Positioning himself at her opening, he kept his eyes locked on hers as he pushed into her with one long, slow, deliberate stroke.
A low groan escaped him as he sank into her, feeling her fire and silk as he came to rest against the deepest part of her. He lingered there for a moment, looking for confirmation that she wanted him to continue.
What he saw in her eyes instead nearly unmanned him right then and there.
Wonder.
“Arlie—” he began, losing his words again to a full body shudder.
“I know,” she said, reaching up to push a sweat-kissed lock of hair away from his forehead. “I feel it too.”
He began to move.
Slowly at first, the shifting muscles of his back tensing as he learned her. She gripped his buttocks with eager hands, tightening around him with every thrust, driving her hips up to meet him blow for blow.
“Let go,” she whispered.
For the first time in Samuel’s twenty-eight years, he did.
He surrendered. To whatever this was. To whatever consequences it brought. Sensation flooded in, blotting out the last of his tangled, complicated rules and thoughts. There was only her body and his. The fire between them.
He became aware of the desperate animal noises coming from her. Her nails clawing at his back.
Through his own pleasure-fogged gauge, he watched her climax roll over her features like storm clouds, knowing he was close the same way he knew lightning was coming in the seconds before it struck.
“Oh, God, Arlie.”
The electric charge built at the base of his spine and pinwheeled outward until it was no longer confined to the low, deep, delicious ache behind his cock. It raced down his legs, spilled into his chest, his back, then ebbed into his heart.
A cry more primal than he had known himself capable of tore itself from Samuel’s very soul as pleasure rocked through him in rhythmic waves. His body tensed as he collapsed to his elbows, burying his nose in the silky sweet tangle of her hair as he descended back toward earth.
They lay like that in absolute silence, his heart beating against hers through the thick wall of his chest as their breathing gradually slowed.
She gently ran her nails over his back. Up. Down. As if memorizing his topography.
He settled into her further, his body going slack, the ridge of his hips pressing against her inner thighs as he ceased all effort to hold himself up.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Samuel wanted to break the silence. To make this moment real by the sound of his own voice. But making it real would mean dealing with the consequences of what they’d just done.
He wasn’t ready for that.
Not yet.
Samuel eased off her, flopping onto his back. Above them, the blades of the fan made slow, lazy circles. They reminded him of a clock. Precious seconds ticking away.
Arlie rolled onto her side, her face half buried in the pillow, one sleepy eye fixed on him. She pushed a sweat-dampened clump of hair away from his forehead.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered.
“I’m thinking that I owe you an apology.”
“For what?” she asked in a voice already thickening with sleep.
The dark fringe of her eyelashes raised, lowered, then dropped to her cheek.
“For everything,” he whispered.
Her breath deepened and slowed, evening into the rhythm of sleep. Samuel joined her in the dark, letting the oblivion wipe the familiar sting of failure from his mind.
He had damned them both.