Page 127 of Cara

I nod shakily, worrying my lip, frustrated by how quickly my body can lose steam. “I'm sorry.”

“No, I'm sorry,” he says. “I’ve been too rough?—”

“No, I like this. I… I like this with you. I just have… things that trigger me sometimes.”

He closes his eyes, catching his breath. I watch him wrestle with that harsh statement in his mind, the horrible things he’s seeing, and wanting to erase them from his memory, I caress his jaw tenderly. “Do you still want this?”

“You?” His eyes clear. “Always.”

“Then, I need you to continue, just like you were. I need you to bring me there.”

It feels like an impossible request at first, as he kisses me, coaxing my mouth open with a slip of his tongue. Slow and sweet, letting me find security sealed in his arms, he lets his hands roam only after I’ve clamped my legs around his hips. Every graze meets sensitive flesh.

I'm not even sure how long we’ve been at this anymore.

Time suspends when he’s inside of me.

“Hold me,” he begs. “Touch me.”

Burying my hands in the damp roots of his hair, I drag my fingers through the silky curls until they cascade over his shoulders, tracing the wide expanse of his back. Lingering on some of the healed scars marring his skin, I find desire in his intense gaze that doesn’t leave me. His dark brows wince with relief when my eyes roll back just as he pitches his hips, knocking me flat with a single thrust.

In our craze before, we lost ourselves in bodily pleasure, pushed to each decision by a reaction. We find that hunger again through our eyes alone, in our fused souls, stretching to reach the other.

In merged breaths as our lips meet.

Xavier fucks me deeply into entangled sheets, his strokes fluid and fast, both gentle and rough, discovering an exquisite median we can both handle.

“I’ll always find you,” he breathes.

Already aware of what he really means, I urge him deeper, hands digging into his firm backside. “Only you.”

He agrees, ramming his response. “Only. Me.”

His mouth is a ravaging force, driving my head into the mattress as he licks deep past my lips before pulling on my bottom lip, claiming me again, never missing a single rhythmic thrust. “Give it to me. Give me what I want, baby.”

My smile widens, overheated but too desperate to care. “Don’t stop.”

He captures the nape of my neck to ground me, placing a hand beside my head to steady himself as he drives us to the brink of this. Our chests heave for the air we’ve forsaken. He is trembling as badly as I am, and we haven’t lost ourselves yet.

That delicious pull of ecstasy is all I have left, and I’ll give it all to him, push myself wherever I need to go to get there with him. Already too sensitive from the previous brinks he’s made me reach tonight, this orgasm builds with exquisite raw pain, evoking whimpers rather than moans. My hands claw at him, desperate to feel that pleasure again. “Xavier.”

He moans.

I whisper it again, breathing the name intimately into his mouth, and he does it again.

God, I love him.

Ilovehim.

It’s that singular thought that does me in, that makes me shake so hard my teeth rattle, my spine arching from the mattress as all of those nerves spasm with a violence that urges him into his own release, shuddering deeply as he pumps himself into me.

We collapse into a state of exhaustion.

Gazing at the piped ceiling, my chest heaves as I experience the toll that hours of pleasure can take on a person.

Lying next to me, Xavier’s arm extends over my stomach as he catches his breath, his cheek resting against the mattress. He acts before I can, his bronzed face glowing with fulfilled desire as he kneels, stretching across the bed to grab a tissue from the nightstand.

Too sluggish to react when he first pushes my legs apart, I expose myself to him. Only when his jaw tightens and his eyes darken multiple shades in mere seconds do I understand what he’s seeing.