I’m ashamed to admit to myself that I’ve imagined this before. Tonight isn’t the first time I’ve thought about making love to Arrow. I’m sure it could have been more romantic. I’m sure he would have rather been with me for the first time in a bed. But there’s nothing about this I’d change.
Every move we make feels sweet and so poignant, as if he’s found my heart unlocked and is carefully retrieving it.
I don’t know how long I move over him before the look on his face changes. He goes from sweet and tender to something a little more desperate. From careful and controlled to something wild. Watching him lose that careful control is somehow sweeter than every tender touch before.
“Did you?” he whispers, his voice hitching.
Tonight means too much for me to taint it with a lie, so I shake my head. “It’s okay.”
“Mia,” he murmurs. Then, like he can’t handle it anymore, he buries his face in my neck, grips my hips tight, and shifts his hips under me. He rocks into me with more force than he’s used to touch me all night long, and it hurts a little but I love it. I offered myself to him, and this—his pleasure, the rough sound at the back of his throat, his jerky movements—this feels like he’s taking me. Making me his.
He holds me tight as he groans, and I feel him swell inside me, feel the long rush of his exhale against my neck as he comes. Then he’s still. Fingers in my hair. Lips trailing up and down my neck.
“I’ve waited too long,” he says, and I’m not sure what that means, so I just nod.
We find some tissues to clean up after, and before things can get awkward, he gathers me against him and covers us both with the blanket and holds me in a cocoon of warmth. I close my eyes for just a moment, and the next thing I know, he’s whispering my name in my hair.
“The sun’s rising.”
I sit up, and sure enough, orange stretches out behind the trees on the other side of the lake. The sun is rising, and I’m here in Arrow’s arms.
* * *
I wake up to someone kissing the back of my thigh. Soft, open-mouthed kisses on that tender skin just below the curve of my ass. Arrow’s mouth. Arrow’s kisses. Deft and skilled and guaranteed to make men fall short for the rest of my life.
Moaning, I start to roll over, but he places a hand on my back to hold me still. “I’m really just getting started if you don’t mind.” His voice is low, gravelly with sleep—the little we got—and it stirs something low in my belly.
After watching the sun rise, we came back to my apartment this morning, locked the door to my room, climbed into bed together, and napped. Or at least I did.
I look over my shoulder to where he’s kissing his way up my back. “Why can’t I roll over?”
He grins and cups me between my legs with one big hand. Heat pools there fast and tight. “Because.” Then he doesn’t need to say anything more. He strokes me, and at the same time his mouth is on me again, trailing down my back and over the curve of my ass. He kisses the backs of my thighs, then follows the path up with his teeth and tongue, all the while working his fingers over me. The angle of his touch is different than anything I’ve ever felt before, and the skin he teases with his mouth so much more sensitive than I could have imagined. I suddenly feel like Brogan left half my body unexplored.
The thought of Brogan makes me tense, and Arrow must notice because he lifts his head and stills his movements. “This okay?”
“Yeah. I . . .” I swallow. “It’s good.”
He nuzzles my inner thigh and groans. “Damn right it is.” He guides my thighs farther apart, slides his hand out of the way, and replaces it with his mouth. Pleasure stabs through me—the sudden heat, the angle, the scratch of his stubble—and his lips move over my most private spot, and everything inside me coils tight and hot and needy.
When he pulls back, it’s only long enough to roll me to my back and position his face between my legs again, but he just looks instead of kissing me.