Bay of Sighs (The Guardians Trilogy 2)

“I like to be quiet with you like this, before the sky wakes. Before Doyle wakes,” she said with a laugh in her voice, “and everything is loud and fast. I can make you coffee.”

“No. You should stay right here.” Now he touched his lips lightly to hers, felt hers curve.

“You want to wake with sex.” Running a hand down his flank, she wiggled closer. “Your penis is already awake.”

She made him love and laugh and long, so he found it impossible to separate one reaction from the other.

“I want you, Annika.” He kissed her again, soft and slow. “Do you want?”

“When you kiss me, when I feel your body against mine, I’m filled with want. Take my want, Sawyer, and I’ll take yours.”

So simple, he thought, and so complete. He sank them both into the kiss, felt that even dawn held its breath to give them this time. This precious time.

Gently, his hands moved over her gently, so he could savor every inch. The soft skin, the subtle curves, the long lines of torso and miraculous legs. Tenderly, his lips followed. Taking her want, he thought, giving her his.

She offered, accepted. Turning to him, melting against him as if everything she was had been waiting only for him.

Every move, every shift, every touch pulsed under his skin. Warmth and light and beauty that captured his heart like cupped hands.

Her breath merging with his in a soul-deep kiss. Her breast, perfect in his hand. Her hips rising up as he glided her over the first peak. In that moment, that hushed moment between the dark and the light, she was, would be, his only and his all.

“Annika.” Overwhelmed, he buried his face in the curve of her neck. “I need you.”

His words shimmered through her. She knew poetry, and song and story. But no words she knew had ever moved her so deeply. To be needed by him lifted her heart, sent it soaring. Even as tears blurred her eyes, she laid her hands on his cheeks, lifted his face so she could look at him.

“I would give you all you need. Be one with me, before the sun comes. Before the sun,” she said again, and arched up in welcome.

And if she wept as they moved together, she could tell herself it was only from joy, only from beauty. Only from knowing he needed her.

She took the joy with her, through the push-ups and lunges, through breakfast.

She kept it clutched tight when Sawyer brought the recorder out to the table.

“It may not sit well after a meal, but everybody should hear this.”

“Another meet?”

“In a way,” he told Riley. “From the bedroom recorder, just after midnight.”

“If we have to hear Malmon getting it on with some unfortunate working girl—”

“It’s Nerezza.”

Sawyer waited a beat, pressed playback.

For a moment, there was a kind of living silence, like a throaty hum. Then what seemed to Annika like a crack in the air. Malmon’s voice trembled, but Annika couldn’t be certain if it came from excitement or fear.

I’ve waited.

When Nerezza spoke, it was somehow cloying, like honey dripping from a nest of bees. And all is as I wish?

All is as you wish.

No, my pet, all is not as I wish until the stars are mine, and those who keep them from me are screaming.

All is in place so all will be as you wish. Please, my queen. I’ve waited.

The laugh made Annika shudder. Will you not offer me refreshment first?