Page 162 of One Wild Wish

The need to stay connected shook me, and he was rock hard, nowhere near satiated.

I took charge, riding him—breasts bouncing, back arching—until I fractured again. His shoulder was pink from where I’d bitten him. My peaked nipples shone from his greedy mouth.

More. More. More.

He still hadn’t come again. Grunting, he flipped us so my ass was in the air, and he plunged back inside me in one punishing stroke.

The force knocked me forward. “Are you going for a world record?”

“Can’t get enough.” More thrusts. Deeper.

A moan tore from my chest. “God, you’re thick.”

“You’re so damn tight. Perfect.”

He used his fingers, sliding them under me, rubbing maddening circles as our skin slapped. It took no time, my other orgasms feeding into this one. My arms quivered, my strangled cries an erotic symphony. He pulsed against my inner walls, a second from playing his own crescendo. Except he didn’t.

Grunting, he flipped us again—me on my back, him over me—seating himself to the hilt. I should have been boneless, nothing left after the pleasure he’d wrenched from me, but a feral hunger flashed in his eyes. He was pumping fast, using my body to seek his pleasure. I wanted him to use me, to wring his own release from my body, because I was his to use, as he was mine.

I felt him swell, the hot length of him thickening into a steel rod. His strokes grew more frenzied. Sweat glinted on his brow. Then he pulled out. One hand branding my hip, he stroked himself with the other, coming on my belly and breasts and chest, long spurts that had him shaking.

His features sharpened, a primal growl rumbling from his throat as he touched my stomach, dragged his fingers through his release. “So hot.”

More like scorching.

Enraptured, I joined him, reveling in the odd sensation of his warm seed drying on my skin. I couldn’t look away from his markings on me. “Watching you like that was unreal.” His cock still jutted proudly, a job well done. “You better put that thing away. I’m tapped out. There’s nothing left.”

He grabbed his boxers and cleaned me up best he could. “Let’s shower.”

After a much needed soak, we flopped back onto his bed. The sheets were a mess, both of us naked and spread-eagled on our backs. Owen’s solid muscle was spent and sprawled beside me. My body felt heavy, all the best places tender. “If we keep this up, I’ll never have to visit the gym again.”

“Challenge accepted.” He lifted my hand to his lips and dropped a sweet kiss on my knuckles. “Best sex of my life.”

My ego took a bow. “I mean, the sex was okay and everything, not my worst , but that dance was amazing.”

He read my sarcasm plain as day, exhaustion coloring his laugh. “I know learning my divorce details was hard. I wanted to do something special for you—hoped to show you what you mean to me.”

I loved how his lazy voice lilted into his often-hidden twang. “It was perfect.”

Releasing a contented sigh, I lolled my head from side to side. My sights landed on the jar of glass on his night table. I hadn’t outright asked about it since that first time. It seemed personal to him, something he didn’t often discuss, but I wanted to know Owen. “Are the glass shards from where you grew up?”

The room was dark save for a glow from a corner lamp. A light scritch of leaves tapped against his bedroom window. He followed my gaze and reached for the container, bringing it to rest on his chest while tucking me into his side. “Yeah. The hippie commune. I collected them from a beach we visited, and then from others later.”

He picked up a blue piece and turned it in his hand, then dropped it with a plunk back inside. More words followed, his quiet memories filling the room. He told me about the last day he’d seen his mother, and the riddle she’d spoken. Musings about feeling untethered in her world. How he’d scoured the beach for glass afterward, had collected it for the next few years, spending hours on sandy stretches, picking through twigs and rocks and garbage. He even shared how he’d bawled his eyes out to his grandmother, mountains of hate and hurt left in his mother’s wake.

Gone was the intense desire from our evening, the air swelling with the wayward world of a lost twelve-year-old boy.

But he was older now, a strong man who’d been abandoned by the one person who should have loved him unconditionally. Somehow, he turned that tragedy around and became sweet and loyal and loving, but my heart squeezed for what he’d endured.

I took a piece of glass, letting the smooth edges bite into my thumb. “Why’d you keep it?”

Easing the glass from my hand, he moved the jar and shifted me on my back. He leaned on his forearm over me. Using the shard, he traced a line from my belly to my breastbone, painted invisible strokes along my lips and nose and brow.

He finished by placing it over my thrumming heart. “I kept them because I believed I’d find someone who had a piece of glass that would fit with mine. That I’d meet a woman who made me feel whole and loved and wanted. Probably some weird Oedipus complex I’d rather not interpret, but that’s why I never tossed it.” His voice roughened, scratched up with his history and the baring of his soul. “The second I saw your eyes, Ainsley, they reminded me of the glass. I get lost looking at you sometimes.”

My throat burned, and I bit my lip. “What I feel for you scares me to death.”

“Baby, I know. I’m nervous, too. But this is right. We’re right.”