Wren felt herself going under, slipping beneath the surface of consciousness. She fought it, forcing her eyes open, rolling in place to face Stone, who was on his side now. His eyes were hooded, heavy-lidded, burning. Wren extended her hand, fighting the weight of her own limb, to touch his chest, tracing the outline of his pectoral muscle, the tan, hard flesh hot beneath her fingertips. His gaze raked over her, soaking up her body, then returned to meet her eyes.
“You’re so beautiful, especially when you come for me like that.” Stone’s voice was pitched low, barely a murmur, rumbling like distant thunder.
“Stone.” She carved a path down his chest, following the grooves of his cut abdominal muscles. “That was…incredible.”
“It was a start.”
“You finished me off, Stone. I can barely function.” Wren struggled with her drowsing eyelids, forcing them open. “But you…I’m not done with you.”
She touched the tightly rolled and tucked cotton of his towel, which he’d somehow managed to keep around his waist the entire time. The front of the white cotton was tented by his straining erection.
He tensed as she hooked her index finger under the towel at his waist, loosening it. “It doesn’t have to be equal, Wren. I’ll be fine.”
She shook her head floppily. “It’s not about equality. I want…this. You. More.”
His lips quirked in an amused smile. “You’re falling asleep as you talk, babe.”
“Then I should save my energy, shouldn’t I?” She smiled at him, but it was a soft, faint curve of her lips.
She tugged at the towel gently until the ends came apart and he was bare to the air and to her gaze. Wren couldn’t stop a surprised gasp at the size of him, but quickly recovered, closing her fingers around his silky hardness. He gasped, then, as she slid her fist down his length.
Wren marveled as she touched him. Stone had always seemed larger than life to her, massively muscled yet as lithe and graceful in every movement as a lion, rugged and rough-hewn. And now, naked, she could barely fathom the raw power of the man. There was no spare fat on him, no imperfections in his muscular build.
She slid her hand around his cock, exploring him, and each stroke of his taut skin took an absurdly long time to complete. He was watching her with hungry eyes, still, letting her touch without moving, without trying to get more from her.
Sliding closer to him, she tucked her head against his chest and took her time stroking him. She used her fingertips to trace his length, then her fist to squeeze his thickness, now setting a rhythm of achingly slow strokes, thumbing his tip at the apex of the stroke and twisting her hand when she reached his base. He pressed his lips against her hair and kissed, tightened his grip on her shoulders, but otherwise remained completely still. The only sign of arousal was his increasingly ragged breathing. Then, as she began to increase the pace of her hand on him, he bucked his hips, meeting her hand.
A groan escaped him, and then another. “Wren, I’m not going to last much longer.”
“Good,” she murmured. “Let go.”
“All over you?”
She only quickened her pace, until he was gasping and writhing. Wren watched him, gauging. She watched the tip of him leak as he pushed into her fist. Wren was aroused again, turned on just watching him grow frantic, savoring the growl that escaped him when she slowed down, and then let go of him.
Summoning all of her energy, forcing away everything but the need for this, for him, she slid her leg over his hips, clinging to his neck as she positioned him at her entrance.
“Wait, we don’t have a—”
“It’s fine. I’m on Depo.”
“But—” He tried to slow her down, but she wasn’t about to let that happen.
“I promise,” Wren said, sinking him deep inside her. She groaned low in her throat as he filled her, stretched her. “Oh my god, Stone.”
“Shit, Wren.” Stone clutched her hips and held her still as he buried himself to the hilt. “How can anything feel so perfect?”
“That’s what I was thinking.” She pressed her feverish forehead to his chest and arched her back, whimpering as he slid out and buried himself once again. He was still holding her hips so she couldn’t move, and she was growing frustrated, impatient. “Let me go. Let me move.”
Stone chuckled. “I don’t think so, babe. Just lay on me, let me do all the work.”
Wren pressed her mouth to his pectoral and gasped as he set a slow pace. “Fine, but I need more. Faster.”
Stone didn’t answer verbally, only drove into her harder, faster, holding on to the crease of her hips and pulling her against him as he thrust. Wren couldn’t figure out how he was still lasting, since he’d been on the edge when she let go of him, but he was still going, still driving her to madness. She was filled, burgeoning with need, gasping against him, moving unconsciously now, unable to stop the fluttering of her hips as she swelled closer and closer to a second climax.
Only her hips moved, the rest of her was boneless on top of him, and now her muscles tensed, coiled, and then she felt something break inside her, burst open and detonate. She stifled a scream against his skin, and then he was there with her, moaning and pulling her down on him, driving into her relentlessly, and she felt herself filled by him as he released, coming inside her with a primal growl in her ear.
They moved together for long minutes more, milking their united climaxes, slick and sated and exhausted.
When they were both about to pass out, Stone shifted Wren so she was cradled in his embrace. “God, Wren. You’re fucking amazing.”
“Mmmm. So are you.” She could barely form words.
Even through her exhaustion, however, she felt the ache, the chemical need, the drowning desperation. She’d managed to push it away long enough to be with Stone, but now it was coming back with a vengeance. She shivered, cold now, and violently nauseous, but too exhausted to move.
Stone’s arms clutched her tighter as she shook, and then he reached down to pull the blanket over them. “You’re sick, babe.”
“It’s worse, all of a sudden.” She swallowed hard against the rising of her gorge. “It was bad, before, but now…oh God, I don’t want this. I hate this. Make it stop, Stone.”
Stone groaned. “I knew I shouldn’t have let us—”
“No.” Wren forced herself to move, to meet his gaze. “No. I wanted that. I
“But now you’re even sicker. You needed that energy to fight the withdrawal.”
“I needed you emotionally, even more.” She wished she could express what making love to him had meant to her, but she was too tired to think anymore, too burned out and too sick to speak anymore. “Just…hold me.”
“That I can do.”
“Don’t let him get me again.” It was her last thought.
She heard him curse. “Never. Never.”
Blackness swarmed through her, sucked her under, and this time she welcomed it.
13
Stone held Wren in his arms, beyond exhausted but unable to fall asleep. She shook intermittently, her skin feverish. She moaned now and then, rolled away and then back, restless. Her fingers dug into her skin as she tried to scratch away things that weren’t there.
He’d known she was starting to feel withdrawal from the heroin Cervantes had forced on her, but he didn’t realize how bad it was until she’d collapsed in his arms after they’d made love. She was absolutely limp, yet unable to stop shaking, whimpering from the ache in her bones.
Part of him felt guilty, like he’d taken advantage of her somehow, but he knew that wasn’t the case. She’d wanted him, beyond the need for safety as her rescuer. She wanted him, as a man. And having wanted her back for so long, he couldn’t resist, and couldn’t keep inventing reasons to try.
