Max was an alpha. I’d always known that. His default resting expression looked like a pissed-off bouncer at a club where you had to have a special handshake to get in the door, and you didn’t know the handshake. He never used two words when he could use one. He was aggressive and loyal and quick to use his fists. I remembered him getting in schoolyard brawls when we were younger, to defend kids who were too scrawny to defend themselves. More than all that, he was also a sweetheart, at least to me—he didn’t show that to anybody else. It was like I knew the dark side of his moon. But now, his aggression was coming at me, unchecked and hard-charging.

It was ahhhhhhhmazing.

He caged me in underneath him, his hands to my ass, and pressed into me. I sank my teeth into his shoulder, and he took me even harder. He didn’t go slow this time—it was like he couldn’t, like he was nothing but instinct and need. As he drove into me, my back arched right up off the mattress, and he held me close to him. I clung to him hard, keeping my thighs so tightly clasped that they trembled. I wasn’t petite, not by any measure. But he made me feel small—that’s how he took over. Like a boss. He slipped his hand underneath the curve of my back so that when the roll of pleasure let me relax and I came back down onto the sheets, my pelvic bone was tilted up toward him. Everything felt even better than before.

With each drive, the headboard smacked the wall behind us. Pound, thump. Pound, thump. I found myself pressing my hand to the wood to quiet the noise so I could focus on him and only him. But it didn’t work. Pound, thunk. Pound, bang. But as he powered into me with another thrust, this one so intense that I really did feel my eyes roll back into my head, the thump changed to more of a…crumbling noise. And it was then that I felt something…powdery, almost. And it was coming down on top of us.

I looked up, and I realized he was taking me so hard that he was cracking the plaster. He was breaking the house. That was how passionate he was. It came down on us like fine sand, and a bigger crumble landed on the edge of the headboard.

“Wall…cracking,” I gasped, because it was all I could manage between the mind-blowing drives.

Max looked up, but he had no response. With one quick tug, he yanked me out of the line of the dust, into the middle of the mattress, so my head was off the pillows. He put his forearm in its place, a perfect fit under my neck. Deep inside me, he paused for a second. He moved my hair off my cheek, he sank down as if for a kiss, but didn’t kiss me. Lips touching, no kissing. “Fuck this house. Fuck everything. Fuck the world. Fuck everything but you.”

I squeezed down on him hard. “Or maybe fuck me, especially.”

He groaned and put the Y of his thumb and forefinger under my jaw. “Dirty talk. But you look so sweet.”

I rolled my belly to make him shift inside me. “Not sweet.”

“Not fucking sweet at all.”

He planted his knees and drew me up to sitting in his lap, my legs hooked around him, my ass to his massive thighs. He plunged into me so deeply that all I could do was roar.

He licked along the line of my throat, and his scruff scratched the cool line he’d left with his tongue. When he got to my ear, he turned my face to the side. He tugged at my earring with his teeth until the back slid off, and he let both parts fall to the mattress. “I don’t want to lose that,” I told him. His grip on my jaw was so tight, I could feel my own heartbeat against his fingers.

“I’ll buy you new ones. Hundreds of them. Spoil you fucking rotten until you’re insufferable.”

This man. How had I not seen this underside of him? This filthy gorgeous talk that made me so crazy? “I love you like this.”

“I love you like this,” he answered with a thrust. “I don’t want anything between us,” he growled and then tugged at my earlobe with his teeth. “Not an earring.” He moved his thumbs to my lips. “Not a secret.” His other hand gripped my hip. “Not a strip of lace. Nothing.”

The words, the feeling, the overwhelming, intoxicating high that was Max sent me spiraling. The position was absolutely perfect, absolutely what I needed, and I started to feel the flicker of my orgasm take over, the first rumble deep inside my body. Max is doing that to you. Max’s cock. Max’s body. Him. It’s him.

“Oh Jesus,” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

Max. Your Max. He’s got you. He does. And he’s going to make you come so hard. I couldn’t even speak because I was heading so fast toward the rapids. “You’re going to make me come.”

“Again and again. Count on it.” He situated me a little higher so my clit was pressing against his pelvis with every drive from below. The hand that had been to my jaw moved down between us, the front of his forearm to my stomach. And then his fingertips met my clit.

Class V rapids. Oncoming. No life vest. No turning back. My walls started to flutter, and my legs started to shake even harder. “Can I come?”

“Do it,” he said, putting a long kiss to my chest and then moving down to my nipples. I watched him in the moonlight, and as soon as he put his lips to the left one—oh sweet baby Jesus—his eyes closed, and that aggression washed away. Total peace, total calm. Total happiness because of me.

The flicker shifted to a tremor in my clit, and I felt myself heading into the falls.

“I’m going to let go for you, okay?” I knew it was my voice, but it didn’t feel like me at all. I felt him smile into my breast, and he nodded into me but didn’t stop sucking, not even for a second.

His touch was perfect, like mine but better, and he made steady circles around my clit. Didn’t experiment, didn’t screw around with fancy stuff; he just gave me dependable, confident, continuous spirals that made my whole reality spin like a top.

“Come on my cock, Rosie. Do it. Now.”

With that, left became right. Here became there. The ocean became the forest. The leaves turned into the waves. I was diving. I was falling. Crashing through the rapids into him.