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He held me with one hand on my hips, guiding both of us back into each other each time we came apart, and one hand around my front, wrapped around my throat.
He squeezed, and my head felt dizzy but in a way that I was excited by, not anxious about.
“Every fucking time,” he said against my ear, his voice hoarse, “it’s like finding heaven.”
Another release shook my body, and in the haze of it, in the chaos of how unbelievably good it felt, I dropped the vibrator. A second later, it was back on in his hand, significantly reduced power just pulling me through it instead of overstimulating me. He was right—I was getting to a breaking point, a point where I might have to beg for it to stop.
“One more,” he breathed. “You can handle one more.”
“I can’t,” I whined, hooking my hand on the back of his neck as he released mine. Blood flooded my head, and in the fog of the rush, I didn’t notice the power rebuilding in that stupid bit of silicone, didn’t notice how quickly it built up that tension again.
“Attagirl,” he chuckled. His hips bucked against me, stuttering and desperate. “God, love, I’m close. Please, one more, one more.”
There was no controlling it at that point. I couldn’t have decided either way—my body had a mind of its own, and Adrian’s groans and pleas only sent me further and further toward another one. The pressure in me built higher, and higher, and higher.
“Fuck, please, Ava. Need…need you…”
His body gave out at the same time as mine, warmth flooding me from the inside and dripping down onto my sheets. My body broke, convulsed, slammed back into the ground after what felt like a lifetime up in the sky. Pleasure bloomed in every vein, in every corner of my body, and it was too much, too perfect, too heavenly to ever try to capture in words, in paint, in images.
“Breathe, love,” he croaked, shaking me gently as our bodies stilled against each other.
Shit. Yeah.
I caught my breath as he held me, sweat dripping between our bodies, his arms around my front. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t form a coherent thought that wasn’t implanted. Thiswas everything I’d been missing for weeks, everything I’d wanted for years.
The words came out without me even having to choose them.
“I love you,” I said. Outside the window, little specks of snow began to fall, glittering in the sun like tiny, weightless diamonds, sending little rays of light blinking into my room. I wanted to paint them still, and to my utter surprise, it felt like I could.
“I love you, too,” he breathed, kissing my cheek. “I love you, too.”
Chapter 40
Adrian
The saltwater sloshed against the side of the boat, rocking it gently and sending the first hints of cooler air over us.
Laid out on a recliner at the far end of the deck and blocking the last views of the sun dipping below the horizon, Ava rested with a book in her hand, the red of her hair blazing brightly from the last rays of sunlight. Her black bikini and a little sash that tied at her waist were all that covered her, but as the wind hit again, she reached absentmindedly for the towel behind her, feeling blindly with her hand until she could pull it over herself, not wanting to tear her gaze from the book for a second.
It was adorable, really, how she found herself so intensely absorbed by the images in her mind as she read instead of the view beside us. Mountains sprouted where the land met both the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Salerno, with colorful houses and buildings and roads built into the sides of it. Streetlamps kicked on one by one, lighting it beautifully—and yet, she stared at her book.
I leaned back against the worn teak of the sailboat’s deck, the soft creak of wood beneath me blending with the quiet lapping ofthe waves against the hull and the soft cry from the other side of the deck.
“Lucas,” I said quietly, leaning down to my left and stroking the top of his head to get his attention. He looked up at me, tearing his gaze from his handheld games console. “Can you check on the girls for me?”
“Sure,” he grinned, setting his screen to one side and pushing off his chair. He’d had a growth spurt recently, and I tried not to let it bother me that my ten-year-old was almost as tall as my shoulders. He was only a handful of inches shorter than Ava now.
I watched him as he walked across the deck in his bright yellow life vest, sticking out like a sore thumb against the deep brown of the deck and the darkening blue water. He squatted down in front of their swings, distracting both of them enough to calm the little cries from Leah. Or Lucy. It was hard to tell from a distance.
Letting my gaze drift back over to Ava as the sun finally blinked out, I fully expected to find her either still engrossed in her book or watching Lucas and the girls. Instead, I found a set of green eyes looking directly at me.
Hey, I mouthed.
Hi, she grinned.
I nodded my head away from both of us as a quiet request for her to come to me, laughed as she threw her head back and groaned in counterfeit exhaustion. She pushed herself upright and wrapped the towel around her shoulders, walked right past Lucas and placed a little kiss on the top of his head, before finally padding across to me.
Her skin had turned sunkissed in the month we’d spent traveling around Europe, her freckles bolder, her eyes brighter. She was fucking beautiful—in all honesty, she was probably themost beautiful thing I’d seen, outshining every coastline, every work of art in every museum, every setting or rising sun.
