Taking advantage of his surprise, she flipped him to his back.
Heat flamed his eyes to smoky black. $he draped herself down and over Daniel, blanketing him with her body and hair just before she took his mouth. Searched deep and long, with all the pent-up need she yearned to pour all over him.
Groaning, he gripped her hips. "You want to be in control?"
She walked her fingers down his chest, lower, counting the ridged flexing of his stomach. "Do you have a problem with that?"
His heart slammed in his chest against her. "No, ma'am."
"I'm not going to break, Danny." Her hand dipped lower still until she encircled him, sheathed him in a condom with languorous strokes. "But I'm thinking it might be incredible to break your restraint."
His fingers flexed on her hips. "And I'm thinking you won't have to try very much."
She lowered herself onto him, took him into her body as once she'd taken him into her heart. Fully, the pressure of his presence within her maybe a bit too much at first until she adjusted to him being there again.
And then so very right she couldn't remember a time he hadn't been a part of her.
His head pressed back into the pillow, eyes closed, jaw clenched tight. She was damned tired of his restraint. She was tired of being half-alive.
She stopped. Waited.
Knees bracketing his hips, she stared down at him, suddenly realizing how much all that restraint cost him, because doing the same was killing her now.
His eyes opened and he stared back up at her. She brought her hands down to his chest, touched him with the same light caresses he'd given her, strokes that at first enticed, then grew progressively more frustrating.
With one teasing finger, she outlined his flat nipple, watching his eyes until… She pulled her hand away, circled her h*ps once. Stopped again.
His eyes widened then narrowed. Oh, yeah, he was on to her. And who would win? Hopefully both of them.
She could even see him smolder at the challenge. Their battle of wills continued with traded caresses that tempted without satisfying until…
With a growl of surrender that conversely brought his aggressive advance, he sat up. Mary Elise shifted her legs to wrap around his waist, welcome him in further, closer, wrenching another growl from low in his throat. He palmed her back, holding them chest to chest, heart to pounding heart as she glided down while he thrust up.
Restraints fell away. His. Hers. Until everything became theirs as they moved together in a frenzied pace of gasping breaths and demands.
His mouth closed over her breast, pulled, drew. The rock of waves beneath them increased the hot friction of skin against skin until she wasn't in control anymore. But then, neither was he.
His dog tags pressed, almost cut into her slick skin. Not that she could think or care, her mind focused totally on Daniel and completion.
Yet also not wanting that end and the afterward that would accompany it when they would have to face each other. Deal with the line they'd crossed that couldn't be retraced. Had she won or lost in demanding his surrender?
And then she couldn't think anymore, just felt the quickening of his pace, his heart, his heated breath against her flesh.
Her memory must have been faulty because no way could she have forgotten this. Knew she never would forget.
"Danny."
His name rode her scream of release. Her name swelled from his hoarse shout against her neck as he buried his face in her shoulder.
And echoing in her head with a resonation that soothed and excited and scared the hell out of her all at once, she heard…
Welcome home.
Daniel sprawled in the hammock, scanning the expanse of ocean in the fading light, his booted foot on the dirt nudging a lulling sway. Mary Elise lounged with her head at the opposite end, keeping watch over the other stretch of ocean. He drew lazy circles along her ankles and wondered when he'd developed a foot fetish. Of course, the woman did have pretty toes in those sandals.
Toes? He was in big trouble here.As much as he'd enjoyed the hell out of Mary Elise when they'd been younger, this woman flattened him. There was an intensity about her now that demanded more from him than before.
And he didn't just mean in bed.