Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
When she met his gaze with him buried completely inside her, with her hips undulating in a rhythm that was entirely her own, she created an intimacy so acute it disarmed him.
No one had ever looked at him like that.
His hands moved from her hips to her waist, palms sliding up her ribs, thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts. She covered his hands with her own, pulling his touch where she needed it most, pressing his palms harder against her skin, as she increased her pace.
The slick, rhythmic sound of their joining filled the room alongside ragged breaths and muffled cries. She rode him with growing urgency, her thighs trembling, her inner walls clenching around his shaft in irregular, fluttering spasms that told him she was close.
He planted his feet flat on the mattress and thrust upward to meet her, driving deeper, hitting the spot that made her scream in ecstasy.
Her rhythm faltered as her body tightened around him in a spiraling grip that stole every remaining thought from his head. “Jack.” Her voice cracked between his name and another moan. “I love you.”
The words landed, solid and irreversible, forged to his heart with heat and conviction and the unmistakable timbre of truth.
He pulled her to him, wrapping her tightly in his arms, her chest flush against his, as their hips moved in frantic, graceless synchrony. His lips traced her lips, her eyes. He kissed every inch of her face as her heartbeat slammed against his, their pulses trading places in a rapid give and take.
“I love you.” He said it into her lips. It was more than a confession. It was a covenant, whispered between souls.
Her inner walls seized around him in a fist of liquid heat, so sudden and so fierce that the air punched from his lungs. Her spine arched off his chest, her nails biting crescents into his shoulders, and the sound that tore from her throat climbed the high ceilings and filled every corner of the room.
He gripped her hips as her thighs clamped around his. His arms slid up her back, holding her tight to him, as her body convulsed in rhythmic, clenching waves that rippled along his buried length.
His vision dissolved to white as he followed her over the edge, the wild percussion of her heart slamming against his own. His arms locked around her as his hips drove upward in three final, shuddering thrusts that buried him so deep he couldn’t tell where his body ended, and hers began.
Hot, pulsing waves fled his body, wringing sounds from his chest he didn’t recognize, guttural and broken and raw. He buried his face against her neck as his fingers knotted in her hair.
They stayed like that for an eternity, gasping each time the lingering pleasure spiked with another jolting little wave. Slowly, the tremors subsided, and his length softened still inside her.
His arms did not loosen, and her fingers never left his skin as she traced slowly over his raised flesh as if memorizing every hidden part of him. Their breathing slowed in tandem, ragged edges smoothing into something sustainable, something that could carry them through the next minute and the one after that and all the minutes that followed.
She pulled back just enough to meet his gaze, a content smile softening her face.
She traced a slow line down the bridge of his nose with her fingertip, over the bow of his upper lip, along the stubbled ridge of his jaw. He turned his face into her palm and pressed a kiss there, right at the center, where her lifeline carved its deepest groove.
“I love you,” he whispered against her skin.
She settled back on his chest, nestling into him. “I love you too.”
The morning settled around them. Curtains billowed in the rising humidity as a songbird sang its territorial claim.
Jack eased her into the crook of his arm, her cheek against his chest, fingers resting lightly on the scar above his heart. That was where he felt her most. In the hollowed cavity of his chest that had only ever known injustice and pain. Somehow, she pushed it all aside and spread something light where darkness had always been.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Above the Clouds
Jasmine…
The scent reached her before consciousness did, threading through the gauze of dreamless sleep like a gentle hand coaxing her toward the surface. Daisy opened her eyes to a room washed in pale gold, where ivory curtains swayed against tall windows and light pooled on the walnut floor.
She had slept. Not the fractured, haunted sleep that left her exhausted for weeks, but the deep, boneless surrender of a body that had finally stopped fighting.
Steam billowed from the bathroom in a fragrant cloud as Jack emerged, dark hair slicked back from his face and beads of water clinging to his shoulders. A white towel clung to his tapered hips, drawing her eye to the carved lines of muscle that shaped from his abdomen.