“I knew you were fighting to hold on until I could get my bearings.” He touched a tear on her cheek, wiped it away. “I knew you were saving both our lives the only way you could, baby. You didn’t hurt me. I never once believed otherwise.”
Would he love anyone more than he loved her at that moment, Hawke wondered. Pure joy lit up her gaze; sweet heat and unconditional love filled the air around them. She was indeed a mate he could be proud of. One he knew would always walk at his side.
Turning, he lifted her in his arms and bore her back to the mattress.
“I believe we were in the middle of something when that bastard disturbed us,” he stated as he came over her, her arms wrapping around his neck as her lips curved into a tempting, loving smile.
“We weren’t exactly in the middle,” she shot back saucily. “I believe we were just getting started. Don’t go missing steps there, mate.”
He had to laugh at her. She’d always been able to make him smile, make him laugh. She had always lightened his heart even as she hardened his dick.
“I love you, Jess,” he growled, the man and the animal speaking, the primal need and emotion that erupted inside him impossible to contain.
“I love you, Hawke Esteban. With everything I am, I love you.” His lips covered hers then. Deep, sipping kisses kept them both drugged as they fought with their clothes, pulling them from each other, tossing them to the side, baring their flesh to the stroke and caress of the other.
Her hands roved over his back, her nails rasping over his flesh as she arched against him, urging him with little moans and cries for the possession he couldn’t hold back.
He had nearly lost her. So easily, she could have been taken away from him tonight. How the hell was he supposed to live if he ever lost his Jess? Not just his mate, but his woman, his lover. She was a part of his soul that he knew he never wanted to be free of.
Sliding his hand along her side, he reached the ripe curve of her breast. He cupped the mound in his palm and lifted it, rolled his thumb over the distended peak of her nipple before lowering his head to taste it.
Drawing the tight little nub into his mouth, he suckled at her as though he was dying for the taste of her. Actually, he had been dying before he tasted her. Frozen on the inside, locked in a loneliness he couldn’t bear. For a year he had fought to prove her innocence, fought for her release. And now she was here, in his arms, touching him, arching to him as he touched her.
He moved down her body and relished each broken cry of pleasure as he fought the heated, slick folds of her pu**y. Starving for the taste of her, for the heat of her, he licked through the narrow cleft, moaned at the slick essence of her and devoured her. With lips, tongue and sucking little kisses, he teased and tormented her silken flesh. Tasted her until there was no doubt in his mind that he could ever live without her, then drew in the tight little knot of her clit and sucked it, flicking his tongue over it until she erupted in pleasure.
And it wasn’t enough. He could never get enough of her.
He pressed her thighs farther apart, lifted her knees and opened her farther to his gaze.
Soft pink flesh parted, revealing the snug little entrance he sought. Tucking the head of his c**k against the fluttering, clenching entrance to her snug pu**y, he shifted his hips, moved, penetrated until the crest was pressed firmly inside her.
Tiny eruptions of the pre-seminal fluid jetted from the tip of his cock, filling her, easing the tender, delicate muscles, allowing her to take him without pain, without distress. It increased her pleasure while adding to her natural lubrication and allowing the wide width of his shaft to sink inside her.
Hawke watched as he took her, listened to her excited little cries and knew he wasn’t going to last long.
His balls had drawn up tight to the base of his cock, a sure indication that his release was only a few strokes away.
Tunneling inside her slowly, working his way in by small degrees, he grimaced at the building rapture surging through his body.
Sweet and so hot. Her pu**y wrapped around his c**k like the tightest, most silken glove. Each stroke of her intimate flesh against the crest and shaft of his erection was torturous ecstasy. Sizzling fingers of electric current wrapped around his balls, stroked along his c**k and had him gritting his teeth to hold back until he was firmly seated inside her.
Lifting his head, Hawke stared into her lovely face. She was flushed, perspiration standing out on her forehead as the tracks of her tears dampened her cheeks.
“My precious Jess,” he whispered, leaning closer, pressing himself deeper inside her and moved to steal a kiss. “My beloved Jess.”
“My heart.” She sobbed against his lip, and he lost it.
The hitched, breathless quality of her voice tore through him. The devotion, the love in her soft whisper, destroyed him.
Groaning her name, he began to thrust inside her. Heavy, probing thrusts that worked inside her, stroking him past pleasure, past ecstasy. He was surging through sensations that he didn’t have time to make sense of, sensations he had never known before.
His mate. His woman.
She cried out his name and his thrusts increased and he shafted inside her as he held her hip with one hand and braced himself above her on an elbow. His lips moved over her jaw, her neck.
He could feel the intensity rising inside her as well. Her orgasm was coming closer, the sweet scent of it was wrapping around him, urging him to take her fast, to f**k inside her harder. Nothing mattered but taking her, marking her, blending their scents until they were one, until they were bound so irrevocably that they could never be parted.
Gasping moans fell from her lips as his kiss moved to her neck, her shoulder. So close. She was tightening around him. Her legs lifted, wrapped around his hips, her pu**y tightened, the muscles convulsing around his thrusting cock.