him. I’m still so close from what his mouth did to me that every movement sends me spiraling toward the edge again. I can feel it building, that coiling tension low in my belly, winding tighter with each thrust.
I press my heels into the small of his back, urging him deeper, wanting more.
He doesn’t give it to me.
He keeps me there. Right on the precipice. Each gentle thrust brings me to the very brink and holds me. My toes curl against his lower back. My mouth falls open, and no sound comes out because I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
My eyes lose focus. The sky above blurs. Everything narrows to the place where our bodies meet, to the slow, maddening drag of him inside me. My fingers rake down his back, gripping, searching for something to hold on to.
“Sebastian…” His name is nothing more than air. “Please…I can’t…I need…”
He knows. Of course he knows. He’s been watching my face this whole time, reading every twitch and tremor.
He moves faster. Just a touch. A little deeper, too, and the added friction is enough to send me tumbling.
Finally. My fingers dig into him, and my mouth drops open as I come apart.
Everything tightens at once and then releases in a rush that steals my sight.
My body locks against his, my thighs grip his sides, my head falls back against the spread of our clothing.
The moan that tears from me is louder than it should be, and he catches it with his mouth, kissing me deep and swallowing the sound before pulling back.
He keeps moving. His eyes stay on mine. The way he watches me, so intent, so focused, as if memorizing every moment of my unraveling…it pulls the release deeper, drags it out until I’m shaking from head to toe with the force of it.
His jaw is tight. His eyes blazing. I feel him holding back. The tension in his arms, in his stomach muscles pressed against mine. He’s right there, too, but he refuses to let go.
He slows as my body softens, his movements becoming gentle, unhurried. Each stroke draws out the last tremors until I’m vibrating beneath him like a plucked bowstring. He presses his lips to my jaw. My neck. The hollow at the base of my throat.
My hair is damp and sticking to my neck…my face. I pant like I just ran from a horde of guards.
Sebastian stops moving. Everything continues to throb. My nerve endings are still vibrating from what just happened. He keeps his weight on his arms; his chest is pressed against mine.
Then he starts moving again.
My eyes fly open. I bite my lip to keep from crying out because it’s almost too much.
He pushes deeper. The new angle sends a shock through me, and a gasp tears from my mouth.
He sits up onto his heels. His hands grip my hips, and he raises my legs, lifting them higher. The shift changes everything. He reaches deeper, filling me in a way that touches something new, something I didn’t know was there.
He thrusts in hard punches that have my breasts jiggling and jerking back and forth with each movement.
“You’re beautiful,” he pushes out, pressing my legs together, putting them over one shoulder.
I lift my arms above my head, placing my hands on the rock face just behind me.
Sebastian’s eyes are hooded. His jaw is tight.
All of his muscles bulge. He is magnificent as he continues to thrust into me relentlessly.
With my legs together, I feel him even more acutely.
It’s intense and building again. The coiling in my belly, the tightening of every muscle.
I didn’t think my body could do this again so soon.
My mouth is open. I’m making strangled noises, trying hard to keep as quiet as I can.
“You feel so good,” I tell him, holding his gaze.
I’ve had quick tumbles here and there; it’s mostly been enjoyable for me, but never like this.
I’m close, and he still looks so together. I want to watch him unravel and let go. I need it.
I cup my breasts in my hands, squeezing them, rolling my nipples between my fingers. Squeezing the flesh together.
Something flares in his eyes. He grunts; the restraint he’s been wearing like armor falls away, and what’s left beneath is raw and open and hungry.
Then he takes me hard and fast. Pounding into me, and the goddess help me, but I love it.
I love seeing his need. His desperation.
The sounds we make echo off the boulders, and I don’t care anymore.
Our skin is slick, our breathing rough. I move with him, rising to meet each thrust, and it feels like flying.
It feels like the moment I’m at the top of my silks with nothing beneath me but air, and I let go.
I come a second time.
It hits harder than the first. My entire body seizes up, my inner muscles gripping him so tight. My body shakes with it, over and over, waves I can’t control and don’t want to.
He grits his teeth, the muscles in his neck cording. His grip on my thighs tightens. He keeps rolling his hips, his thick member pushing in and out of me until I am all but spent.
Then Sebastian pulls out of me, lowering my legs, which fall open.
I watch, breathless, as he wraps his hand around himself. He’s slick from me, his fist tight, his strokes hard and fast. His stomach muscles lock. His eyes stay on my face.
He’s the most beautiful male I have ever seen. I am transfixed.
His body curves forward. He palms himself tighter, his hand moving up and down in a hard rhythm. His breathing comes in ragged bursts. His movements turn uneven, jerking, losing their rhythm, and then he groans. Low and rough and half-strangled. His seed spills across my belly in hot, wet streaks.
He groans again softly, his hand continuing to work himself.
Watching him take his pleasure with his eyes on me is the most erotic thing I have ever witnessed.
The way his body draws tight, the way his expression breaks open, the way he shudders through the last of it with his head bowed and his chest heaving.
He opens his eyes. They find mine, and for a long moment neither of us speaks.
“I’m sorry,” he manages between breaths. “I shouldn’t have done that. I…” He looks down at my stomach, and his face goes warm. “I got carried away…caught in the moment.”
I let out a soft laugh. “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t. I just… I wanted to do the right thing. I didn’t want to be selfish and—”
“Stop.” I reach up and press my fingers to his mouth. “Stop right there. You did the right thing. I don’t have any black bark to stop your seed from taking root. I got just as carried away and didn’t give it any thought. I’m grateful that you did.”
He nods once. His cheeks are a little red. I find his sudden shyness sweet and so unlike him. “I could have been more tactful…had more respect. I got lost in the moment.”
In truth, I like that he did.
“It’s fine, Sebastian. I swear it. I enjoyed it…all of it.” I smile.
He pulls his braies and trews back up and fastens the laces. Then he fetches some moss from a nearby boulder and uses it to carefully clean me off as best as possible. He tosses the moss away.
“See?” I say. “No harm done.”
Then he lies down beside me, his shoulder pressed to mine.