“You are amazing,” Wrench said gruffly to Lydia, once they were out of earshot of The Den.

It was astonishingly meaningful. Lydia looked up at his face, already so familiar. “I couldn’t do anything less,” she said simply.

He stopped, and Lydia drew up in front of him. Just as she had hoped he would, he gathered her gently into his arms. “Thank you,” he said. He looked like he might want to say something more, but only repeated, “Thank you.”

Then he kissed her again, and Lydia put her arms around him, wherever she could reach, and kissed him back.

His shoulders were ridiculously wide under her hands, and his mouth was insistent and strong on hers. His hands seemed to hold her entire torso with no effort, big thumbs making patterns along her muscles. Every nerve in her body was alive with hunger.

“My room,” Lydia breathed, when they broke apart for a moment of air. Wrench’s hands gripped harder, then he let her go free with visible effort. She made herself let go as well, stepping back. She smoothed her mussed hair back, then took his elbow again.

They maintained a decent charade of self-control all the way up the gravel path, breaking it only as they came to the front entrance of the spa. Lydia wasn’t sure who reached first, but they fell into the doorway pulling at each other’s clothing, desperate for the feel of skin against skin.

His plain gray silk tie came untied with a whisper and was flung to the tiled floor. Lydia’s fingers were trembling with need as she unbuttoned the tiny buttons of the shirt beneath, and she had to pause to run her hands up underneath the crisp material.

Wrench’s hands were trying to make sense of her dress, baffled by the lack of zippers or buttons, while his mouth was distracted on her neck and at her collarbone.

Lydia finally took mercy on him and backed far enough away to get her dress off over her head.

The way he looked at her, amazed and longing, made Lydia pause, wearing nothing but her heels and underthings.

“You are so beautiful,” Wrench said breathlessly.

Lydia realized that he wasn’t going to move again without help, and stepped into his waiting hands. “You’re wearing too much,” she told him chidingly.

Moving much faster than a man of his size ought to, he sent the jacket spinning across the room, shortly followed by the shirt. Lydia wasn’t sure if he managed the buttons or simply tore them off, and didn’t find that she cared either way, as his free hand was touching parts of her like they’d never been touched before. When she moved up against him, she was keenly aware of his erection between them, pressing in tantalizing places.

He lifted her up onto one of the chairs, kissing her neck and running big hands down her thighs. He toyed with the lace of her underpants, but didn’t offer to remove them, making Lydia sigh in delicious frustration.

“You’re still wearing too much,” she pointed out.

It was quickly obvious that the chair wasn’t wide enough for their intended activity, and Wrench growled near her ear, then lifted her up as she wrapped her legs around his bare torso. He refused to be distracted by her kisses, and carried her to one of the curtained alcoves. He sat her on the massage table and returned swiftly to his attention to her breasts, barely contained in her bra.

Lydia unclasped his pants and ran the zipper down slowly, thoroughly distracted by his stubbly kisses on the delicate skin of her chest. She reached questing fingers into his underwear as he let the pants slip down, and freed the member that was waiting impatiently there.

His hands were definitely not his only large feature.

When his fingers made their way down from her ribcage this time, they didn’t skip over her lacy underpants. He removed them like they had offended him, lifting Lydia and slipping it out from beneath her in one smooth motion. They shifted as necessary to line up, and then Lydia was moaning out loud as he spread her at last and drove into her.

“Yes, oh, yes,” Lydia told him. “My mate, my one.”

Wrench may not have been exactly as she’d fantasized, but this was more than her imagination had been broad enough to anticipate.

He didn’t just enter her, he owned her. Every nerve was afire. Every touch was electric. When he drew back, she was bereft. When his stroke drew him in deeper, she was complete. Her entire consciousness narrowed to how he filled her and lifted her and the crest of the orgasm he built in her.

When she fell from the heights of her release, she expected… she wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t to have Wrench kissing her neck and using his clever fingers at the small of her back and his hips to soothe and calm her as he slowly—so slowly!—continued to stroke into her.

She could do that again, she realized in astonishment as he steadily began to increase his pace, licking her collar bone. One of his hands moved into her hair, which was loose now. Lydia had no idea where her flower clip had gone.

It didn’t matter. Her world diminished again, to his hands on her skin, to his member filling and satisfying her bone-deep hunger for him. She was feather to his fur, and she was a vessel of pleasure and completion.

As she came a second time, she felt the steady rhythm of his strokes become more frantic, and his hands clawed at her flesh in desperation.

It was unsurprising that he swore when he came, blistering the air with his release as he filled her at last.

Lydia dissolved into breathless laughter, somehow not at all bothered by it through her own bliss.

Wrench came to a panting halt, holding her tight against him and staying, pulsing, in her for as long as flesh allowed it.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, hands careful where they’d been clawing only moments before.

Lydia drew his face down and kissed him, carefully and deeply. The urgency was past, but all the tenderness remained. “Not at all,” she assured him.

“Lydia,” he said, looking back into her face.

Lydia waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

He didn’t resist when she kissed him again, opening his mouth to her tongue willingly. Lydia was astonished that desire woke at the pit of her stomach again already, and she kissed him with the unspoken promise of ‘more’ and ‘soon.’

Then she pushed him back. “Come,” she said. “We’ve got to find all of our clothing or I will never hear the end of it from my staff.”

Her dress was an easy find, and all the parts of his suit except two buttons. Her hair clip had vanished.

“Lydia,” Wrench said again, standing naked and befuddled with his clothing in his arms.

Lydia added her dress to his pile. “Come,” she said again.

She led him past the storeroom to her room, tucked away at the very back of the spa. To her surprise, someone had snuck in and lit candles, and her bed was scattered with rose petals. “Well, this would have been lovely,” she laughed, and Wrench cracked a smile.

On her bedside table, her usual reading material had been tucked away and there was an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and a handful of condoms arranged in a rosette.

“Champagne?” she offered Wrench with a laugh.

“Not really my bag,” Wrench said apologetically.

“Not mine, either,” Lydia agreed. “Anyway, we’ve got a lot to deal with tomorrow, and I’ve got sunrise yoga to lead.”

Wrench dropped their clothing on a chair. “That sounds suspiciously like it happens at sunrise.”

Lydia removed the bra that hadn’t made it off her during their eager lovemaking, enjoying the way it made Wrench’s breath hitch when she released her breasts. “That is how it works, yes.” She yawned, blew out the candles, and slipped under the light blanket on the bed, scattering rose petals. “Come on, Warren,” she said, patting the bed beside her. The name didn’t sound quite right to her ears, but she couldn’t reconcile ‘Wrench’ as a name in her head.

He glowered for a moment, then sighed and slid down under the blanket with her.

Lydia scooted to curl up with him, worried for a moment that it would be awkward and restless to sleep next to someone after so long in an empty bed.

But he felt perfect in her arms, like they were both exactly where they belonged, and she was asleep before she could do more than sigh in contentment.