Prologue #2
He flips me over again, settling between my legs, his chest pressed against mine, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as he drives into me with full force.
I cry out, wrapping my legs around him, nails dragging down his back.
The sound of our bodies fills the room — raw and unrestrained — and he reaches between us to find my clit, circling it with his thumb while he continues to thrust, and the combination undoes me completely.
My thighs shake. The wetter I get, the harder he fucks me, like he is responding to every signal my body sends him without my having to say a word.
He pulls out briefly, rubs himself against my entrance — teasing again, insufferable — then plunges back in, driving so deep I feel him in my stomach.
He hooks one leg over his shoulder, then the other, spreading me wide, and he holds my gaze as he rocks into me — steadily, powerfully, watching me come apart beneath him while he grunts with every thrust.
My orgasm slams through me like something breaking open, and I cry out his name.
He wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me so we are face to face, still joined, his cock buried inside me as he holds me in his lap.
It is so intimate that it makes my chest ache.
I wrap my arms around his neck and press my forehead against his, and I begin to move against him — rising, dropping, taking him in deeper.
I ride him hard, my nails sinking into his shoulder, my head falling back as I lose myself entirely.
He digs his hands into my hips, groaning, and captures my lips in a rough, breathless kiss. Then he lays me back, bracing himself over me, and drives into me with deep, claiming thrusts — his hand closing around my throat, not enough to hurt, enough to make my toes curl.
My orgasm takes me before I have time to prepare for it, and I squeeze around him with every spasm, pulling him deeper, my body dragging him over the edge with me.
He groans — low, guttural — and buries his face in my neck as he releases, his body trembling, his arms pulling me against him so tightly that I feel every pulse as he empties his warm seed inside of me.
I tremble with every aftershock. He drops beside me, exhaling heavily, and draws me into his arms before I can think to move away.
Our breathing tangles in the silence. He tilts my chin with two fingers and kisses me softly — a different kind of kiss than anything that came before it. Slower. Something else in it.
"I love you, Scarlett," he says.
My heart stops.
His blue eyes are warm and steady, his voice quiet, carrying the kind of certainty that has always characterized everything about him. Not performed. Not impulsive. He says it the way he does everything — like a man who has already thought it through and arrived at his conclusion some time ago.
"That's what I wanted to tell you this morning," he whispers, his gaze moving over my face.
I stare at him.
I want to say it. The words are right there — sitting at the back of my tongue, waiting — and they are true, truer than anything I've said out loud in longer than I can remember.
I want to tell him that I love him, that I think about him constantly, that there hasn't been a single day in the past months where he hasn't occupied some corner of my mind even when I was doing everything in my power to push him out of it.
But saying it now, right now, in the warm aftermath of his declaration — something about it doesn't feel like mine. I want to say it when it's spontaneous. When it belongs to me, not just in response to him. I want those words to take him by surprise the way his just took me.
So I don't say it.
The silence stretches between us, and he doesn't appear troubled by it. He holds me against him, his thumb moving in slow circles against my back, and something about his patience — that familiar, infuriating patience of his — makes my chest fill to the point of pain.
I slip my hand to his jaw and kiss him instead. Hard. Certain.
Then I pull back and reach for the hem of my dress, pulling it over my head and dropping it to the floor, and I watch his eyes move over me — every inch of me — with an expression that makes me feel like the most wanted thing on earth.
His cock is hard again already. I feel it against the back of my thigh as I shift to straddle him, and he raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting.
I kiss the side of his jaw. His throat. I move my lips slowly down his chest, his stomach, his abdomen — tracing every ridge of muscle with my mouth — until I reach his hips and fist his cock in my hand.
His breath shifts immediately.
I stroke him slowly, building the pace, watching his jaw tighten and his eyes close as he gives himself over to it. His head tips back against the pillow. I lean down and take him into my mouth, and the groan that escapes him fills the room.
I work him methodically — lips tight around his girth, tongue tracing the underside of his cock, taking him deeper with each pass until I feel him at the back of my throat.
He is thick and hot in my mouth, the taste of him sharp and clean, and I feel the answering warmth flare between my own legs as I move.
His hand finds my hair.
I lick a slow line from his tip down to the base and further, drawing one of his balls into my mouth and rolling it softly before licking my way back up the thickly veined length.
By the time I reach the tip, a fresh pool of pre-cum has gathered at the slit, and I take my time collecting every drop.
I swallow him down — halfway, then deeper — pulling air through my nose as I adjust, then continuing until he fills my throat completely. My eyes water, as I suck with hollow cheeks and draw back slowly, and when I do it again, his grip in my hair tightens as he fucks my face with rough intensity.
I can feel him getting close. His thighs flex beneath me. His breathing comes in shallow, controlled pulls that are barely controlled at all. I pick up the pace — faster, suction tighter — gagging and bobbing my head until his whole body goes rigid beneath me.
He comes with a low, rough groan, his hand holding my head in place, his hips lifting slightly off the mattress. I feel his warm load slide down my tongue and I swallow him carefully, licking his tip clean before sitting back and meeting his eyes.
He stares at me for a long moment.
"You'll be the end of me," he says, and his voice is rough and wrecked in a way I have never heard from him before.
Then he flips me onto my back and slides inside me in a single, fluid thrust — and he drives into me until I am shaking and incoherent and completely, irretrievably his.
This is the thing about Dax Blackwell.
He doesn't ask for anything. He simply decides. And then, with that quiet, devastating certainty of his, he waits for you to catch up to what he already knows.
I caught up a long time ago. I just haven't told him yet.