I blinked, unleashing a tear I hadn’t realized had collected in my eye, and Hades returned. He came to me, wiped the tear away, and pressed his mouth to mine. His arms caged around me, and I was Persephone, happy in her prison.
It was unclear when Macalister left, but by the time Royce lifted me up off the couch, his father had vanished. He must have shut the door behind him because it was closed again. A stone of guilt settled on my chest, crushing my heart. I shouldn’t have allowed any of that to happen.
There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Wooden beams decorated the ceiling, and their lines continued down the back wall, so they were the only thing breaking up the floor to ceiling windows, and Royce walked us toward it until my upper back was flat to the smooth wood.
He was already hard as he stood between my legs, but I clasped a hand around him and pumped my fist, trying to repay at least a fraction of the pleasure he’d given me. His palms were on the beam over my head and he looked down to watch my strokes, and although it severed the connection of our stare, it didn’t break the spell between us. His chest rose and fell with his uneven breath, and he throbbed in my hand. He enjoyed the feeling, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he was allowing it more for my benefit than his own, giving me an opportunity to reciprocate.
His eyes met mine and announced all he wanted was to follow the command I’d issued.
Make love to me.
A breathless sigh slipped from my mouth as his hands drifted around me, both behind my waist. One moved to splay across my back and the other slid down over my backside. Without thinking about it, I hiked my leg up to wrap around him, and his fingers trailed lower. They skated down through the crevice of my body between my cheeks, and he stifled the noise of surprise I made by planting his mouth over mine.
There was only the faint brush of his fingertips against my clit before he moved on and his palm slid against the underside of my thigh. I was balanced on the ball of one foot, but then he was lifting, and it left me with no choice but to wrap my legs and arms around him and hold on.
He stared at me like he might die if he didn’t, and slowly lowered me onto him, inch by impossibly good inch. On the outside, we were so still we were practically statues, but inside everything was going haywire. My pulse was an engine in overdrive. Nerves fluttered in my belly. A whine threatened to bubble out of me.
Once he was fully seated inside, my body tight around him, Royce began to move. His hips drew back and pressed forward, pushing the small of my back against the wall. It didn’t take long for our gasps to sync. I banded my arms tighter around his neck and dropped my forehead against his shoulder, letting moans pour from me freely.
The position was taxing on him, but he didn’t set me down. He struggled for breath, and it fluttered the loose ends of hair beside my neck, and his muscles quickly began to shake with fatigue. But he kept going. He wasn’t able to tell me he loved me, and maybe it was foolish to believe he did, but he affirmed his feelings for me with each slow thrust and deep kiss.
The edges of the beam bit into my back, and he’d become so slippery with sweat it was hard for me to hold on to him, but I wanted it to last forever. I wished we could freeze time and exist the rest of our lives here where we were just ourselves, connected to each other.
“Marist,” he uttered against the shell of my ear. The single word was loaded with so much emotion, it was nearly the same as the three words I hoped to hear from him someday.
The hands supporting me lowered until I could put my feet on the floor, and then I was turned in place, so my back was against Royce’s toned chest. He used one hand to steady himself, and the other grasped my hip to guide him back inside me, and as soon as it was done, he folded our arms together over my chest, lacing his fingers on top of mine.
His mouth latched on to the sensitive spot just below my ear and sucked gently, and it made the muscles inside me clench on him. He groaned his satisfaction.
It could have been hours or minutes before the pleasure became too much and we neared our end. When he trailed his fingertips down my stomach and pressed them to my aching clit, it set me off. I slapped my hands against the beam in front of me and gasped through the onslaught of my orgasm, which was so strong my legs threatened to give out on me.