Chapter 19 Stephanie
STEPHANIE
She pulled him down and the world narrowed to his mouth on hers.
It wasn't like the first time. The first time had been whiskey and firelight and the slow, deliberate decision to let herself want something reckless.
This was different. This was the ground still settling beneath them and dust in her lungs and the taste of adrenaline so sharp on her tongue.
She was alive. She was alive and he was here, all of him, bare skin and muscle and the heat of his body pressing her into the earth behind the oak roots where he'd shielded her from tons of falling stone, and she needed him with a primal ferocity that was a screaming demand of a person who had just been told it was about to die.
His mouth was hard on hers, urgent, tasting like dust and sweat and the wild edge of the shift.
She could feel the difference in him, the animal still so close to the surface that his muscles moved with a fluidity that wasn't entirely human, and when she bit his lower lip he growled against her mouth, a sound that started in his chest and vibrated through hers.
"Here?" he managed, pulling back just far enough that his breath hit her wet lips in a hot rush. His amber eyes were nearly black, pupils blown wide, and the cords of his neck stood out with the effort of holding himself in check. "Steph, we're in the middle of..."
"Here." She fisted her hand in his hair and pulled. "Right now."
Whatever restraint he'd been holding shattered.
His hands found the hem of her thermal and shoved it up, palms rough and calloused against her ribs, her stomach, the underside of her bra.
She arched into his touch and yanked the shirt over her own head because his hands were too busy mapping skin to bother, and the cool night air hit her sweat-damp body at the same time his mouth found her throat and the contrast made her gasp.
He was everywhere. Hands dragging down her sides, thumbs hooking into the waistband of her jeans, teeth scraping the curve of her shoulder.
She could feel how hard he was against her thigh, the full heavy length of him pressing into her through the denim she was still wearing, and the friction made her hips roll up into his on instinct.
He made a sound against her neck that was barely human, half groan and half snarl, and his hand dropped between them to work the button of her jeans with fingers that weren't entirely steady.
She lifted her hips to help him drag the denim down.
The ground was cold against her bare skin and she didn't care.
The oak roots dug into her shoulder blade and she didn't care about that either.
All she cared about was the weight of him settling back over her, the heat of his skin on hers as his thigh pressed between her legs making her vision blur.
She reached down and wrapped her hand around him and he jerked, his whole body tensing, a sharp exhale punched out of his lungs.
He was thick and hot in her grip and when she stroked him, slow and firm from base to tip, his forehead dropped to her shoulder and his breath came in ragged bursts against her collarbone.
"Fuck," he whispered. "Steph..."
"I need you." She tightened her grip and stroked again, felt him pulse in her hand. "I need to feel you."
He caught her wrist and pinned it above her head, fingers locking around her like a cuff.
His other hand slid down her body, over her breast where his thumb caught her nipple through the thin fabric of her bra and rolled, then lower, across her stomach, between her thighs where she was already wet and aching.
His fingers found her and her back arched off the ground.
Two fingers, sliding through the slick heat of her, circling the spot that made her legs fall open and her hand grip the oak root above her head hard enough that bark bit into her palm.
He watched her face while he touched her, those dark amber eyes cataloguing every reaction, every catch of breath, every shift of her hips.
He was learning her again, the way he had the first time, but there was nothing patient about it now.
This was focused and relentless, his fingers working her with a precision that built the pressure fast and steep.
"Don't hold back," she told him, and her voice came out wrecked. "Not tonight."
His mouth was on her breast suddenly, pulling the bra cup aside with his teeth to get to bare skin, and the hot wet suction of his tongue on her nipple sent a current straight to where his fingers were still moving and she cried out, loud enough that it echoed off the ruined ridge face.
He added a third finger and curled them and she shattered.
The orgasm tore through her, sudden and violent, her body clenching around his hand as her hips bucked off the ground.
She bit down on her own forearm to muffle the sound and tasted dust and sweat and didn't care because wave after wave was rolling through her, pulling her under, and he didn't stop, just slowed his pace and worked her through the aftershocks until she was gasping, boneless and tugging at his shoulders.
He pulled his hand free and braced both arms on either side of her head, and the muscles of his forearms stood out like ropes in the moonlight as he positioned himself at her entrance.
She could feel him there, blunt and thick and burning hot, and the anticipation alone made her clench around nothing.
He pushed into her in one long, steady stroke and the sound that came out of her was something she'd never heard herself make.
Not a moan. Deeper than that. A full-body gasp of being filled completely, stretched around the hard length of him until there was no space between them, his hips flush against hers and his breath shuddering out of him like he'd been punched.
He held still. She could see the restraint in his jaw, in the locked line of his arms, in the slight tremor that ran through his whole body as he gave her time to adjust. But she didn't want time.
She wanted the opposite of time. She wanted to burn through this moment so fast and so hard that there was nothing left but the two of them and the raw, screaming truth that she was alive and he was inside her and the world could collapse again and she wouldn't move.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her heels into the small of his back and pulled him deeper.
He moved.
The first thrust was controlled, testing, his hips pulling back slow and driving forward with enough force that she slid against the ground.
The second was harder. By the third, control was a memory and they were both gone, his hips snapping into hers with a rhythm that was brutal and perfect and exactly what she needed.
The sound of skin against skin filled the basin, punctuated by her gasps and his low, rough groans and the wet, obscene noise of their bodies meeting over and over.
She raked her nails down his back and felt the muscles jump under her fingers.
He dropped his head and bit the junction of her neck and shoulder, not gently, teeth sinking in hard enough that the sharp bloom of pain mixed with the pleasure building between her legs and turned into something she couldn't separate.
She arched into the bite, one hand gripping his shoulders, the other braced against the oak root above her to keep from sliding.
"Harder," she heard herself say, and she barely recognized her own voice.
He hooked his arm under her knee and pushed it up, changing the angle, and the next thrust hit something so deep inside her that her vision whited out.
She screamed. Actual screaming, into the night air with dust on her skin and his body driving into hers and the ruined dig site spread around them like a battlefield.
He didn't slow down. He held the angle and fucked her with a focused intensity that stripped everything away, all the arguments and the avoidance and the week of pretending they hadn't left something unfinished.
The pressure built faster than she could track, coiling tight and hot at the base of her spine, spreading outward through her thighs and her stomach and the backs of her knees.
She could feel him getting close too, his rhythm growing ragged, his breath coming in sharp bursts against her throat, and she wanted it.
She wanted to feel him come apart the same way she was about to come apart, at the same time, in the same breath.
She tightened around him deliberately, clenching hard, and his whole body stuttered.
"Steph." His voice was raw, almost broken. "I can't... if you do that I'm going to..."
"Good." She tightened again and rolled her hips up to meet his next thrust and the friction against her clit was the last thing she needed. "Let go. With me."
The orgasm crested and broke and she felt it pull him under with her.
He drove into her one final time, deep enough that their hips ground together, and she felt him pulse inside her as her own body seized around him.
The pleasure didn't come in waves this time.
It came all at once, a full-system overload that locked every muscle and stole every sound except the breath they choked out against each other's skin, shaking, clinging, the world reduced to the place where their bodies joined and held and wouldn't let go.
It lasted longer than she thought possible.
The aftershocks rippled through them in tandem, her clenching triggering his pulse triggering hers, a feedback loop that kept them pinned together until the last tremor faded and they collapsed into the dirt, sweating and spent and tangled so thoroughly she couldn't tell whose limbs were whose.
Criss's face was buried in her neck. She could feel his heartbeat hammering against her chest, fast and hard, gradually slowing.
His breathing evened out in stages, each exhale warm and damp against her skin.
One of his hands was still cupped behind her knee, holding her leg up even though the urgency was gone, like he'd forgotten to let go.
She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing the golden-brown strands back from his forehead where sweat had plastered them.
His scalp was warm under her touch and she felt him lean into it, just slightly, a small unconscious surrender that didn't match the alpha bravado he wore like a second skin.
"You saved my life," she said quietly.
The dust was settling around them, the destroyed basin ghost-white in the moonlight, and the air was cold on every part of her that wasn't pressed against him.
She could feel him still inside her, softening slowly, and the intimacy of that was different from the frantic, electric urgency of a few minutes ago. Quieter. More dangerous in its own way.
He lifted his head and looked at her. In the moonlight, his amber eyes were pale gold, the pupils still blown but the wildness receding, and behind it she saw something that caught her off guard.
Not the cocky assurance she was used to.
Nor the easy charm he deployed like a weapon.
Something careful. Something held back, leashed so tightly she could see the effort it cost him in the fine tension around his eyes and the set of his jaw.
He was holding back. Even now. Even in this, where they'd stripped everything down to skin and sweat and the raw, undeniable fact of wanting each other. There was a part of him he wasn't letting her see, a door he kept locked even when every other wall came down.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. Gentle. Almost reverent. And the tenderness of it, after the roughness of everything else, wasn’t anything she had been ready for.
He eased out of her carefully, and she felt the loss of him as a physical absence, cool air rushing in where his warmth had been.
He pulled her against his side and she let him, too wrung out to pretend she didn't want the contact, and they lay in the dirt behind the oak roots with the night sky spread above them, stars sharp and bright now that the dust had cleared. She would have been cold if it hadn’t been for the heat of his shifter blood.
Her body was heavy with the kind of exhaustion that came from too many hours of work and too much adrenaline burned too fast and the particular emptying that followed sex like that. The kind that left you transparent, every defense stripped, every pretense burned off.
She looked up at the stars and felt his arm tighten around her shoulders and his breath slow. His chest rose and fell under her hand, warm skin over hard muscle, and the spiced cedar scent of him mixed with dust and sex and the cold mineral smell of the ruined site.
The first time, she'd left before dawn and told herself it was nothing. This time, lying in the wreckage of her excavation with the man who'd thrown himself between her and a collapsing ridge, she couldn't sell herself that lie.
Something was between them. Something bigger than attraction, bigger than chemistry, bigger than two people who happened to be good together in the dark.
She'd felt it in the way his body had found hers before his mind had made the choice, the shift and the sprint and the instinct that operated below the level of conscious thought.
And he knew. She could see it in the thing he kept pulling back behind his eyes. The restraint that lived underneath the confidence. The careful, controlled distance he maintained even when he was as deep inside her as he could get.
Criss Holt was hiding something. Not about the dig or the collapse or even Rydan Ashkar. Something about them. About what this was between them and what it meant and why his body kept finding hers like gravity.
She didn't ask. Not tonight. Tonight she was alive and exhausted and his arm was warm around her and the stars were very bright and very far away and the ground beneath them hummed with the faint, patient pulse of something that had been waiting a very long time.
She closed her eyes against his shoulder and let the exhaustion take her.