and locking our palms, giving her the breadth of my being. I wish I could find the right words to show her every part of me that she’s unlocked. Every secret she’s made safe. Even the ones I’ve hidden in deep shadows. The frightening things. The dangerous things.
They don’t frighten me anymore.
They pulse through me like the rain that’s now become a storm. Flashing more lightning across the air. Bursts that are echoed in my blood, even pounding beneath my skin, as I mold more of my body against Kara’s. Feeding from her fire.
“Now. I need to feel you now.” Her plea weaves through me like dark, devastating magic.
I give in to it and reach between us.
And then I’m sinking.
Into her fire. Into the storm. Fused to her desire. Compelled by the perfect connection of her…us.
So deep.
Need to be…so deep…
But I have to get there slowly, goddammit.
Between one thrust and the next, I remember the self-control I was so committed to before I got inside her. I’m the first man to take her like this. She’s so small and brave, having to accommodate me.
And nothing about me has ever been average. Right now, it’s not a bragging right. It’s a circumstance I force into the forefront of my thoughts, no matter how thoroughly my body protests the point. Everything’s working beyond my control. I’m so full and hot, compelled to push in farther.
Farther…
I’m only halfway when she sucks in a sharp breath.
Full stop. I freeze and force my head up. “Kara… I’m sorry.” The words rush from me between brutal breaths. My chest is pumping, smashing into her erect, succulent nipples—which does nothing to help the craving to slam into her fully. “I know I’m—”
“You are.” She punctuates the acknowledgment with a low moan and a catlike arch beneath me. “You’re also…not deep enough.”
The surety in those words is a rush of thunder in my lungs. Voltage in my veins. A potent antidote to all my paralyzing worry over hurting her.
“Stop holding back,” she murmurs. “I said all of you. I meant it.”
I can barely meet the demand when she shifts instead. Lifting her legs higher, wrapping her thighs tighter. Giving herself the purchase to pull herself up the very moment I can no longer hold anything back. I drive forward…until every inch of my erection is fully seated inside her.
That high cry that emerges from her becomes an electrode of awareness snapped into the right port of my brain at just the right time. So this is what she means by deep enough.
“Holy hell.” A blur of cruder language washes across my brain. None of it sums up the fire she’s setting to my cock… The flames she’s spreading everywhere through me…
She presses a featherlight kiss to my neck. “You stole my line.”
I can feel her smile against my skin, but I’m past levity. Being this deep in her feels like life or death. Maybe both. I don’t really care which, as long as we see it through. I draw in a shaky breath, taking more of her heavenly scent into me as I do. My angel. My sweet heaven.
“And you’ve stolen my soul.”
Our gazes lock again. She gives me a look I don’t know how to interpret, except for the liquid heat in her eyes that I’m sure is made of pure desire. I don’t stop to figure the rest out. Because right now, it doesn’t matter.
Right now, I can’t stop.
I’m pressure and passion and tension.
Fever and flames and obsession.
I’m wrapped in her heat, plunging to the farthest cushions inside her until all I crave is more.
Still, I go deeper.
Even as wind howls at the walls and rain sheets the windows.
Harder.
As all the lights flicker, sputter, and then darken completely.
Farther.
As a plummeting tree branch slams against my window before crashing onto the ground below. Then another.
I barely notice. Neither does Kara. She clings like I’m her tree branch, scoring my shoulders with her hold and gouging my back with her heels. Her head is flung back, and her mouth is wide as she gathers air in harsh, hoarse breaths. And her eyes…
Her eyes might just turn me into a pyromaniac.
Their flames, whorling faster and faster around her irises, have me thrusting with deeper force. Driving into her like a man possessed. Maybe I am. My lust is futile without her fulfillment. My blood is just water without her fire.
“Maximus.”
My world is consumed by the sexual smoke of her voice.
She’s not pleading this time. She’s calling me. Compelling me.