A howl of excitement left her throat, the sound surprising her. He clutched both her hips in his hands, his cock half buried in her.
“Are you okay?” he demanded anxiously.
She answered him by bouncing her bottom slightly, pulsing his cock in her. He lifted a hand and swatted her bottom in gentle remonstrance before he firmed his hold on her and continued to fuck her with quick, shallow strokes. She groaned roughly. She couldn’t shut up. Her reaction to this whole thing was unprecedented.
“God, you’re so damn hot,” he growled.
With each firm pass of his cock, he sank deeper, until his pelvis popped against her buttocks as he fucked her. He paused with his cock fully sheathed, his arm muscles bulging tight as he held her against him.
“Gia,” he said sharply, piercing her haze of lust. She gasped wildly for air.
“What?” she asked weakly. He was filling her completely, his cock throbbing deep inside her. She was going to burst into flame any second.
“You’re screaming nonstop, baby. Are you okay?”
“I am?” she moaned feverishly. “Oh, God, Seth, help me.”
He cursed and reached beneath her, rubbing her clit firmly. She exploded like a cache of dynamite. The next few moments were a haze of pounding pleasure and pressure and unchecked carnality. She opened her eyes to see Seth standing over her, one of his feet on the mattress next to her hip, his knee bent, the other foot on the floor. He was fucking her with long, firm strokes, his ridged torso tight and gleaming with perspiration, a snarl on his handsome mouth.
He had said he was holding back with her before. This was the real Seth, savage and unbridled, fearsome and beautiful. Gia watched him in that mirror and knew she was witnessing a claiming in some sense. She didn’t want to be claimed by a man or any person.
But she did want to be by Seth.
He was the exception to the rule.
“You’re mine. Say it, Gia,” he grated out as he thrust, and she wondered if their minds were fused in that volatile moment as intimately as their bodies.
“I’m yours,” she affirmed shakily. Because in that moment, she was.
Her face convulsed with some mixture of awe, longing and amazement when she felt him swell inside her and saw the wild expression on his face. Then he was holding her to him, every muscle straining in his long, powerful body, desperate in his need. The sound he made as he came was fierce and plaintive, as if he gloried in that brutal, slashing pleasure and hated it at once, because it signaled the end.
His head fell forward as he gasped for air. Slowly, the hard tension in his body started to dissipate. The sounds of their rough, uneven breathing filled the room. Something had altered deep inside her, and it both frightened and awed her.
Gia glanced at her own face in the reflection for the first time in minutes, not at all startled to see that her cheeks were damp with tears.
Eighteen
Seth never said so in specific words, but she sensed he’d been as moved by their raw, powerful lovemaking as she was. He couldn’t keep his hands off her for the rest of the night. Gia would remember the sound of his hoarse, quiet voice in her ear, murmuring sweet, unexpected praise as well as tense, erotic tributes for the rest of her life. After that heated, raw joining, they’d showered and then returned to bed, too involved with each other to worry about everyday matters like their discarded meal or cleaning up the kitchen.
Or unpleasant ones like the clock slowly ticking away their time together.
The next morning she rose at nine, strangely bright-eyed and energized, even though she and Seth had slept little. He was already gone from bed. She pulled on her robe and wandered out to the kitchen in search of him.
“Coffee is ready for you,” he said when she rounded the corner. He sat at the kitchen table, shirtless. One of the pumpkins from the porch sat in front of him, and he was utterly focused on carving it.
“What are you doing?” she asked, grinning as she approached him.
“It’s for Daisy,” he said. He looked up and saw her confused expression. “Daisy Pierce. Rill and Katie’s little girl,” he explained. He hitched his head slightly in a “come here” gesture and she leaned down to kiss him. He smelled and felt wonderful. She lingered, plucking at his lips. He became the aggressor, and their kiss deepened.
“Morning,” she breathed out next to his mouth a moment later.
“Morning,” he replied gruffly. He shifted his face, burying his nose in her neck and nuzzling her with his lips and mouth. “You smell like sex.”
She laughed softly and ran her fingers through his soft hair. “You got that straight. Lots of it. You certainly are energetic after sleeping only a few hours.” She glanced at what he was doing to the pumpkin and gasped. She straightened, staring in amazement. “Oh my God, that is the coolest thing. I can’t believe you can do that. Is that Daisy?”
She was referring to what he was subtly carving on the pumpkin. It was clearly the face of a little girl with twin curly pigtails on either side of her head. Most of his marks didn’t fully penetrate the pumpkin. Instead, he’d artfully cut just past the skin, revealing the paler inner surface. The contrast between the bright orange skin and the paler flesh-colored interior of the pumpkin was what created the surprisingly detailed image.
“Yeah. Daisy loves to wear pigtails. I thought she’d like a pumpkin,” he said, resuming his carving.