Page 105

My body is drained both emotionally and physically, but as I said earlier, we need this.
I need to express how grateful I am for what he did to protect Tillie, and he needs to know that protecting someone you love no matter the cost doesn’t make you a monster.
“Let us have this. They”—I point to the door I know he checked twice before coming to find me—“can have us tomorrow. But tonight… tonight is about us. Y-you…” I choke on a sob, and Ark is at my side in an instant.
“Don’t. God.” He breathes out slowly, his chest rising and falling faster than his mind works through the words he’s struggling to express. “The thought of you being scared of me. It’s killing me, Mara. I’ll… I’ll never forgive myself if I’ve scared you.”
“Why in the world would I be scared of you? I love you, Ark.”
“Don’t. Fuck,” he repeats. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you?—”
I end his lies by propelling onto my tippy-toes and kissing him.
He hesitates for barely a second before he returns my embrace with just as much devotion, love, and respect. Our kiss is soul-stealing, above and beyond anything we shared.
His sacrifice gave us this.
After kissing me so tenderly I feel dizzy, Ark drags his lips down my chin and along my neck before he buries his nose into my loose locks and inhales deeply.
I washed my hair every day for a week, waiting for this moment.
“You smell”—I wait for the praise that always boosts my confidence. I get that and so much more when he finishes his sentence—“like home.”
As we reacquaint our lips, we stumble back until the mattress folds my knees out from beneath me and I fall backward.
Ark catches me with one arm while the other gathers my wrists and pins them above my head. I squirm when the mostintimate parts of our bodies collide before I rock my hips, grinding against the girth his pants are struggling to contain.
I barely get in two grinds when Ark’s focus shifts lower. After pulling down on the cups of my bra, he licks my nipples and grazes them with his teeth before his five o’clock shadow tickles the squishy part of my stomach I’ve not been able to shed since giving birth.
My legs scissor when he kisses each little mark Tillie’s growth caused my skin. His admiration is unmissable, and it has me teetering toward the brink of ecstasy.
Ark’s thrilling kisses stop at the edge of my panties. He lifts his eyes to my face, searing me in place with a hungry stare, before he does something unexpected.
He frees my hands.
I keep them locked together and above my head when his focus shifts back to adoring my body. He kisses the bow at the top of my panties before he slowly peels them down my legs.
A tinge of self-consciousness should plague me when he stares at my pussy, but it doesn’t. His stare is too hungry, too admiring, to instigate something as worthless as shame.
The praise I was seeking earlier bears down on me when he says, “You smell so fucking good.” He closes his eyes, enhancing his senses, before he flares his nostrils, sucking in the scent of my near arousal.
When his eyes open, the panic behind them earlier is gone, replaced with lust.
“I want to taste you again. Can I?”
The needy rumble of his deep timbre darts through my body, making me shake when I nod.
“Tell me, baby. Give me your words.”
My nerves are too low to be heard in my voice. They’re clustering in my pussy. “I want you to eat me, Ark. I need you to.”
With a smirk that will highlight my dreams for years to come, he runs his index finger down the seam of my pussy before he teases my clit with his thumb.
“You have such a beautiful pussy, Mara. So pretty and pink.”
My pussy sucks around him when he lowers his thumb and dips it ever so slightly into my pussy. He watches me under hooded lids, his body thrumming with as much excitement as mine is being bombarded with.
“I’ll get you off like this first before bringing you to climax on my face. I need you wet enough so that my prickles don’t chafe you when I eat you for dessert.”