Page 34 of Faultline

He's not fast. That's the difference. The first time was urgent, driven, a man outrunning something he couldn't name. This time he's taking inventory. His hands learn my ribs, the curve of my waist, and the dip at the base of my spine. His mouth follows his hands, and every place he touches burns a line into my skin that I can trace with my eyes closed.

My hands find his flannel and push it off his shoulders. The thermal underneath goes next, and then he's bare from the waist up and the breadth of him fills my vision. I run my palms across his chest, over the ridges of scar tissue and muscle and the work-hardened terrain of a body that has never been decorative. My fingers trace the scratch marks the spruce left on his forearms, and he watches my hands move on him with an expression I can't read and don't try to.

He unbuttons my jeans and slides them down my hips. I lift to help him, and the movement presses me against the hard length of him through his jeans. His breath catches. The first break in his composure, and I file it.

He strips my jeans and everything underneath in one motion. I'm sitting on the table wearing nothing, my files on the floor, my legal pad somewhere under the chair. The man who made me coffee this morning is looking at me with the unhurried patience of someone who intends to take his time.

"You're going to have to stop looking at me like that," I say, "or I'm going to start thinking you actually like having me in your kitchen."

"I like having you in my kitchen." No hesitation. No deflection. The words land flat and heavy and real, and they hit somewhere I haven't armored.

He drops to his knees.

My hands grip the edge of the table. His palms slide up the insides of my legs and press them open. The vulnerability of being spread bare on pine that still holds my coffee rings should be calculated into some kind of risk assessment, but the only calculation my brain is running is how fast my pulse is climbing.

His tongue is on me before I'm ready for it, and the approach is nothing like the first time. That was long strokes, building in layers. This is targeted. Precise. His tongue circles the tight bundle of nerves at my center with a focused pressure that sends a bolt of sensation straight through my pelvis. My hand leaves the table and buries itself in his hair. He lets me grip. He doesn't let me direct.

He builds me with patience I can't match. The pleasure comes in waves rather than layers, each one cresting higher, and his forearms hold me open when my body tries to close around the intensity. I hear my own breathing in the quiet cabin, short and ragged and losing the battle with whatever composure I walked into this kitchen carrying.

When the orgasm hits, it rolls through me in a long, shuddering pulse that starts where his mouth is and radiates outward. My legs shake against his hands. The sound that comes out of me fills the cabin the way smoke fills a room.

He stays with me through every second of it, his tongue slowing as the aftershocks recede. When he finally pulls back and looks up at me, his jaw is wet and his eyes carry the quiet certainty of someone who accomplished exactly what he set out to do.

He stands and unbuckles his belt. I watch his hands work the leather, the metal, the zipper, and the deliberate economy of each movement makes my stomach clench with anticipation that borders on pain. He pushes his jeans down and steps out of them, and he's thick and hard and close enough that his heat reaches me before his skin does.

He pulls me forward until I'm barely on the table. His hands hook behind my thighs and wrap my legs around his waist, and the position aligns us with a precision that steals my breath before he's inside me.

"Stay with me," he says. His voice is low, stripped to something that's barely language. His forehead touches mine. He holds my legs apart, controlling the angle, and the muscles in his arms are rigid with the effort of keeping still.

Then he pushes into me, slow and relentless, and the fullness is devastating. My hands grip his shoulders. My fingers dig into the muscle. My body opens around him by degrees until he's seated deep enough that the pressure of him erases every thought I've had since morning. The stretch borders on too much. He holds there, buried to the root, and what comes out of my throat is the surrender of a woman who has stopped pretending she's in charge of anything happening in this kitchen.

"There," he says, barely a whisper against my forehead. "Right there."

Both of us breathing. Foreheads touching. The intimacy of the position is more disarming than the sex. We're face to face. I can see every line around his eyes. Every scar. Every flicker of the restraint that's costing him.

He starts to move. Slow, controlled, pulling back until I think he's leaving and then driving forward until I can't breathe. The table shifts beneath me. His hold on my thighs tightens, pulling me into each thrust, and the angle puts him against a spot inside me that sends sparks through my field of vision.

My breathing goes ragged. His pace doesn't change. Every thrust carries the same deliberate weight, the same controlled depth, and the consistency is more ruinous than speed. This is a man communicating the only way he knows how. Not urgency. Not need. Certainty.

I feel the second orgasm building from a deeper place than the first. It gathers in my pelvis and my spine and everywhere his body presses against mine. His pace stays even, steady, maddening. My ankles hook behind his back on instinct, and his hands immediately tighten, spreading me wider, taking back the angle.

"Not yet," he says. Low. Certain. Instructions, not requests.

My fingers dig into his shoulders. Every muscle in my body is straining toward the edge he won't let me reach, and the denial strips me as bare as the pleasure did.

"Liam." My voice doesn't sound like my voice.

His control breaks. The measured pace shatters, and what replaces it is raw and fierce and driven by something that doesn't answer to discipline anymore. His hands drag my hips forward and hold me there, pinned at the angle he wants, and he drives into me hard enough that the table scrapes against the floor. His teeth find the curve of my neck and press into my skin with a pressure that will leave a mark.

I want the mark. I want every bruise his fingers are printing into my hips. I want the ache I'll carry tomorrow in muscles I forgot I had.

The orgasm tears through me with a violence that whites out the edges of my vision. My body locks around him and the sound I make is pulled from somewhere I can't name.

He follows me over the edge with a groan that vibrates against my throat, his hips stuttering hard against mine, and I feel him pulse inside me while his arms shake and his breath breaks apart against my skin.

The kitchen is quiet afterward. His weight leans into me. My legs are still wrapped around his waist. The table held, which says something about the craftsmanship of the hands that built it.

His arms band around me, and the grip isn't gentle. It's the hold of a man who has taken something and doesn't intend to give it back.