Chapter 7 #2
Something shifts in his eyes at that—something that was already wound tight snapping loose entirely.
He pushes me backwards until my shoulders meet the low stone ledge at the roof’s edge, rain falling in silver curtains all around us.
He looks down at me in the dark and the wet like a man who has made a decision and intends to see it through completely, and it’s all I want.
His hands run down my sides, over my waist, finding the hem of my soaked shirt. He peels it over my head without hurry, and the rain hits my bare skin, but I barely notice because he is looking at me in a way that makes me feel like the most vital thing on this rooftop. The only thing.
“You’re beautiful.” Not flattery. Just fact, stated plainly, as his hands move across me with a reverence that undoes something deep in my chest. “I’ve thought about this”—his thumbs brush over my nipples, and I inhale sharply—“more times than I’m going to admit to you.”
“Admit it anyway,” I breathe.
He lowers his head, and his mouth closes over one nipple, and I stop being capable of words entirely.
He takes his time. Of course he does. Maz does everything with that same unhurried, devastating focus, and he turns it on me now fully and completely.
His mouth and hands work across my skin while the rain pours down on both of us, warm where he touches me and cold everywhere he doesn’t, and the contrast is maddening.
By the time he drops to his knees on the wet stone in front of me, I am gripping his shoulders like the rooftop might tip.
He looks up at me from below, rain-soaked and entirely certain, and something about seeing him like that—kneeling before me in the downpour, his eyes dark and locked on mine—punches the air from my lungs.
“Maz—”
“I’ve got you.” He presses a kiss to the inside of my thigh. “I’ve always had you.”
He takes me apart slowly, deliberately, the rain loud and relentless around us as he works his mouth against my core, his hands gripping my thighs to hold me steady when my legs threaten to buckle.
He is not in a hurry, and I love every second.
He savors every sound I make, responding to each one with something more, until I am shaking and breathless and the orgasm that crashes through me is so intense I cry out into the open sky, the sound swallowed up by the rain and the wind and the endless dark above us.
He stands, and I pull him to me immediately, my fingers working at his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders and letting the rain take it.
He is all hard lines and warmth beneath my hands, and I press my palms flat against his chest just to feel his heart slamming there, just to know I am not the only one undone by this.
I am not.
He groans when I reach for his belt, low and rough, and dips his head to drag his lips up the side of my throat.
“You know what tonight is,” he murmurs against my rain-slicked skin.
“I know.” My fingers still on his waistband. I look up at him, the rain streaming down his face, and he has never looked more certain of anything. “I want it. I want you. All of it, Maz. All of you.”
He exhales, something almost like relief moving through him. His forehead drops to mine. “You’re going to be my mate.”
“Yes.” The word comes easily.
Maz lays me down on the roof, covering me with his toned and hard body.
I wrap my legs around him, and when he pushes into me—slow, steady, his eyes never leaving mine—I feel the breath leave my body in one long, shuddering exhale.
He stills, giving me a moment, his hands gentle at my back. He is big. So big.
“Okay?” Rain drips from his jaw to mine.
“More than.” I roll my hips and watch him lose his composure entirely.
What follows is breathless and desperate and entirely ours—the rain hammering down around us, both of us chasing the other to the edge of something that feels bigger than either of us.
His hands are everywhere, and mine are in his hair, at his shoulders, clinging to him as he drives us both higher and higher until I feel the pressure inside me reaching something impossible.
Maz groans, gripping my neck and bringing me to his lips.
The bite is fast and hard, but the pain is there for a second.
Then it hits. Orgasm after orgasm rolls through me until there is nothing but pleasure, nothing but Maz and me as one.
The mate bond washes through me in a wave, and I embrace it, letting it settle in my heart and soul just like my bond to Black.
My orgasms keep tearing through me in a long, shattering wave, and I hear him groan against my neck, feel him shudder, feel him follow me over.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
The rain keeps falling. He holds me against him, both of us breathing hard, his lips pressed softly now over the mark at my throat. I can feel him—not just physically, but there, somewhere warm and certain for us both.
“Juniper.” My name, soft and wrecked. Possessive.
I pull back just enough to look at him. His hair is plastered to his forehead. Rain runs down his face. He looks at me like I am the best thing that has ever happened to him. I feel the new mark on my thigh, and I wonder where his is as I look him over, blinking the rain away.
I reach up and press my hand to his cheek. He turns into it.
“Mine,” he says quietly. The rain says it with him.
“Yours,” I answer. “Now stop us both getting pneumonia and take me inside.”
He laughs—really laughs, warm and sudden and gorgeous—and holds me tighter against him in the downpour as he carries me inside and spends the night making sure I’m his.
We both don’t leave the bedroom until morning and not until Black knocks once before coming inside.
“There is someone here to see you. He is outside the front door.” Black smiles at us. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Maz laughs as I blush and pull my clothes on, walking over to the window and looking down. Aster is here.