“Answer me, Banner,” I say sharply.
“I see,” she says, looking up to catch my eyes.
“I want to be inside you all the time,” I say, urgency making my voice rough. “I want to be in your head.”
I kiss her temple.
“To know what you’re thinking.” I press her away from me enough to kiss between her breasts and over her heart. “To know what you’re feeling. To know what you need.”
Our bodies take over, and I’m pounding up into her again, despite my best intentions. The muscles of her legs clench on mine with every rise and fall. She kisses me, her tongue taunting mine. A sparring match of parries and feints.
“Okay,” she breathes into our kiss.
I grip her face and solder our eyes together in a heated gaze.
“This is more than sex for me,” I say. “Do you understand?”
Her eyes widen, darken with realization.
“I understand.” She never looks away, even as the pace of our bodies increases. “It is for me, too.”
Her whispered assurance starts filling that hole, that empty space having only her body doesn’t touch. I kiss along her jaw, down her throat, inflict tiny bites on her collarbone.
“Mean it, Ban,” I say fiercely into the scented cove behind her ear. “I need you to mean that.”
“I do.” Her breath chops up against my neck. Her fingers twine in my hair. Her knees tighten at my hips the harder and deeper and faster we fuck. “I promise it’s more.”
“I won’t share you.” I pull back and grasp her chin, forcing her to look at me. “I know it’s hypocritical. I know I took you. I don’t care. I won’t share.”
“You won’t have to.” The breathless promise tumbles past her lips and into that hole, filling it more. Soothing the empty ache of it. She takes me by surprise, grabbing my chin and clenching her inner muscles around my dick possessively, making me groan. “And I won’t share you.”
The idea that, with all the women I’ve fucked and never felt even a fraction of this intensity, I would jeopardize my connection to Banner is laughable, but I don’t laugh because I see the same questions, the same need for reassurance, for more, in her eyes that I know is in mine.
“It’s just you, Ban.” I reach between us, stroking and pinching her clit as an electric bolt strikes from the base of my spine and down my legs, strangling my next words. “I promise.”
That vow steals the last of my control, and every doubt, every hesitation leaves as I spill into the warm welcome of her body. My release triggers hers, and we both cry out, our voices loud and echoing on the empty terrace. We’ve forgotten the server could come back any minute. We don’t consider some misguided diner possibly stumbling into our private space. There is only the Caribbean Sea, a sheet of blue-hued glass beneath us. Only the sweat-damp parts of us soaking up the breeze. There is only a promise we whispered before we both came, stronger than steel and as fragile as the beam of moonlight illuminating us.
30
Banner
“Did you save room for dessert?”
My question reminds me of our server who must have been horrified when he realized what we were doing on that terrace. Since I was under the table with Jared’s dick in my mouth, I couldn’t see his face. The memory burns my cheeks, but an irrepressible grin spreads across my lips.
“What’s so funny?” Jared asks from his side of the table. “And I’m good for now on dessert. Stuffed actually.”
“Okay.” I rise from my seat, pick up my plate and reach for Jared’s.
“I got it,” he says, gathering his plate, wine glass, and fork, and heads toward the kitchen. “Now what made you smile like the cat who ate the cream?”
An uncharacteristic giggle pops past my lips.
“Ironically, I was thinking about that poor waiter from the restaurant.”
“He was anything but poor after that tip I gave him.” Jared laughs and loads his plate into the dishwasher. “His eyes got bigger when he saw his gratuity than when he realized what you were doing under the table, believe me.”
I cover the portion of the