Page 116 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

“I know.”

“No schedule, Rocco.”

“I turned off my phone.”

That surprises me enough to make me smile. “Voluntarily?”

“Grant has instructions not to contact me unless someone is dying.”

“How romantic.”

I slide my hands beneath his jacket and push it from his shoulders. The rose quartz remains in my palm. Rocco takes it from me and places it beside our rings on the bedside table. Then he returns to stand between my knees.

We begin with breath.

The practice once made him impatient because stillness required a different kind of control from the vigilance he understood. Now he relaxes into it with me. His gaze holds mine as our breathing falls into rhythm, each slow inhalation building awareness rather than releasing it.

His hands rest on my thighs through the embroidered fabric. Neither of us rushes.

I feel the warmth of his palms, the rise and fall of his chest, and the desire gathering between us. He lets me feel every stage of his restraint, not as distance, but as attention held so completely that nothing exists beyond the two of us.

When I reach for the buttons of his shirt, he catches my hand.

“Stay with me.”

“I’m here.”

His eyes darken. “All of you.”

I understand.

I stop anticipating what comes next and allow myself to experience what is happening now. His thumb moving across my wrist. The pressure of his knees against mine. The pulse beating low in my body as he draws a slow breath and I follow. Only then does he release my hand.

I open his shirt one button at a time. He unfastens the hidden closures along the back of my dress with the patience of a man dismantling something intricate. The bodice loosens, and cool air moves across my skin before his hands replace it.

Rocco lowers his mouth to the center of my chest. The kiss is soft. The next is not.

Heat spreads beneath my skin as he works the dress down my body, revealing me gradually while his attention remains fixed on every response. When the gown gathers around my feet, he lifts me from it and carries me to the bed wearing only my silk undergarments and the shoes Chloe insisted completed the dress.

His gaze travels down my body.

“Shoes stay on,” he says.

“That doesn’t sound very spiritual.”

“It isn’t.”

I laugh, but the sound catches when his mouth closes over my nipple through the silk. My fingers grip his shoulders as he draws the fabric aside and uses his tongue with slow, devastating concentration.

Nothing about the practice diminishes the hunger between us. It intensifies it.

Every touch becomes deliberate. Every pause leaves room for sensation to spread before the next one begins. Rocco watches my face while his hand moves between my thighs, learning me again as though a year together has not exhausted his need to discover more.

It never will.

By the time he enters me, we are both trembling. He holds himself still inside me while I wrap my legs around his waist. His forehead rests against mine, our breath breaking and finding its rhythm again.

“Look at me,” he says.