Elle was barely out of the water when Locke swept her up in his arms. She wasn’t surprised he’d caught up to her; he was born for the water.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hungrily as he made his way toward the stairs. She knew from experience that they were rocky, as if they’d been carved by nature and not by man, but she felt as secure in his arms as if she was walking on her own two feet. His grip was ironclad, and she settled into his chest as he carried her toward the house, his tongue plundering her mouth with single-minded purpose.

He’d just stepped onto the terrace when a thread of reason broke through the desire pulsing in her veins.

“The others…” Their nakedness was an afterthought in the face of the throbbing between her legs, but it was there nonetheless.

He broke their kiss, nibbled at her bottom lip. “Not back yet. And you’re crazy if you think I’d let any of those dogs see you naked.”

She tipped her head back and laughed as he stepped into the house. His mouth found hers again as he carried her through the living room, up the stairs, over the threshold of the master suite that had quickly begun to feel like home.

It had been a surprise to realize how easily she could slip into the extremes of Locke’s life. How comfortable she could feel in a house on a cliff in Mexico, the bookstore far away.

Real life far away.

The thought that this could be her life had only recently begun to occur to her. That she could fall asleep next to Locke every day, wake up next to him every morning. It had put the bookstore in perspective, made her wonder if her obsession with it had been more about misplaced guilt over the loss of her parents’ store. As if her love for Lachlan had somehow made it happen it when reason told her there was no way that could be true.

He crossed the room and lay her on the bed, staring down at her with naked need, his body still damp from the ocean, his cock thick and hard for her. Looking up at him she realized she was ready to move on. Ready to give herself over to something new.

Ready to give herself over to him and whatever that would mean.

She lifted her arms. “Come to bed.”

He stretched out next to her, tracing a path from her chin to the hollow between her breasts.

“You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.”

He continued over her stomach and cupped the mound between her legs like it was something sacred. Then he leaned over, captured her mouth in a slow, sensual kiss that stoked the embers still smoldering at her center. His fingers were slipping into her folds when she rolled on top of him, pushing him back on the bed.

“Not this time, my love.”

She bent her head, slipped her tongue between his lips as she slid back and forth over his cock, letting it slip between her folds, hitting her clit with every motion until she was desperate to feel him fill her all over again.

He groaned as she pulled away, kissing his strong jaw, making her way down his neck, across his big shoulders, down his muscled chest. She stopped at one of his nipples, circling it with her tongue, tasting salt as she sucked it, her hips hovering over his cock.

He cupped her ass while she moved to his other nipple, then worked her way down his corded abs, dipping her tongue in his naval before she positioned herself between his thighs.

He looked down at her as she wrapped her hand around his cock, slowly stroked him, savoring the feel of him lengthening and hardening in her hands. She loved that she could give him the same kind of pleasure he could give her.

That it was a turn-on for her was just a bonus.

He was already matching the rhythm of her hand with his hips when she lowered her mouth to his swollen head, circling the tip, tasting a drop of semen that had beaded there. She closed her mouth around it and sucked hard before sliding down the shaft an inch at a time, wanting him to savor the heat of her mouth.

He groaned when she hit the bottom, his impressive length filling her mouth, hitting the back of her throat.

“Fuck, Elle…”

He stroked her head while she held him there, something he had always done when she took him in her mouth, never pushing, just stroking her hair as if in acknowledgement of the pleasure she was giving him.

She wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft and stroked as she lifted her mouth, sucking on the tip again before sliding back onto him and pulling up again, finding an easy rhythm matched by his hips, her hands alternately massaging his balls and stroking his shaft as she licked and sucked.

He was filling her mouth, growing bigger long past the point when she thought he had reached his limit. Her pussy was wet and swollen in response, her body anticipating the way it would feel when he tunneled through her like some kind of erotic muscle memory.

“I need you to fuck me, Elle,” he gasped. “Unless you want me to come in your mouth.”

She kissed his tip, circled it with her tongue. “You can come anywhere you want.”

“Then get up here,” he said. “Because I want to look at you when I come inside you.”

Working her way up his body, she straddled his hips, positioning herself over his slick cock. She leaned over him, pressed her lips to his. When she pulled away she was surprised by the intensity in his eyes as he held her head in his hands, looked into her eyes.

“I never stopped loving you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

She pressed her fingers against his mouth. “I love you, too, Locke. It’s as much a part of me as the blood in my veins. It always has been. We don’t have to talk about it.”

She reached between their bodies, positioned his head at her entrance. Then she was sliding onto him, sighing as he filled her, stretching her channel as he pushed through it to the very top of her.

He grabbed her hips. “Fuck, you feel good, Elle.”

She rolled her hips, grinding on him as her body found the position that would allow for optimal friction on her clit and maximum penetration. He grabbed her ass as he lifted his hips to meet hers, and then they were moving together, his shaft filling her while his head pushed against the sensitive hollow inside her, sparking an ache that walked the knife’s edge between pleasure and pain.

It only made her want more, and she flattened her palm on his stomach to give her better leverage and pushed down on him hard, heat blossoming outward from her clit as it hit him on the downstroke.

The orgasm that had been building since the moment he’d lifted her into his arms on the beach was a full-fledged wildfire in her core, growing to a fever pitch as they moved faster, both instinctively reaching for release.

He pulled her ass cheeks apart as he drove up into her with a vicious thrust, invading every inch of her until she cried out into the room. She spilled over the edge, riding the wave, the two of them coming together, her body clenching down on him as he groaned, thrusting feverishly into her as he let go.

She was nowhere and everywhere. Part of the sea stretched out below the open windows. The sky stretched out over it. The man spilling his essence into her. She was suspended between reality and a netherworld where there was nothing but the light exploding in her body, the swell of her release, the fulfillment of the promise her empty body had been holding for eight long years.

The bliss of nothing. Of everything.

When she opened her eyes she was draped over him, his fingers combing through her hair, damp with sweat and spread out around them. Neither of them spoke, and she closed her eyes, savoring the rise and fall of his chest, the lullaby of his heartbeat under her ear.

It was all she needed.