“Tell me to stop,” he breathes, barely recognizable, nothing like the clipped, controlled instructor I know. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
“Never,” I say, and then I’m pressing myself harder against him, chasing the delicious pressure building low in my belly. His grip on my thighs tightens in response, and the groan that tears out of him makes me want to hear it again, and again, and again.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he tells me, his eyes still closed, as if it’s taking everything in him to continue. “I’ve been fighting this since the Fury Loop. Since before then, if I’m being honest.”
When he opens his eyes, they’re so open that all I can see is a man who confessed everything, who laid his weapons down and allowed himself to be bare before me.
“Then stop fighting.” I press my palm against his chest, right over his heartbeat. “You don’t have to be armed against me. I’ve felt how hot you burn, and you’ve never scorched me, not even once.”
Then his hands are everywhere, tracing my waist, my back, and my thighs. Each touch is awed and starving at the same time, like he’s spent years learning how to take a person apart and is just discovering what it feels like to want to put someone back together.
I want to be the one he puts back together, and the thought’s so big and terrifying that I kiss him harder to keep it from swallowing me whole.
Not breaking the kiss, he walks us to shallower water. His steps are careful and unhurried, like he’s afraid that if he moves too fast, he’ll wake up and I’ll be gone. My fingers trace the back of his neck, and his grip on my thighs tightens in response, a reflexive squeeze that sends heat pooling low in my stomach.
My back meets the soft moss growing at the water’s edge, as if it was made for this moment, and then he’s settling over me, the weight of him grounding and real. I feel every inch where we’re pressed together—his chest against mine, his hips between my thighs, and the hard planes of his stomach tensing against my skin every time he breathes.
But instead of pressing forward, he brushes wet hair from my face with fingers so gentle I barely feel them, looking at me like I’m the first good thing he’s let himself want in years.
My head spins. Because the man who kills without regret and sleeps with blades within arm’s reach is looking at me like I’m made of glass, and I don’t know what to do with a tenderness this big coming from hands this dangerous.
“You’re shaking,” I whisper, gazing up at him as if the moonlight can pull truths straight from his soul.
“I’m terrified.” He says it like a confession, his mouth barely an inch from mine. “Steel doesn’t lie, and neither do I. The way I feel about you terrifies me more than anything I’ve ever fought.”
“And what do you feel?” I ask, not wanting to push him, but also not sure when we’ll have a moment like this again.
“I feel like I’ve been at war with myself for years, and you’re the first thing that’s made me want peace.”
He holds my gaze, steady and unflinching, as if he’s handing me the most unguarded part of himself and trusting me not to cut him with it.
The words take my breath away, so I just reach up and trace the line of his jaw, and he turns his face into my palm, pressing his lips against its center. The gesture’s so quiet and unlike him that my chest aches with the weight of it.
Kieran Cross, combat instructor at Blaze Academy with seventy-three kills inked on his skin, currently positioned between my thighs in a way that suggests he intends for me to become number seventy-four, except the death will be metaphorical and involve significantly more pleasure.
I arch into him, and he groans against my throat, like I broke through his last line of his defense. His hips press forward, and I feel him at my entrance, separated by two thin layers of soaked fabric. The length of him pressed against me makes my breath hitch, and my hips roll to his before I can stop them.
The pressure’s maddening, and not nearly enough.
“More,” I breathe, and then he rocks against me, slow and deliberate, and I cry out at the friction.
He does it again, harder this time, his hand sliding up to grip the back of my thigh and hitch it higher on his hip, changing the angle until the next roll of his hips drags him right against my center and my vision whites out.
“Are you sure?” He searches my face, the vulnerability in his eyes looking foreign on him.
“Yes,” I say, not breaking his gaze. “I’m sure.”
Then his hand’s sliding between us, his fingers finding where I’m swollen and aching even through the fabric. He presses down, rubbing in slow circles, and my back arches off the moss, my hips chasing his fingers as the pressure builds until I can’t do anything except grip his shoulders and hold on.
The sensation sends me spiraling until I shatter from his touch, my body clenching as I cry out against his shoulder.
His groan vibrates against my throat, and then he’s pulling fabric down, freeing himself, and positioning himself so theblunt heat of him nudges my entrance, making every muscle in my body tighten with want. He’s hot against me, and the first brush of bare skin on bare skin tears a sound from both of us that echoes off the water.
He freezes there, shaking, his breath is coming in short, sharp bursts. His eyes squeeze shut, and he rests his forehead on mine, every part of him pressed against me for one endless moment. Everywhere our bodies touch, his heart’s pounding so hard it might be mine, and the restraint he’s holding onto is visible in every locked muscle and tense fist planted in the moss beside my head.
I want this. Not just physically, but in the deep, marrow-level way that has nothing to do with friction or heat and everything to do with the fact that this man held me while I cried about my brother, called my stubbornness strength, and chose to stay when every instinct told him to run.
Now, he’s one push from being inside me, and my thighs tighten around him, my body straining toward his.