Giving up, she took a deep breath, shuddering again as the action lifted her breasts to brush the firm wall of his chest and sensation rippled through her. She nodded.
He smiled down at her, his expression so kind and understanding that her heart swelled. Then he kissed one corner of her mouth, followed by the other, and finally the center, slipping his tongue inside for a long, leisurely exploration.
Lower, he caressed her waist and hip, the inside of her thighs. Gently, he pushed them apart, making even more room for himself. Room to move and rub and drive her crazy.
Still kissing her senseless, urged on by her fingers in his hair and her nails raking his scalp, he cupped her rear in one hand, her feminine mound in the other. She moaned into his mouth, writhing against him, straining even more as his fingers teased her swollen folds.
She was wet with desire, growing even more so as he tormented her relentlessly. Rubbing, kneading, mimicking with his hand what she wished he were already doing with his strong, hard body.
“Reid,” she panted, her voice little more than a thready whisper. “Please.”
“Done with the foreplay, huh?”
She felt his grin as he brushed the sandpaper roughness of one cheek against her own.
She gave a strangled laugh. “Hours ago. I didn’t need it to begin with.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so,” he all but growled.
Bending her knees and hitching her legs at his hips, he found her slick opening with the tip of his shaft and slid inside in one slow, easy glide.
She sucked in a sharp breath and held it as his size, his heat, the fullness of his entry swamped her.
“Okay?” he asked just above her ear, his own breath sawing in and out raggedly.
In answer, she gave a long moan and tightened her legs around his waist.
He chuckled. Or attempted to, anyway. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him even closer, arching her pelvis and giving her inner muscles an encouraging squeeze. “Yesss.”
Reid muttered a curse, lips peeling back from his straight white teeth and eyes nearly rolling in their sockets. In the next moment, he was moving, thrusting with smooth, powerful strokes. Each time he withdrew, she wanted to whimper at the loss. Each time he filled her again, she wanted to cry out in ecstasy.
Pressure and sensation built, first flowing outward like the ripples of a pond after a pebble has been thrown in, then winding tighter and tighter like the coils of a spring. She scored his back with her nails, afraid she would leave welts but unable to control herself.
Reid’s own hands seemed to be everywhere at once. He clutched her shoulders before running his palms down either side of her spine, cupping her bottom, roving back up to her waist and around to plump her breasts, plucking the nipples until every nerve in her body sat up and took notice.
For long minutes, only the sounds of their heavy, staccato breathing and their bodies moving in tandem filled the room. She thought she tasted blood from where she was biting so hard on her lower lip, her head thrown back in growing ecstasy.
She clutched at him, panting, desperate, murmuring his name over and over as she strained for what she needed. That pinnacle of pleasure only he could give her, but that he was holding just out of reach.
And then Reid’s own grip on her tightened, a steel-like vise of fingers on flesh while he drove into her. Hard, fast, deep—so good it brought stars to her eyes.
Her climax, when it came, hit her like a runaway train. Out of nowhere and with enough force to bow her spine and push her into the mattress while Reid stiffened above her and pressed her down even more.
He collapsed atop her on a long, satisfied sigh. His weight blanketed her. A hot, heavy blanket that should have been smothering but instead made her feel safe, enveloped, content enough to remain this way forever.
Reid started to shift, pulling out of her and rolling to his side. A tiny part of her cried, No, no, please not yet. Please don’t let it be over just yet.
But instead of getting up, instead of leaving her in the bed alone, he tugged her close, wrapping his arm around her and draping her across his chest.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said in a dry, graveled voice near her temple, “but I’m going to stay for a while.”
The part of her that had panicked a moment before did a happy little flip-flop, grinning like a girl who’d discovered her birthday party included pony rides.
“If your sisters come home, I’ll hide in the closet.”
That reminder burst one of her birthday balloons. Pushing it aside, she held on to her happiness as tight as she could and responded with something she knew he would find amusing.
“Mind if I hide in there with you?”