He was using her body against her, and Zoe found she didn’t care. She wanted him too much to worry about what that made her.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were so blue it hurt, and Zoe’s hands were clumsy at the zipper of his unbuttoned trousers. She shoved and pushed and finally freed him, sighing when she wrapped her hands around the silken hardness of him.
But they were both too close to the edge. When he handed her a condom she noticed she was shaking again, and she could feel the slight tremors that moved in him, too, where he still held himself immobile above her.
She’d never wanted anything more. She sheathed him carefully, quickly, and then she guided him to her entrance.
“Say my name,” he told her fiercely, the way he had before, with that curious intensity and that serious look on his face.
“I don’t want to say your name,” she threw at him, and she surged up before he could argue, impaling herself on the length of him.
It was slick, terrible, perfect.
Unreal.
“Why don’t you say mine?” she managed to gasp, as if that might save her. As if anything could.
She understood she was doomed, and she didn’t care anymore.
“Have it your way,” he whispered, his mouth at her ear, and she was already shivering, already melting. Already his. “I’m going to make you scream it, Zoe. I’m going to make you beg. And then I’ll do it all over again, until my name is the only thing you know.”
“Promises, promises,” she whispered, and laughed at the dark look on his face.
But then he began to move.
* * *
She was exquisite.
And she was his.
Hunter wanted to imprint that on her skin, tattoo it on the silken perfection of her flesh. He wanted to mark her, again, so there could be no doubt.
He settled for that simple, life-altering slide inside her, the clutch of her thighs, the sharp sting of her fingernails into his back. That complicated rhythm, that beautiful dance.
The animal in him wanted wildness—but he wanted to savor her, and so he did.
He set an easy, deliberate pace, stunned by the fire that roared inside him, drunk on each and every one of the noises she made, the motion of her lithe hips, the scent of lavender warm between their bodies, the taste of her and that sense of belonging, of rightness, that surged inside him, claiming him with every stroke.
Making him the man he should have been, as if this was a baptism and he would never be the same when it was done. He believed it. He believed he could be anything for this woman. He wanted that as fiercely as he wanted her.
She tilted back her head, arched into him, and her eyes were dark with the same passion that he could feel in him. The same enormity. As if this wasn’t sex, but a sacrament.
“Please,” she gasped, and he smiled.
“I told you you’d beg.”
“It’s not polite to gloat,” she said, and he didn’t know how she did it, how she managed to sound so prim even now, when he was deep inside her and he held her on that quivering edge.
When the world felt new with every slick stroke, every glorious slide. Every shiver, every sigh.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
“Say it,” he told her. He lost himself in the taste of her breasts and toyed with those proud nipples, never changing his relentless rhythm, direct and deliberate, keeping her in that shaking frenzy beneath him but never quite tipping her over. “My name, Zoe.”
And he felt her melt. Fire chased by lightning, soft and strong and his, and she cried it out at last. To the glass above, to the night around them, to the sky and to the world.
Again and again and again, until it sounded like a song. Like a vow.
His name. His possession. His.
“Hunter,” she cried, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t—”
“Didn’t I promise to serve you? Have a little faith.”
“Then do it, for God’s sake!”
He laughed, reaching down between them and rubbing his fingers against the hard little heart of her, gathering her to him as she made a desperate noise that he felt in every part of him before she shattered all around him.
And only then, when she was in pieces again and he was drowning in her the way he wanted, the way he thought he might have to do for the rest of his life, until it killed him and he didn’t think he’d mind if it did, did he let himself follow her over the edge.
* * *
Later, he woke in the stillness of the night in a sudden rush, but she was still there. She hadn’t slipped out while he slept, while he wasn’t paying attention. She hadn’t disappeared. She hadn’t walked away from him, never to be seen again.