That truth hits me with more certainty than all the others, blinding and beautiful, as she grazes her mouth between the two scars on my calf. Though I’m clear about her purpose now, as well as her need to finish it, I almost order her to stop. The way she sees me…the millions of ways she’s retaught me how to see myself…is overwhelming.
Life-changing. Heart-changing. I don’t know how to give it all back to her. How to show her my awe. My reverence. My love.
But more than that. So much more.
The feelings keep growing and swelling until I feel like a hot air balloon, ready to burst and fall from the sky of my sanity. But that’s also not going to happen. I command it to myself, over and over. I’m grounded right here, bound to the most breathtaking creature in all the cosmos, and she’s painting my skin with her perfect kisses. She’s restoring my soul with her enduring strength.
And now, thank God, she’s retracing her sensual trail…back up my other leg.
None of my feelings disappear, but they’re sure as hell blindsided. At the moment, I’m grateful. It’s easier to stir them into a force with which I’m happily familiar. The ache for her in my blood. The fire for her in my balls. The stretch for her along my cock. It has me shifting and moaning, ready to beg her for relief…
Until she gives me something better.
“Kara!”
It bursts from me as she seals her lips over my tip. Then again as she takes all of me into the wet heat of her mouth. And it’s good. So. Damn. Good.
She releases me from her tight hold but not from her seductive service. With her lips playing along my veined length, she croons, “Looks like I finally found you.”
“Thank fuck,” I laugh out, though the next second it’s tumbling from me in a taut moan. But not for long. I’m back to speechless euphoria once she engulfs my crown in her mouth again and then lowers that wet heaven all the way down once more.
I’m nearly gone at that second but clench myself back, holding out for the bigger prize. The much better homecoming present. The treasure I seek while calmly pulling her up and then not so calmly flipping her over. Once I move over her, leaning in to plunge my mouth against hers, I forget the word calm ever existed.
When we finally break apart to gulp in air, my pulse is hammering and my cock is aching. Both give me the fortitude to form intelligible words of command at my lips.
“Make room for me, little demon. I need to be a part of you, right now.”
Chapter Twenty
Kara
Readily, I part my legs for him. Greedily, my core weeps for him. Joyously, I welcome all of him.
There’s no hesitation about his primal thrust. Nor the one after it. I’m grateful and glad, filled with him until I forget there’s a world beyond us. This is my new fire and glory, the only hell and heaven that matter anymore. And Maximus is my new ruler: the king of my soul, the holder of my heart, the hero of my survival.
I love him so much.
But I long to give him even more than that. The surrender of my body. And the whispers, from so deep in my soul…
“Maximus…”
He captures my tears with his full, warm lips. “It’s okay,” he assures between his long thrusts. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”
But how can he? How can he comprehend the fullness of this desire, the size of my love? Yet as he lifts his face until our eyes lock again, I see that it is possible. In all the rich striations of his blues, I see the force of my desire reflected right back at me.
“It’s all yours,” I tell him in a thick rasp, and the edges of his lips kick higher.
“I know that too,” he murmurs.
“Then take it.” I curl my heels against the firm planes of his backside, begging for his deeper invasion. “Take it until I can’t think anymore. Until I can’t—”
My own sharp sigh is my interruption. He’s done it. Swept me to the place where even words aren’t enough and all I can do is burn for him. All I can comprehend are flames that consume me from the inside out. I watch them, layers of orange and gold reflected against the dark intensity of his own gaze, and I’m lost to their power. To our connection. To the union of our bodies, rocking in a rhythm as old as time but as bright and brilliant as our love. And hot. So searing and glaring and hot…
Until my body’s not enough to contain it anymore. My heart’s aching and pulsing with all the devotion I hold for this beautiful man. Words push themselves into being because holding them in any longer seems impossible.
“Oh, Maximus. I love you. So much…so much.”
My heels pull him in deeper. My hands find their way to his shoulders, where I dig into his steely muscles with a force beyond my control. I hate even thinking about hurting him any more, but as I grip him tighter, his hardness pushes at the confines of my core.
The places, so deep inside, that begin to push back.
He hovers his face just inches over mine. Boring that cherished cobalt gaze into mine. Thrusting his mighty, magnificent body into mine. “I love you, Kara. I’ll never stop.”
Denying his truth is impossible.
Pleasing him is incredible.
I’m shattering into a billion particles of passion. Of pleasure. Of ultimate fulfillment. Maximus is there with me, all his pieces chasing mine, until our groans and shudders dominate the air. Until our ecstasy and unity become a new incantation of their own. Except I doubt there are any words, in Latin or any other tongue, to express the completion of every sense I can still comprehend. I’m conscious of every inch of Maximus, still fitted inside me, but beyond our atmospheric envelope, the world is a haze of inconsequential nothingness.
Only after my heartbeat slows and my body relaxes do I let more awareness back in. It enters in small pieces as Maximus rolls to his back and tucks me against his side, our bodies still slick and warm in the patches of sunlight that sneak through the apartment’s tinted windows. It’s so perfect to lie here in a languid puddle, simply reconnecting with the sensory fabric of the city. Compared to Dis, the dust and din of LA is the world’s most divine symphony.
Very soon, it’s the aria that lulls me toward the heaven of deep sleep.
“Hmm?”
I’m still so groggy, I have no idea if the mumble spilled from Maximus or myself. I’m not sure it matters, since my head won’t stop whirling. I swing a glance at his bedside clock. It’s late in the afternoon, but I feel like I only nodded off for a quick nap. The sensation intensifies to the point that it seems the whole room is swaying—on a very unsteady axis.
That’s when I fully open my eyes and realize that it is.
And that the axis feels big enough to extend to the street outside. Maybe the whole city.
“Oh my God,” I mutter, but I can barely hear myself past people yelling and the blares of at least a hundred car security horns. “Maximus.” A shock of adrenaline makes me sit all the way up. “Is this—”
“Earthquake.” He pulls me close as he lifts from the pillows too. “A decent rock party too.” The timbre of his calm words against my ear is the perfect reason to stay where I am, even before he goes on. “We should stay put. This is a support wall, so we’re safer riding it out here.”