Accepted what she gifted me.
I groaned, savoring the taste of her, the feel of her.
God, she was like fucking fire in my hands. It was like I’d been swallowed up by a blizzard and she’d been sent to thaw me out. This was my Rach. Not the ice queen. The firestarter.
Her tongue had been hesitant at first, but now, her confidence regrowing, she started to taste me back.
Rachel wasn’t shy. Not with me. But it took her a while to remember that.
I knew her body as well as she knew mine, and she knew what drove me wild as well as I did with her.
As she became more aggressive, her nails digging into my shoulders, her grip on me tightening, I dragged off her shirt, exposing more silken flesh to my hungry hands.
Exploring the length of her back, I felt the vertebra of her spine, but they weren’t as pronounced either. I savored the small curves of her hips and reached around to flick at the fly of her jeans.
When I slipped my fingers between the tines of her zipper, and I rubbed over her panties, I found her hot and wet.
She shuddered against me, her mouth tearing away from mine as she pushed her forehead into me too.
“Oh, God,” she mewled as I teased her with my hand.
When our lips collided again, as she whimpered into my mouth, I finally dragged her panties away and brushed up against slick, silken flesh.
She was so goddamn wet that I hissed under my breath and, as I found her slit, I thrust two fingers in, knowing how ready she was for me.
Scissoring them had her squealing, and her back arched against my hold even as I snagged her mouth in a kiss that I knew stole her breath away.
It was mine.
All fucking mine.
As I fingered her pussy, she rocked into me, her knees spreading as she moved to straddle me. With her knees digging into the sofa, I expected her to rock against me, to finally get some fucking friction, but she didn’t.
She launched off it.
She started to strip out of her clothes and, once bare, her hand went between her legs.
When she rubbed her clit, her eyes closing, she might as well have put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger—she raised her fingers to her mouth and tasted them.
I growled, and it was deeper than before, outraged and hungry and fucking desperate for this woman.
My mate.
I darted forward and dragged her against me as she let loose a choked laugh and straddled my legs again, rubbing against me like I’d hoped she would before.
Then her fingers were shaping my dick, and her hands were delving into my fly, and her palm was suddenly holding my cock in her fist.
As she stroked me a couple times, I tipped my head back, watching as she arched upward on her knees, legs parting wider to straddle higher up mine, and she rubbed the tip of my cock against her slit.
She nudged her clit a couple of times, until she gasped with the sensation, before she tucked it against her gate and let me slide home.
The pressure, the sensation, the fucking delirium that triggered had me closing my eyes a second as I let the sofa take all of my weight. Then, I realized what I was missing, and I quickly opened them again and watched the flush on her chest slowly start to spread.
Her tits were tinging pink, her cheeks too. Her eyes grew misty, and her breath started to sough from her lips.
Before my eyes, Rach became the woman I knew. The woman I recognized. Not the icicle who’d taken my girl’s place. She returned to me.
Somehow, that was more painful than anything today.
She was there—within touching distance.
But she was only here for a short amount of time.
She was on loan to me.
Partially thawed.
But fuck, what she could do to me half-frozen was decimating by comparison to another woman.
I’d learned a long time ago that Rachel was it for me.
It.
She groaned as she started to ride me, finally drawing higher on her knees, rocking into me, grinding down hard as she twisted her hips to take every inch.
Her hands drifted to my shoulders, and she leaned on me for strength as she started to move faster.
I watched her nostrils flare as our eyes clashed and held, and I twisted us around so she was flat on her back and I was looming over her. Her nails dug into my shoulders and this time, she ordered, “Rub my clit.”
The second I did, letting the tips of my fingers slip and slide through her juices, she immediately clenched down around me and her hands slid around to the back of my neck, her heels digging into my ass to urge me on.
We both groaned at the change in angle, and her pussy started fluttering around my cock like it was panicking, choking on me like it needed the orgasm to survive.
She screamed, her hands finally moving, dragging through my hair, nails scraping over my skull as she ground into me, chasing release, finding it and rewarding me in return.
The second her cunt clamped down around me, clutching at me, milking me, I let go.
Of the present, the past, the future, and everything else.
As my orgasm hit me, I felt the whack of it like a punch to the solar plexus.
It stole my breath, melted my bones, and made me feel like the world beneath my feet was shaking.
That was Rachel.
Always Rachel.
My girl.
Mine.
I gripped her hips, urging her to ride me a couple more times, and as the ecstasy slowly started to fade, the comfort of our proximity, of our rejoining hit me.
Pivoting us to the side, I flopped down, encouraged her to keep one leg straight so I could stay inside her for as long as possible, and burrowing my face into her throat, my goddamn home, I fell asleep.
FIFTEEN
REX
For the second time that day, it was the scream that woke me.
The terrorized call of someone who needed help but who was no longer in danger.
Whatever dragons Rachel needed slaying, they’d died years back. At least, according to her.
I couldn’t fight the demons in her mind, couldn’t stop them from attacking her.
But that wasn’t what broke me.
That happened when she started slapping me. When her nails dug down and she clawed at me like I was her attacker.
Like I was the one who’d hurt her when I’d hurt my-fucking-self before I ever did anything to bring her pain.
She kicked at me and shoved at me, slapping and pinching and scratching and aiming to do anything to maim me.
She’d broken me years ago, but this?
The chasm ruptured.
Splintered.
I twisted us around so that I was no longer with my back to the sofa, but as I tried to get away from her, she took it as another sign of attack.
“NO!” she screamed, the word hoarse like she’d been saying it over and over again.
“NO! King—he’ll… NO!”
My name on her lips tore at my insides.
“NO!” It came again as I finally managed to clamber off her, my knees colliding with the rug beneath the coffee table. It was a tight fit so I wasn’t surprised by the shard of pain that hit me when I collided with the edge of the glass table, but it was nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, to the agony that came when she whimpered, “He’ll kill you, Grizzly. When he finds out, he’ll kill you.”
Grizzly.
My uncle.
If she’d kicked me in the balls, I’d have been able to catch my breath sooner.
Instead, I just sat there. There were too many punches to field. Too fucking many.