All fire and too good—
The world aflame and too much—
And when he let out a shout, pumping himself into her, she went with him.
Shattering into pieces all over again. Pieces Lucinda thought would never fit together the way they had. Not ever again.
But as she cracked open and lost herself in it, she couldn’t say she cared.
Neither one of them moved for what felt like a forever or two.
There was nothing but the sounds of their breathing, harsh and loud and meshed together the way their bodies still were.
There was the crackle of the fire somewhere in the distance. The breeze, scented with the sea.
Ages later, Lucinda finally remembered her name.
Long years after that, she managed to lift up her head, helped considerably when Jason reached out to smooth back her hair with one hand.
She felt as if there were worlds bubbling up inside her, so many things she needed to say that she didn’t know how to fit into the necessary syllables and sounds. All of which made her chest ache as they sat there, unsaid.
She felt...changed.
As if this hadn’t been sex at all, that brisk release she knew so well and often courted back home, but something much darker. Deeper. Intense and unknowable.
“Jason...” she whispered, and he was still inside her. Still an impressive length, but the sound of his name made him thicken.
And then he smiled, wicked through and through.
She felt it like a new sun, beating down on her from a new high noon.
And everywhere it touched her, she blazed.
“I like a good appetizer, darlin’,” he drawled, threat and promise in that voice of his. In that gleam of gold in his dark eyes. In his cock lodged deep inside her and hardening, already making her shudder all over again. “And that was more than good. But now? I’m really fucking hungry for a meal.”
* * *
When Jason led her into his bedroom, to the great, wide bed that took up most of the space, Lucinda decided that this was her turn to shine. What happened by the fire pit wasn’t her usual style. It had come on like a storm.
Maybe he’s a storm, something in her said.
Lucinda wanted no part of storms, or fire pits, for that matter. But she was good at bedrooms. She knew exactly how to play here.
It was strange to have her hair down and curly, but she didn’t let that get to her. She didn’t let it throw her off. And as they got near the bed, she turned to Jason and slid her hands upon his chest, still mouthwateringly bare and just as hard and muscled as he looked. He gazed down at her, his dark eyes intense and shot through with that intoxicating gold that made her breath catch.
But she didn’t want to catch her breath and let his gaze go to her head. She wanted to take what happened between them and steady it, somehow, inside her. It was only sex, after all. There was no need for her to feel as if it was eating at her bones, changing her, turning her into something else—
That’s enough, then.
She was coming over all angsty when that wasn’t her way. Lucinda concentrated on Jason’s impossible beauty instead.
He looked down at her hands on the sculpted ridges of his abdomen and smiled. Then he took a moment to shuck off his jeans and toss them aside before he came back to stand before her, naked at last. His confidence and sheer maleness was nearly overwhelming. She wanted to...breathe him in. She wanted to bury her face against him, close her eyes and feel his hard, corded arms wrap around her and hold her.
She wanted him to make her feel safe.
And that set off just about every alarm she had inside her.
Lucinda blinked, hoping against hope that nothing showed on her face. She directed her attention away from odd urges inside her and toward the things that actually mattered here, standing next to a bed with a beautiful man. And at Jason’s cock, already mouthwateringly hard again, and with a fresh new condom besides. She wrapped her hand around him, smiling when he was finally the one to let out a jagged sort of breath.
As long as it wasn’t only her.
She felt herself get wetter. Hotter. She was already imagining that thick, hard length inside her again—
Get on with it, she ordered herself, before she started building up fantasies of his keeping her safe again, when she knew better than that. Lucinda was the only person who could keep herself safe, and even if that wasn’t true, a night with a man she’d only just met was no place to explore her poor, broken heart, for fuck’s sake.
She let go of his cock and slid her hands up the wall of his chest again. He was standing between her and the bed, so she thought she’d cut to the chase. She smiled up at him, hoping she conveyed all the seduction and heat necessary, and then she pushed him. She put her weight behind it.
Usually, they fell right over in a willing and lazy sprawl, but Jason didn’t move an inch. She might as well have shoved a mountain.
“If you want something, Lucinda, ask.”
Already that was different. It wasn’t part of the usual script. Lucinda scowled at him—also not normal—and pushed at him again. “Lie down.”
He still didn’t so much as sway. His gaze left hers, tracking over her curls instead, and something about the way his expression changed made a different sort of heat wash over her. It felt connected to that same urge she’d had before, to...cuddle, God help her.
Lucinda thought she would rather die.
And everything was already out of control. The fact she’d fallen asleep the way she had earlier instead of charging ahead with her grand plan to win this man over. The fact they’d had sex like that, outside, hot and wild—and decidedly not the way she generally had sex.
Not the way she wanted to have sex, she amended inside her head.
But she wanted that damned resort more than she wanted to hold on tight to her own control issues.
“Lie down,” she said again. “Please?”
“Okay,” Jason said, too easily. And after what seemed like far too long.
He smiled at Lucinda in a way she thought was mocking, but she didn’t allow herself to react. And only when she was sure he was going to continue doing it forever did he move back, clearly because he’d decided to move and not because she wanted him to move, and stretched back on the bed.
She didn’t like the fact that he’d wrested control from even that. It made the whole thing feel...fraught with peril, somehow.
But she ignored it, because bigger things were at stake here. She pasted her smile on her face again and then she moved toward him, climbing up on the bed and crawling her way up the length of his big, rangy body until she could seat herself astride him again.
The choreography to this was simple, no matter that Jason was by far the most intense man she’d ever met. Lucinda had worked out the kinks years ago. It didn’t matter how big the man was, or how their bodies fit together otherwise. Push him down on his back, climb on board, and she could make her own fun. Then leave.
It was easy gratification. And better still, the men in question always enjoyed the show she put on as she did all the work, so there were never any complaints.
Lucinda chose not to analyze exactly why it was so important to her that she put this situation with Jason back on that kind of footing. The only kind of footing she understood.
She