Her short nails bit at his neck and shoulders, and then he settled his weight fully upon her. Skin on skin. The connection wasn’t just physical. Not for him. And the emotion in her eyes told him not for her, either.
Nick buried his face in her neck and grasped the top of her head with one hand. God, he needed to get closer, deeper, as far inside as she could take him. His hips withdrew and plunged forward, rolling to drag pressure against her clit. She grasped his back and moaned in time with his thrusts and rocked her hips to meet his. Even as his lower back started to ache, she was still the best fucking thing he’d ever felt. He’d pushed through it this morning, so he could do it again. He flipped a mental bird at his injuries, because no way was he missing out on a moment of this experience, nor shorting Becca even an ounce of pleasure.
“You okay?” he rasped against her ear before kissing the delicate shell of skin.
Her chuckle was deep and throaty, and drew his gaze to her face. She leaned up and kissed him. “I’ve never been more okay in my life.”
He grinned, identifying with the sentiment and feeling it slip into the dark places in his soul and light them up.
A sharp twist of muscle in his back made him suck in a breath and clench his jaw. He gritted through. Leftover soreness from his fight. He was going to kick Beckett’s ass for making him think of the guy during sex.
“Hey.” Her hand smoothed over his forehead and cheek.
Opening his eyes, he found concern mixing with arousal in her expression. Damnit. He kissed her, hating the thought of anything ruining their moment.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered against his lips.
“Not a damn thing.”
She pushed on his chest, and he frowned. But she was smiling, a bit of mischievousness in her eyes. “Turn over,” she said. “And sit against the headboard.”
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
Rixey pushed the pillows upright and settled against them, relief flowing into his back at the change in position. He couldn’t think on that long, though, because she straddled him and sank down onto his cock in one torturously good slide.
One hand on the headboard and one on his shoulder, she rode him, her core sucking him in, her clit rubbing against his stomach, her nipples dragging against his chest. He skimmed his hands up and down her back, grabbing her hips and thrusting deeper when he couldn’t stand the nearly nonexistent distance between them.
“God, Nick, I’m going to come again.”
The words shoved him a giant step toward his own release. “Good. I want to feel it.” He latched on a nipple, sucking and tugging and teasing with his teeth. She moaned and tossed her head back, her body arching against him and the tips of her hair tickling his hands on her hips.
Her muscles squeezed, a slow, sure clamping down on his cock that had him growling low in his throat. “Yes, sunshine. Come all over me.”
She sank all the way down on him, taking him in to the balls, and ground her hips hard and fast against him. Fingers digging into her sweet ass, he rocked her hips forward and backward on his dick, grinding her clit against his stomach.
And then she was coming, groaning, milking his body with her release. Her arousal flowed over him, hot and slick, and he lifted her hips and slammed her down, once, twice, three times. His orgasm was an out-of-control freight train tearing down his spine.
“Fuck, Becca,” he gritted out as his cock erupted inside her. He thrust deep, rocking his hips as his mind and body went to pieces. And then he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest.
BECCA’S HEART BEAT so fast she was almost dizzy. And it wasn’t just because of the incredible sex or the multiple orgasms, though those had been bone-meltingly good. It was because everything about Nick—his touch, his smile, the intense emotion in his eyes—all insisted she wasn’t alone in this crazy, whirlwind connection. Which was really, really good. Since it was really freaking likely she was in love with him.
She might’ve questioned how she could feel something so deeply for someone she’d known for only a couple of days, but Nick had been with her every step of the way through the worst moments of her life. She felt a bond with him she’d never felt with anyone else.
The loneliness, the emptiness, the sense of dislocation she’d felt as, one by one, she’d lost nearly every member of her family? They were mostly gone. When they found Charlie—because they would—she’d be totally whole again.
And it was all because of Nick.
She wrapped her arms around him, one around his back and the other around his head, and held him tight. Words sat on the tip of her tongue, and she had to press her lips to his soft hair to keep them from spilling out. She didn’t want to come off like a lovestruck teenager. Even though inside she kinda felt like one.
He kissed the skin above her heart and pulled back, and then he kissed her. Soft, sweet, worshipful kisses that sent a sheltering cocoon of warmth over her skin. She loved him all affectionate like this.
Slipping his hand between them, he said, “Better deal with this. Be right back.”
She rose off his lap, hating to let him go. He gave her one last kiss as he removed the condom and walked across the room. The dragon on his back seemed almost alive as it moved over his muscles.
Her gaze lit on the full mass of scar tissue on his left hip and upper butt cheek. She’d have to find a way to broach how much pain he’d been in a few moments before. No way she was asking in the middle of sex and risk making him feel bad, but for a moment distress had been clear on his expression.
Her gaze dragged downward. More tattoos adorned his legs, but she could only make out the line of black and blue nautical stars on the outside of his right calf.
Man, he was a fine sight, scars and ink and all. “Nice ass,” she said, her mouth running away with her thoughts.
The laughter he unleashed was the sweetest thing.
Grinning to herself, she settled against the pillows, still warm from his body. He reappeared from the hallway a few moments later, hint of a grin on his lips. Back in bed, he crawled in over her and came to rest with his head on her stomach, his arms wrapping underneath her back.
She ran her fingers through his hair, and his expression was pure contentment.
“What’s the tattoo on your left leg? I could make out the stars, but not the words.”
“It’s says, ‘All Gave Some, Some Gave All.’ ”
Her fingers kept moving, as if his words and the sentiment behind them didn’t lodge a knot in her throat.
A few moments later, he shifted his hips like he was trying to get comfortable. Then again, he was lying on his stomach, which he’d told her bothered his back. “Hey, Nick?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you something?”
His eyes flew open, the lashes tickling her stomach. “Always.”
“How much did your back hurt?”
He released a long breath, his eyebrows making his displeasure at the topic clear. “You could tell?”
She gave him a little smile. “Only because you made a face. Not because of anything you did, which was all amazing, by the way.”
The corner of his lip quirked up. “I didn’t even think . . .” He shrugged his big shoulder. “Being with you today was the first time since . . .” He pressed his face into her stomach with a groan. “It was probably just because of the fight with Beckett.”
Wait. Was he really saying she was the first person he’d had sex with in over a year? “The first time you had sex since you were shot,” she finished for him.