Page 32 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

My skin has started glowing. I can see faint pearl light moving across his chest where our bodies touch.

Rafe looks down at it, then back at me. Something hot and unbearably tender crosses his face.

His fingers keep moving between my legs, patient and precise, building pleasure without rushing toward the end of it. When he slides one finger inside me, my breath breaks. A second follows, and I tighten around him, still sore enough from earlier that the stretch makes every nerve wake up.

He slows immediately.

I shake my head.

“Don’t.”

His eyes find mine.

“Don’t stop.”

So he doesn’t.

He curls his fingers inside me and his thumb circles my clit, and I feel the pleasure gathering with a terrible, beautiful inevitability. My thighs close around his wrist. My forehead presses into his shoulder. He kisses my hair, my temple, the corner of my eye.

There is no performance anywhere in it.

I don’t have to be sexy for him. I don’t have to make the right sounds or touch him back or give him anything in return. His cock is still hard against my thigh and he acts like it doesn’t exist.

Like this is enough for him.

Like I am enough.

Something inside me loosens. Not dramatically. No doors crashing open. No ocean lighting up around me.

I simply stop holding myself so tight. My legs relax. My hand, fisted in his shoulder, opens.

And that turns out to be the thing that finishes me.

The orgasm catches low and rolls through me slowly, my body tightening around his fingers before the pleasure spreads outward in long, trembling waves. Light blooms beneath my skin, pale blue washing over the blankets and the bare skin of his chest.

I say his name into his neck. Or I just mumble nonsense. It’s impossible to know.

He holds me through it.

His fingers go still when I become too sensitive. His other arm closes around my back, pulling me against him while the last shivers work through me.

My eyes sting. I hate that.

I bury my face against his shoulder before he can see.

He sees it anyway. Of course he does.

But he doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Doesn’t tell me not to cry. Doesn’t make the moment bigger than I can handle. He kisses the damp corner of my eye, then gathers me against his chest.

For a moment I allow myself to just float in my own little cloud of pleasure.

Then I become very aware of the fact that he is still hard against my thigh.

He gave me everything I asked for and isn’t even asking for anything in return. The realization makes me want him with a force that wipes the last of the fog from my brain. I lift my head. Rafe’s eyes are closed and he is petting my back in slow circles.

“Absolutely not.”

One eye opens. “What did I do?”