He knew that.
She sat there, waiting, in the dying rays of the sun, wondering what had changed that he would do this and risk what they had, thinking she’d miss him if it had to end.
But then, it had been a while.
Maybe too long.
Maybe it was time...
She heard his footsteps crunch on the gravel driveway, and then he was there, standing awkwardly in the half-light, as if knowing he’d crossed some invisible threshold.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice unusually thick. “Rough day...”
And suddenly she didn’t need an explanation to understand because his stumbled words and his tortured eyes told her all she needed to know. “It doesn’t matter,” she said with a reassuring smile, as she stood and wove the fingers of one hand through his.
Because, even in the fading light, she could see the torment that was etched in his face and feel the pain that had brought him here. She pushed herself higher and pressed her lips to his.
It didn’t matter that he’d broken the rules, not this one time.
Not when she knew how to fix him.
They didn’t make it to the bedroom. They didn’t make it inside. Her kiss was the trigger that unleashed something inside him, something untamed and wild. Primal. He growled and tugged her to him, his fingers tangling in the hair behind her head, his hot mouth meshing with hers, his tongue urging hers into the dance. She felt the knot at her nape come undone and the heavy tide of her hair roll down her back, while his hands – his big, beautiful hands – followed it, palming their way down her spine and lower, his long fingers squeezing the cheeks of her behind so she tingled with the press of his fingertips so close to her heated core.
A flock of black cockatoos screeched their way across the darkening sky as the light around them shifted, the colour leeching out of the day as he rocked her hips against the swell of his erection. He made a sound low in his throat, half a guttural cry of desperation half an admission of need, and then his hands were working at her clothes, frantically pulling at the buttons of her painting shirt and shrugging it over her shoulders and letting it fall to the ground without letting his mouth lose hers.
Her naked breasts firmed in the whisper of warm evening air, her nipples tight buds even before his hands found them. She sighed in his mouth as he cupped them, tweaking their aching tips, before his hands skimmed down her belly to find the snap at her waist and wrench the zipper, and her shorts and underwear were down before he began shedding his own clothing.
He was like a blind man, a man lost in a dark room and searching for the light. Or a diver out of oxygen, desperate to reach for the surface before his lungs exploded. He wasn’t like the others. He didn’t need her entertainment or her flattery. He just needed to be inside her.
And as she let herself lose her shorts and her sandals, she knew all she had to do was to be there until the storm passed and the tension in his body that was bending him into knots was gone.
She felt herself pulled into his arms again, his seeking cock colliding with her belly, as his tongue plunged deep in her mouth, his fingers clenched tight in the cheeks of her ass as he lifted her from the ground and spun her around towards the studio. The sunset-warmed glass met her back as he pressed her against the glass, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his heated neck, while his hot tongue swept circles around her nipples and his erection pressing hard and insistent at her slickened entrance, until she was swept up in the whirlpool of sensations, and she whimpered with the conflicting pleasure and pain of it.
He didn’t make her wait. His hands on her hips, he drew her down his length, each inch adding to the delicious fullness, and she shuddered at the sheer bliss of the connection.
His tortured eyes collided with hers as he lifted her slowly upwards.
“Ava,” he ground out, as he held her there momentarily, before he surged upwards at the same time he pulled her down hard. “Ava.”
He was like a storm unleashed after the calm, wild and savage. Elemental. But even as he thrust into her, even as her blood turned to mercury in the rush of heat from that delicious friction, that look in his eyes sent that cold lick of fear down her spine again. This was not how it was between them. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
The realisation faded, increasingly blurred and indistinct until it was snuffed out by the sensations unfurling and blossoming inside her, sensations building as wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her, taking her with them, higher and higher. Until there was nowhere left to go, nothing there to hang onto, and one final powerful thrust of his hips launched her over the brink, and sent her spinning through a universe of sparkling lights in a velvet sky.
Gradually the shudders subsided as she floated back to her world, her ability to detect detail returning. Bit by bit she became aware of her pounding heartbeat, of his fractured breathing, and of the puff of his hot breath against her heated skin; the whiskers of his jaw that rasped against her skin where he rested his head in the crook of her shoulder, his fingers uncurling from her flesh as she unwound her legs from his waist. Tentatively, she tested her land legs. Her knees wobbled but didn’t buckle. This was good.
He lifted his head and pressed his hand
