The surf crashes.
Gulls cry to each other.
I feel undone, but in the most amazing way. Like I was taken apart and reassembled, only to discover that I was never put together correctly in the first place.NowI’m correct.Thisis how I’m supposed to be.
It’s beautiful.
15Love Like Stars
Annika
We doze together. I sleep in his arms through the afternoon, more sated and content than I’ve ever been in my life.
When I wake, it’s evening, the sun an inch or two above the horizon, a huge red-orange coin, brilliant and bright. I can see the beach from my sheltered nook in Chance’s arms, a deep crescent of white leading to gleaming, rippling, endless azure being slowly stained red by the sunset. A few gulls play above the waves, winging and wheeling and dipping and swooping, their calls sounding like laughter.
I feel Chance’s mammoth chest lift as he sucks in a huge breath, and then we sink together as he lets it out.
I look up, and see he’s awake as well. I trace the beard along the angle of his jaw. “Hi, you.”
His smile is pure warmth. “Hey there, mama. Have a good nap?”
A stretch ripples through me, causing me to stiffen and spasm, straightening and then bending backward against him, a deep, almost orgasmic groan escaping me. “God, yes. Best nap ever.” I curl a thick strand of inky black hair around my finger. “You?”
He arches up off the bed in a stretching yawn of his own. “Fuck, I don’t know if I’ve ever napped that hard.”
I laugh. “Good.” I wrinkle my nose. “I, um, need to hit that outdoor shower, though. I’m…um, crusty.”
He grins. “I’ve got a better idea.”
He rolls me onto him, belly to belly, chest to chest, and then sits up, twists, and stands. His hands cup my ass and hold me in place, and my thighs clamp around his waist. “Hold on, mama.”
I cling to his neck and laugh as he strides out of the hut, down the steps, and toward the surf. “Chance, wait, I’m not—”
He ignores me and stomps right into the ocean up to his hips, and then twists and falls backward. I have plenty of time to suck in a deep breath and close my eyes before we hit the water. His arms are powerful bands around me, and as we go under, he kicks powerfully, swimming us toward deeper water, still on his back. He surfaces, planting his feet and standing up. The water is around his chest, and I’m still wrapped around him.
I laugh, holding to his neck one-handed and wiping at my face and scraping my hair away from my eyes. “It’s so warm!”
“Middle of the summer, baby. Like bathwater this time of year.”
His hair is sticking to his face, so I brush it aside, away from his face. “I was expecting it to be a lot colder. Not sure why. I swam in SoCal all the time and it wasn’tthatmuch cooler than this.”
He releases me and I find my feet, grinning at him as I duck under and swim away from him, angling for the sea floor and then kicking off with my good leg. Surfacing, I wipe my face and then scrub my skin, especially where I’m a little crusty from earlier. Not that I mind—far, far from it. In fact, I can’t wait to have him inside me again. To feel him let go, to fill me with his cum.
I feel like he ignited something inside me. If my libido was dormant before, meeting him woke it up. Kissing him and getting back in touch with my own body lit the match. And now, having known the glory of being intimate with Chance? That once-dormant libido is fully awake, a ravenous monster that can’t be sated.
It’s almost a gnawing hunger in me—a sensation that feels a lot like a craving for meth. Except…the fix I need won’t leave me sick and dying. The fix I need will make me more alive. More myself. More of everything good in this world.
My cheeks heat, my lungs expand in my chest, my heart—the metaphorical one—swelling and filling every nook and cranny in my soul, because my heart is full of him.
I look at him. He’s a few feet away, in the act of surfacing after ducking under as I just did. His gargantuan shoulders and chest stream rivulets of water, the heavy muscles shifting and rippling as he runs his hands up his face and backward over his scalp, elbows flaring as he draws his hair backward. His thick beard streams water down his chest. His eyes catch mine, flaring with a wealth of emotion as our gazes lock.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, Annika,” he says. “You take my breath away.”
Instead of answering, I kick off and swim to him, my naked body slicing through the water. I reach him, and he catches me, gathers me close, as if he can sense the hunger rising in me. Our wet, naked bodies collide, and our mouths fuse in a wild, greedy kiss. My legs wrap around his waist and I cling to the cliff-face of his shoulders, feeling his hands slide up my thighs to my ass. He walks toward the beach with me, striding through the waves, kissing me.
I can’t wait. I need him.
The water surges through us and around us as he walks us to the shore, and I reach between us. Find him ready for me. God, he’s so fucking big. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little apprehensive, earlier, when I was preparing to take him inside me. But I should have known better. Everything else about us justworks. This, too, seems to just work. To fit, perfectly, as if we are cut from the same cloth, created to match.
