MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

Chapter 166: MAKING LOVE IN THE RAIN

RYKER

Her mouth was already open when I pulled her against the tree.

Both hands in her wet hair, her fingers twisted in my soaked shirt, her back against the bark and the rain coming down loud through the branches, and I kissed her the way I had been wanting to since the first time she stood in my doorway and looked at me like she already knew exactly who I was and had decided to stay anyway.

She kissed me back harder.

Her hands pulled at my shirt and her mouth moved against mine with nothing held back, no hesitation, no armor, just her, and I pressed her further into the bark and tilted her head back and she let me and kissed me back from that angle and made a sound low in her throat that went through me clean and fast.

I bit her lower lip and felt her fingers dig into my shoulders and pulled back just enough to look at her mouth and then kissed her again, slower this time, my tongue finding hers, and her hands moved from my shoulders into my hair and gripped and pulled me closer and I went.

Rain on both our faces. Her mouth warm against the cold of it. My hands moving from her hair to her jaw, holding her face exactly where I wanted it, and she made that sound again and I swallowed it and kept going.

Her mouth was the only warm thing in the rain and I stayed there.

Both hands in her wet hair, her fingers in my soaked shirt, her back against the bark and the rain coming down loud through the branches and none of it was enough so I pulled her closer and kissed her harder and felt her make a sound against my mouth that went through me like a current.

I pulled back and looked at her face.

Wet and flushed and completely undone in the dark, looking back at me the way she never let herself in daylight, and I put my mouth to her throat and felt her pulse slam hard under my lips and kept it there.

Her hands moved from my shirt to my hair and gripped.

I pulled the front of her dress down and put my mouth to her breast and sucked and her back arched off the bark and she pulled my head harder against her and the rain ran down her skin and I followed it and she was trembling before I had done anything yet.

I lifted my head and looked at her.

"I have been waiting," I said, low and direct, "since the first night you knocked on my door."

Her chest was heaving, rain on her face, eyes dark and locked on mine, "So have I," she said, "I just did not want to admit it."

I pulled her underwear aside and touched her and her hips came forward hard and she exhaled my name against my jaw and I worked at her and felt her getting close fast, her thighs pressing together, her fingers digging into my shoulders, her whole body pulling toward me.

I pulled my hand back.

Her head came up, eyes sharp, "Ryker."

"Not yet," I said.

"I will actually hurt you," she said.

I laughed, real and low, and she looked at me with rain dripping off her chin and almost smiled and then I reached for my belt and her hands were already there, working it open, and I pushed her dress up and lifted her against the tree and her legs went around my waist and her hands gripped my shoulders and I looked at her face.

She looked back at mine.

No deflection. No armor. Just her face in the rain, open and real and completely present, and I pushed into her slow and felt her breath leave her body all at once.

Her fingers pressed hard into my shoulders and I stayed still and watched her face adjust and her eyes stayed on mine and she said, "Move."

I moved.

Slow first, her back against the bark, the rain loud above us, her legs tightening around me with every push and her head dropping forward onto my shoulder and coming back up because she wanted to look at me and I wanted to look at her and we both kept doing that, looking, like we were checking the other was still real.

"You feel," she started, and stopped.

"Tell me," I said.

Her jaw tightened, rain on her lips, "Like you were always supposed to be here," she said, and the words came out like they cost her something, and they landed in my chest and stayed there.

I moved harder and she made a sound that was not quiet and her hands went from my shoulders to the bark on either side of her head and gripped it and I put my mouth to her throat and felt her pulse going absolutely haywire and kept moving and she said my name and I felt it in my spine.

"Again," I said against her throat.

She said it again.

I set her down.

Her legs were unsteady and I kept my hands on her waist and turned her and she put both palms flat against the bark without being told and looked back at me over her shoulder with wet hair across her face and her dress gathered at her waist and her eyes completely dark.

I put my hands on her hips and pushed back into her and her forehead dropped against the bark and her fingers curled against it and the sound she made went through the rain and through the trees and she did not try to contain it.

My mouth went to her shoulder, her neck, the side of her throat, and I felt her shaking under my hands and I tightened my grip on her hips and moved and she pushed back into me and we found a rhythm that the rain kept time with and her knuckles went white against the bark.

"Do not stop," she said, her voice completely wrecked.

"I am not stopping," I said against the back of her neck.

Her head came back against my shoulder and I put one hand flat against her stomach and pulled her back into me and she covered my hand with hers and pressed it harder and said my name again and this time it broke apart in the middle and I felt that break in every part of me.

She came undone with her hands against the bark and her head thrown back and my name in her mouth and I held her through every second of it, both arms around her, her whole body shaking, the rain pouring down on both of us, and I kept moving until she stopped shaking and then I kept moving anyway because I could not stop, did not want to stop, wanted to stay exactly here with the rain and the dark and her hands on the bark and her back against my chest for as long as I could make it last.

I finished with my face pressed into her wet hair and both hands gripping her hips and a feeling tearing through me that had no clean name and nothing to compare it to because nothing I had done before this had felt like this, not once, not with anyone, and I was not going to pretend otherwise standing in the rain in the dark with her.

I had taken things my entire life.

Taken what I wanted and walked away and felt nothing following me out the door and told myself that was strength and believed it because it was easier than the alternative.

She had not been taken.

She had turned around in the rain outside a lit aquarium and looked at my face and said what is stopping you and nothing in that was surrender, it was a choice, and she had made it looking straight at me, and I had felt that difference the moment I touched her and I was still feeling it standing here with my forehead against the back of her head and my hands still warm from her skin.

We stood in the rain.

Both of us.

Her palms still against the bark, my forehead against her hair, neither of us moving or speaking, just the rain coming down loud through the branches and the dark all around us and both of us breathing.

Then she turned around.

She looked at my face.

I looked at hers.

Wet and open and completely real in the dark, her hair flat against her cheeks, her eyes moving across my face like she was looking for something and finding it and not entirely sure what to do with that, and I looked back at her and my mouth did not open.

No line waiting. No move already prepared. No version of this I had planned for.

Just her face in the rain and my hands that did not know where to go and the quiet of a man who has just been handed something he did not know he was missing and has no idea what to do now that he has it.