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But this time, they were skin to skin. With all that light between them, so there was no hiding.

There were only the two of them, naked. Maskless.

And Jonas lost himself in the only place he’d ever been found.

He took it slow, making sure that he returned the favor she’d given him. He got his mouth on every last inch of her body.

And by the time he finally pulled her beneath him again, her breath sounded like sobs. She’d taken to cursing him, and he grinned at her, braced there above her.

“Patience, Bethan,” he told her. Piously.

He loved it when her green eyes blazed fire at him. And when she went so far as to call him a selection of ugly names.

“That’s remarkably impolite,” he chided her.

“Why don’t you go f—”

But he thrust in, deep.

She arched against him, the curse she’d been throwing at him shifting into a kind of scream.

And only when she finished shaking did he begin to move.

He still took it slow, but he didn’t take it easy on her.

Because this was Bethan, perfect in every way. Beautiful beyond imagining and every last part of her strong, capable, and gorgeous. She could amaze him with her hair down to capture the light, and she could take him and all his dark demands.

And he knew with every impossibly deep thrust, every time she met him and groaned out her pleasure, that this was real.

Raw.

Something like magic, changing them both by the second.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on tight.

Jonas lost his pace, his rhythm.

Then he burst into flame, consuming them both, until there was nothing but the glory of it. And her voice in his ear as they both hurtled straight on into the center of the sun, whispering his name.

He could normally track time to the second, but he lost any claim on it as they lay there, tangled up together in the warmth and brightness of this soft, sweet cabin of hers. He wanted to protest when she stirred, and had no idea how he managed to keep it to himself. Particularly when she sat up, then looked back over her shoulder at him, smiling at him in a way that made his heart hitch.

Another thing he refused to think about. Not now.

“Stay there,” she said as she got to her feet.

He obliged, watching her as she moved, swift and lovely, over to the side door of her cabin. She pulled on a long coat that hung on a peg there, stamped her feet into boiled wool boots beneath it, and grinned at him when all he did was stare.

“I have my own hot tub,” she said. “We never got to use the one in California, did we? I started the fire earlier, but let me check the water.”

She slipped out the door. Jonas rolled to his feet, then stood there, naked. All the pastels were getting to him, because he found it all... soothing.

Meanwhile, his heart was a problem behind his ribs. His head was spinning, like he was drunk again. When he was never drunk.

Only with her, something in him whispered.

She came back in, bringing a gust of cooler air with her, and only grinned at whatever expression he had on his face as she shrugged out of her coat and kicked off the boots.

He braced himself, because surely now would be the time for discussions he didn’t want to have. Surely she would demand... more vulnerability, if that were possible. Things he didn’t have in him. Places he couldn’t go.