I have no clue how he’s managed to twist the most enlightening and empowering moments of my life into that fucked-up shape. It’s cerebral acrobatics I’m not capable of, and I don’t want to be. “Sol, you’ve spent years caring for me without jumping my fucking bones. Without me even knowing you wanted to.”
“I should’ve told you the second you started acting like maybe you wanted me again.”
My heart contracts. “Maybe,” I allow. “But you didn’t drag me down this path. And I know what a minefield I am to be around, even on a good day.”
“Jack—”
“No. I am. And you walked straight into it from the moment I woke up. But for the record, I might not remember the first time we were together, but I remember the second, and the third, and every fucking time after that.”
Sol tears his gaze from where it’s become fixed on some spot beyond me. “Do you remember the last time?”
My blood heats even before my brain bombards me with image after image of the night we spent together before the storm hit.
Skin on skin.
Sol trembling beneath me as I slid inside him.
The raw pleasure on his face as we came together.
“I remember.”
“Did you like it?”
It’s my turn to snort. “If you hadn’t almost died immediately after, it would be all I could think about.”
Sol wets his bottom lip. An unconscious swipe of his tongue that has my hands sliding from his waist to the swell of firm muscle below. “I thought about it in the water. After theSironawent down and I lost Oscar in the waves. But it didn’t seem real.”
“It was real.”
“I know, Jackie. I can feel it thrumming between us now I can keep my eyes open long enough.”
“You feel it, eh?”
“You don’t?”
“Sol, I fucking feel it.” He’s still between my legs. I take full advantage of it and tumble him to the bed before he knows what’s happening.
I’m gentle, though.
Sol likes my weight on him. My rough touch. But he’s still battered and bruised. Still fragile, even if he doesn’t know it. And so I let instinct guide me and roll him gently onto his back before I give in to the consuming need to kiss him. Reclaim him, from the ocean, the gods he believes in, and the royal mess other people’s bad choices have made of his life.
The thrumming he’s talking about fast becomes a burning throb. We grind and kiss, grind and kiss, and I steal his clothes piece by piece, tasting every inch of him before I slide down the bed and swallow his cock.
Sol curses, arching from the bed. His leg curls around my neck and I like it.
I like it a lot.
And I fuckinglovehow he grips my hair. How he rocks deep into my throat, as if he lost the restraint he’s carried all these years to the storm.
He swells in my mouth and I taste his need on my tongue. Feel it in his trembling legs, and the warning he chokes out through a groan.
“Jack, I’m gonna come.”
Nope.
Not yet.
I pull off and lever myself back up the bed. “Can I fuck you?”