I guide her hand up and down, the sensation of her fingersfinallybeing wrapped around me every bit as fucking perfect as I have pictured so many times. Her eyes find mine, half-lidded. “I can—I want to.”
I kiss her, my teeth nipping at her bottom lip so that she’ll gasp and let me in, so that she’ll let me fuck her with deep strokes of my tongue into the heat of her mouth the same way I want to fuck her pretty cunt. “I shouldn’t, Cora. Not like this,” I tell her when I give us both the chance to breathe again. “You deserve someone who is gentle and slow with you that first time, sweetheart. You deserve—fuck, Cora, tell me to stop.”
“No,” she murmurs against my mouth, my jaw, getting bolder as she touches me. “I’m not scared of you, Aiden.” I groan when her teeth graze my neck, when her hand squeezes me beneath the water. “I like when you teach me things. I like when you touch me. I like when it feels like you need me, too.”
“I do need you, Cora,” I admit. “Fuck, I need you.”
“Then take whatever you need, Aiden,” she tells me, placing a gentle kiss beneath my jaw. “Please.”
I move as fast now as when I’d drawn my gun a week ago. One moment, she’s standing in the water with me, feeling me, begging me to take. Take what I need. Take what I want. Takeher. The next, we’re on the bank, cool ground at her back and the firm press of my body over hers. My fingers tangle in her hairas she arches into me and as my other hand digs into her thigh, wrapping it around my waist.
Her first moan rips free when my mouth closes over her breast through the drenched cotton of her camisole, quickly followed by my frustrated grunt and the sound and feel of ripping fabric. Then my lips, teeth, and tongue are back on her now bare skin.
“Aiden,” she whimpers as I suck hard, her nails digging into my back, not to push me away but to pull me closer. “Aiden, we—”
“I know.” I lift up, kneeling between her legs, releasing her only so that I can take two fistfuls of the fabric clinging to her leg and pull. It tears easily, and I make a satisfied sound at seeing more of her before I slip my right hand between her legs, cupping her firmly beneath the shredded fabric as she lets out an almost broken sob of my name.
“Aiden—” I tear the fabric up the other side, and her freed legs hug my waist before she looks down and sees what she’d only felt before. “Ohfuck.”
I chuckle, both hearing her use that word and the honesty of her reaction breaking through enough to bring me a little more back to myself, to remind me where we are, who we are.
“It’s all right, Cora,” I murmur to her. “Not going to make you take it right away. Need to open up this tight cunt first.” I roll my hips, not able to resist the friction of her against me, and she tries to mimic the movement only once before I grab her waist to still her. “Fuck, don’t. Don’t.” My eyes squeeze shut tight. “You keep doing that and we’re not going to make it back to the cabin.”
She hums happily, her lips skimming my skin, seeking any part of me that she can reach as she mumbles, “Cypress.”
“I know, I want him, too,” I tell her, groaning as I drag myself between her legs one more time, just to torture myself. “Should have brought him with you.”
“I tried,” she says, gasping when I pull her from the ground and into my arms. “But he…he said me showing up here without my dress on would be plenty effective.”
I’m pacing in front of the fire, checking again and again how quickly the daylight is fading outside the windows. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her go alone?
It’s safe here. And if she’s with Aiden, she is taken care of, but what if he hadn’t gone to the creek as I thought? What if Cora is still out there looking for him in unfamiliar woods?
I’m about to grab my gun from the kitchen table when a loud thud slams into the front door and a much softer, surprised laugh follows. I cross quickly, jerking the door open, then have no choice but to jump right back out of the way as Aiden and Cora come tumbling into the room.
“There you are, wolf,” I say with a grin, casually strolling over to the tangled heap now sprawled out on the rug in front of the fireplace.
The two of them are a state to behold. Aiden is beneath her without a stitch of clothing, skin wet and dirt-streaked as if he’d had a tussle getting out of the water. Which, judging by thedrenched, mud-splattered, and torn clothing that hangs from Cora as she straddles Aiden’s waist, I think that’s likely correct.
“Fuck you, Cy,” Aiden grunts, rapidly recovering and flipping her beneath him. “Make yourself fucking useful and help me get her naked.”
I bend to pull Cora’s knife from my boot, handing it over to him along my way to crouch by her head. “Hello again, little bird.”
Her lust-clouded eyes blink up at me, her silky smile radiant even with dirt smearing her cheeks. “Brought him back.”
“Of course you did,” I say warmly, tracing her face with my fingers, my movements a slow counter to Aiden’s rapid pace. The remaining fragments of her underclothes cut away with a deft efficiency as he tears through each strip, careful not to so much as scratch her skin in his haste. As he pulls them away, he tosses them into a sodden heap by the fire until she’s left bare on the rug once he’s done.
“Cypress.”
I look up at Aiden’s call, take in the way his lips are parted, his eyes hot, as he points the blade in my direction.
“Strip,” he orders, then drives the knife into the scarred floor and leaves it trembling there. His focus returns to Cora, his tongue resting on his bottom lip as he drags his palm over each peak and valley of her body. “Want to watch you fuck her first.”
Only with Aiden. With Cora. Only with them have I ever been willing to even temporarily cede control. My past tells me that such a display of trust only ever preceded my near destruction, but here? Now? It only feels like deliverance.
I reach behind me, taking hold of my shirt before tugging it up and over my head. Tossing it to the side, I’m already moving to the button of my trousers when I hear Cora gasp.
The scars.I’d forgotten about them, my own view so clouded by building desire that I had neglected to realize how clear they’d be to her.