lip, I cast a glare up at him. He replied by palming my cheek and leaning down to catch my lips in a fierce kiss. He had my clothes off in record time, throwing my T-shirt aside and lifting me from the bed to shove my sweatpants down around my hips. I shimmied and kicked them free. This time, he didn’t stop me when I reached for his fly.
With an assist from him, his jeans were kicked loose, and I sighed as I stroked my palm over the swollen length of his cock. When I moved to push his fitted briefs down, he shook his head, pressing his palm to my chest and levering me backward on the bed.
“Not yet. I need something to help me stay in control.”
“You’re always in control, you—” My protest died in a gasp when his mouth captured one of my nipples, sucking just hard enough that a piercing shot of pleasure arrowed from there straight to my core, which clenched in rippling reply.
“You’re always—” My breath hissed through my teeth when his lips closed over my other nipple, and his touch moved lightly over my belly before I felt his fingers teasing over the damp cotton of my panties.
“I’m always what?” he murmured as he grazed his teeth over my nipple, the feel of his lips on my skin sending another spasm of pleasure through me.
“In control,” I gasped out.
He lifted his head. “Look at me.”
It took an effort, but I opened my eyes, the lids heavy as I stared at him. “With you, I’m almost never in control. And it’s been four months and six days and thirteen hours since I was last with you like this.”
My heart thrashed violently in my chest. “You’ve been counting?” My question was a raspy whisper.
“To the minute.” He glanced at his watch. His tone was solemn as his eyes bored into mine. “Remember? I had to leave early that day to go to Anchorage. We had a fight, and you told me to go.”
I swallowed as a rush of emotion spun into the pulse of need pounding through me. “Oh,” was all I could muster.
In another moment, he brought his lips to mine as he pushed the cotton out of the way and teased his fingers through my slippery wet folds. My entire body was pulsing, swollen and achy with need. My sex clenched when he slipped two fingers into me.
Cast adrift in the current of need and caught in the intensity of finally being with him after too long, I was relieved there was no more talking. I needed this, needed him as much as I needed air to breathe.
Gabriel’s lips teased, kindling my body with light nips on my neck, a piercing suck on one nipple as he pinched the other. He blazed a trail of fiery kisses over my belly. One of his palms slid up the inside of my thigh, the firm pressure something for me to hold on to as sensation threatened to spin me loose.
I felt the pressure of his shoulders between my thighs and then his fingers sinking into me again as his thumb teased over my swollen and aching clit. I was frantic, pleading for more, chasing after a sweet surrender I knew would come like a wave crashing on the shore.
He licked into my folds, teasing me with his tongue and his fingers as the fire inside kindled hotter and hotter, the flames rushing through me. I was gasping, crying as the pressure drew so tight in my center I thought I might shatter.
But Gabriel wouldn’t let that happen. When the pressure finally did break loose, I cried out in exquisite ecstasy, and he held me together with soothing strokes of his palms as he rose over me. He hooked one of my knees around his elbow and then filled me in one deep stroke, seating himself deeply as my climax still rippled.
“Nora,” he whispered in a gruff command.
When I opened my eyes, I was ensnared instantly in his gaze, the gold flecks in his green eyes like embers of fire. My heart thumped hard, in tune with his as his weight came down over me.
Maybe I could believe he loved me. Just thinking that felt so dangerous I was relieved when his lips claimed mine, and he drew back before filling me once again.
Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel
“Nora.” Her name came out slurred, my voice thickened with the intense sensation of being inside her again. The relief of being