Chapter 13
Neri
I wake up in a bed the size of a generous bathtub, wearing a large warm astronomer instead of a blanket, and for once my brain doesn’t start the morning meeting.
No agenda. No slides. Just the syrup-thick light through the deep window, the weight of his arm over my ribs, and his breath slow against the back of my neck.
His stubble grazes my shoulder when he stirs.
The tide is going somewhere below the meadow, unhurried.
Everything smells like woodsmoke and salt. And him.
He surfaces slowly, and his arm tightens around my body.
“You’re here. Good.” His voice arrives against my ear, sanded soft with sleep. “I was scared the whole thing was an extremely detailed dream.”
“The dream would have a bigger bed.”
“The dream,” he says, his lips brushing the back of my shoulder before finding the seam of my gills, “would not improve on one single thing in this one.”
His mouth closes gently over the seam beneath my ear.
My breath catches.
The reaction is immediate, the same helpless bolt of pleasure I experienced on the beach. It’s like my entire body wakes up beneath a single one of his touches.
“Rafe.”
“Mm.”
He kisses the seam again, slowly enough that I feel the drag of his lips over every sensitive inch. His hand leaves my ribs and glides down my stomach, broad and warm, stopping at my hip.
He is hard against the backs of my thighs. But he doesn’t thrust against me. Doesn’t take pleasure for himself. His hand simply rests there while his mouth moves along my neck.
Something about that makes the warmth between my legs sharpen.
I turn in the narrow bed, which involves one knee knocking into the wall and Rafe shifting half his body toward the edge to keep us both from falling onto the floor. Then I’m facing him.
His hair is wrecked. His glasses are somewhere on the floor with the rest of our clothes. Without them his eyes look softer, unfocused at the edges.
His mouth is swollen from earlier. Because of me. Because of how ardently we kissed. Because of how well he pleasured me with his tongue.
The thought sends a hot little pulse through me.
I reach for him.
My palm slides over his chest, down the hard plane of his stomach. His muscles tighten beneath my fingers. When I move lower, toward the erection pressing between us, his hand closes gently around my wrist.
He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to the center of my palm, then my wrist.
“Slowly, little water sprite.”
His lips move over my knuckles, one by one. He lets my hand go only to slide his beneath the blanket again. Down my waist. Over my hip. Across the outside of my thigh.
Then back up. Slow enough to make me ache.
His thumb passes over my nipple and my whole body tightens.
He watches my face. Actually watches it. Not admiring himself for causing the reaction. Not waiting for me to tell him how good he is. Just learning me.
He cups my breast and rolls the nipple gently between his fingers. Heat spreads low through my stomach and wetness spills between my legs. I shift closer without meaning to, and his erection presses hard against my thigh.
Still he doesn’t ask for anything.
“Rafe.”
“Tell me what you want, Neri.”
His thumb does it again. My breath leaves in a shiver.
“More.”
That is apparently all the instruction he needs.
His mouth finds mine and the kiss is nothing like on the beach.
Earlier, he kissed me like he’d been starving.
This morning he kisses me like there is nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.
Slow sweeps of his tongue. His teeth catching lightly at my lower lip.
His hand moving from my breast down my stomach while I melt, centimeter by centimeter, into the mattress.
His fingers reach the inside of my thigh. I open my legs for him without hesitation.
His fingertips slide through my folds and find me already wet. A low sound leaves him against my mouth. The sound alone makes me wetter.
“Neri.”
The way he says my name is almost worse than being touched.
His fingers move slowly in one long stroke through my folds, from my entrance all the way to my tiny bundle of nerves. Then another. His thumb brushes my clit and my hips lift into his hand.
I grab his shoulder.
He does it again.
“God.”
My skin has started glowing. I can see faint pearl light moving across his chest where our bodies touch.
Rafe looks down at it, then back at me. Something hot and unbearably tender crosses his face.
His fingers keep moving between my legs, patient and precise, building pleasure without rushing toward the end of it. When he slides one finger inside me, my breath breaks. A second follows, and I tighten around him, still sore enough from earlier that the stretch makes every nerve wake up.
He slows immediately.
I shake my head.
“Don’t.”
His eyes find mine.
“Don’t stop.”
So he doesn’t.
He curls his fingers inside me and his thumb circles my clit, and I feel the pleasure gathering with a terrible, beautiful inevitability. My thighs close around his wrist. My forehead presses into his shoulder. He kisses my hair, my temple, the corner of my eye.
There is no performance anywhere in it.
I don’t have to be sexy for him. I don’t have to make the right sounds or touch him back or give him anything in return. His cock is still hard against my thigh and he acts like it doesn’t exist.
Like this is enough for him.
Like I am enough.
Something inside me loosens. Not dramatically. No doors crashing open. No ocean lighting up around me.
I simply stop holding myself so tight. My legs relax. My hand, fisted in his shoulder, opens.
And that turns out to be the thing that finishes me.
The orgasm catches low and rolls through me slowly, my body tightening around his fingers before the pleasure spreads outward in long, trembling waves. Light blooms beneath my skin, pale blue washing over the blankets and the bare skin of his chest.
I say his name into his neck. Or I just mumble nonsense. It’s impossible to know.
He holds me through it.
His fingers go still when I become too sensitive. His other arm closes around my back, pulling me against him while the last shivers work through me.
My eyes sting. I hate that.
I bury my face against his shoulder before he can see.
He sees it anyway. Of course he does.
But he doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Doesn’t tell me not to cry. Doesn’t make the moment bigger than I can handle. He kisses the damp corner of my eye, then gathers me against his chest.
For a moment I allow myself to just float in my own little cloud of pleasure.
Then I become very aware of the fact that he is still hard against my thigh.
He gave me everything I asked for and isn’t even asking for anything in return. The realization makes me want him with a force that wipes the last of the fog from my brain. I lift my head. Rafe’s eyes are closed and he is petting my back in slow circles.
“Absolutely not.”
One eye opens. “What did I do?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.”
Before he can ask what I mean, I push gently at his shoulder until he understands and rolls onto his back.
The bed complains beneath him. There is barely enough room for what I have in mind, but I manage to swing one leg over him and settle astride his hips.
His cock is hard and throbbing between my legs as I grind my hips over it, spreading all that wetness over the length of him.
Rafe goes completely still. The expression on his face sends a warm, wicked thrill straight through me.
“Neri.”
My name sounds different in his mouth. Rougher.
I brace both palms against his chest. His heart is hammering beneath one of them. His hands come to my hips, warm and strong, but he doesn’t move me. He waits.
I lower myself onto him slowly.
My body is still sensitive from what he just did to me, and the first stretch pulls a shaky breath from my lungs. Rafe’s fingers tighten against my hips. His head drops back against the pillow, eyes closing before opening again to find mine.
“You’re amazing.”
I sink the rest of the way down.
“I know.”
His entire body goes taut beneath me.
For a moment I don’t move. I just sit there with him deep inside me, feeling the heat of him, the pressure, the startling intimacy of looking down and finding Rafael Vasquez watching me as though I am the only thing in the room worth seeing.
Then I rock my hips.
His breath leaves him hard, sharp and fast.
I do it again.
This is different too.
On the beach he led. In this little bed, I choose the rhythm.
I choose how fast, how deep, when to slow down and when to take more.
His hands stay on my hips, following rather than directing, and every time I move his face gives me another piece of what he usually hides behind that effortless smile.
Want. Pleasure. Something warmer and far more dangerous than the easygoing persona he shows the world.
I ride him slowly at first, learning what makes his fingers flex against my skin, what makes his breath catch, what pulls my name from his mouth.
Apparently a particular roll of my hips does all three.
“Neri.”
There it is again. That deep, rough tone, masculine and raw. I find that I crave it.
I do it once more just to hear him say it. It doesn’t disappoint. The movement sends pleasure building through me again, impossibly soon, my flesh still tender from the first climax. My skin begins to glow beneath his hands, faint pearl at first, then brighter with every rise and fall of my hips.
Rafe watches it spread over me, his expression turning to an almost feral male hunger.
I lean over him, palms flattening on either side of his shoulders, and kiss him. His arms come around me, holding me close while I keep moving, and the angle changes enough that pleasure sparks hard and bright through me as my clit rubs against his shaft.
I break the kiss on a gasp.
“There.”
His hands return to my hips immediately.
“Again?”
I nod.