Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
“I have you,” Brand promised—and sank down hard against him, that solid weight spreading his thighs to the point of trembling pain and yet weighing him to earth, too, safe and anchoring him before he could fly apart. Brand released his captured wrist to wind both arms around him, lifting Ash up into him. “Hold fast to me.”
Hold fast to me, Brand said…and as Ash wrapped his arms around his shoulders and dug his fingers into his back, began to move.
Slow and deep as the movements of the earth, Brand filled him—a seismic thing, the grinding of mountains, the turn of the tides, time set by the push and pull between them, until Ash could only breathe when Brand was inside him and held himself breathless and taut each time those gliding strokes drew out. He couldn’t see, his vision a haze of colors blurred through tears, turning the night-locked ceiling overhead into darkness and stars. This tide of pleasure would drown him, consume him, submerge him in a sea so dark he would never see light again…and he would let it.
He would let it because Brand felt so good inside him. So right. The pain was perfect, punishment and pleasure in one, tearing out everything that hurt inside him and replacing it with the clean bright pleasure of sensation. He ignited, each time Brand sank deep enough to make him feel as though he would fly apart, every time his depths stretched and ached and burned around the searing caress of flesh to flesh. He sobbed, each time that moment of emptiness inside him left him feeling so alone, so adrift, begging to have that feeling of joining back.
And he curled small against Brand and let the man overwhelm him, wholly giving up control to his every touch.
He wasn’t sure when his lips found Brand’s again. Only that they tasted of tears, and he let himself sink into a kiss that promised he need only surrender. Need only trust. Need only give all of himself, willingly and wholeheartedly, into this strange and dominating man’s firm and grasping hands.
So he gave—rolling up to meet him, moving himself against him, naked flesh against fabric. He gave with his lips. He gave with the touch of his hands burying into Brand’s clothing, his hair, his skin. He gave with his body, as one last stroke of teasing fabric and hard muscle against his aching cock was too much.
And he fell fully and utterly into Brand’s control, as pleasure made his vision white and wet heat spilled inside him in shuddering bursts twin to his own. Tight contractions of flesh to flesh matched the rhythm of his heartbeat, and he tumbled into the dark.
With the taste of his own name sinking into him, drunk again and again from Brand Forsythe’s lips.
CHAPTER NINE
ASH WOKE BEFORE THE DAWN, when the sky was just beginning to lighten with wan color and the crickets had stopped their singing, but the birds hadn’t yet started their counterpoint harmony.
He couldn’t say what woke him. He was sore and tired and warm and safe, sheltered against a hard mass of muscle that made him feel so very small, tucked close against Brand’s sleeping form.
Ash didn’t remember passing out, last night. Only that there had been a quiet haze in the aftermath, dazed and gasping and aching, while Brand gently separated their bodies, carefully tended to the hurt and ache inside Ash, then cradled him close with lips pressed into his hair. Ash must have dozed off like that, curled up naked in Brand’s arms.
And Brand was still here.
He must have stripped some time after Ash had fallen asleep, leaving him shirtless and shoeless, naked save for the slacks Ash could feel brushing against his legs under the covers. His head rested against the pillow, his darkly ashen golden brown hair spilling across the pillow, his eyeglasses laid aside on the nightstand. Even in sleep there was something fierce and sharp about his features, brooding and dark.
Ash lingered, letting himself just look at him, taking in the way his lips parted on sleeping breaths, the way the moonlight pooled in the hollows beneath sharp cheekbones while shadows retreated to gather under the stubborn line of his jaw. Starting just at the base of his throat, above his collarbone, was the jagged line of what looked like an old scar, snaking diagonally down the hard-cut planes of his chest and vanishing beneath the duvet; Ash touched the scar lightly, tracing the subtly different texture, the slick waxiness of something old and long-healed. It had to be old, to be so smooth—and Ash wondered if it was from the car crash, so long ago when Brand had once been young.
He’d never seen Brand so still, before. So unguarded. Even when the man was quiet he was a bastion of tense activity ready to spring into motion at any moment. Ash liked this, he thought. Seeing Brand this way. Knowing him this way.