My back left the table. My legs spasming against his grip, he tossed them over his shoulders, cupped my ass in his hands, and pulled me deeper into his mouth.

I dug my heels in his back, my own back arching higher, as a cry escaped my lips and my climax tore through me, shredding me, destroying me.

The good way.

The way it was meant to be.

Before I was even close to coming down, Deacon was over me. I felt the tip of his cock sliding through my wet, he caught where he needed to be and thrust inside, filling me.

“Baby,” I breathed, wrapping my arms tight around him, lifting my knees high, pressing my thighs to his sides as he drove into me.

“Fuck. Years,” he grunted against my neck, powering deep.

Oh God.

God.

He’d waited, holding back, wanting, maybe hoping.

Just like me.

“Years,” I whispered.

“Too long,” he growled.

“Way too long,” I agreed, gliding from the down of my climax into the up of another one as I took his cock and felt his teeth nip my earlobe.

“Beauty,” he ground out.

“You fit me. Perfect.”

“Tight. So wet. Fuck,” he groaned, slamming inside me.

“It’s building again,” I told him, my voice breathy and sharp, the pleasure amping.

“Ride it, Cassie.”

Cassie.

Oh man.

He was right.

This was right.

We were right.

Beauty.

I held on tight and then tighter as I lifted my head, shoved my face in his neck, and moaned my second orgasm into his skin.

He bucked hard and fast between my legs, then with a grunt that rolled into a very long groan, he joined me.

I held on coming down and then I held on tighter listening to him do it.

But as I did, panic gripped me and I tried to get a hold on it even as I fought back the desperation to take everything in. Memorize it with a clarity that meant I’d never lose the memories.

The feel of him inside me. Moving my hands to take in the sleek skin over tight muscle on his back. Drawing him in through my nostrils to memorize the scent of his hair tickling my nose.

Knowing we’d finally changed.

Knowing this meant it was over.

The little we had, the minutiae he’d give me, gone.

He was going to take this, give it, not allow either of us to have more, leave, and never come back.

He stayed buried, his face in my neck, his breath coming even, but even if it couldn’t be the most comfortable position in the world for him when we weren’t doing it, he didn’t move.

Maybe he was memorizing too.

And he was glorious. Everything about him. Everything we’d just shared. Everything he made me feel when he told me I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. When he told me in his own particular way how far I was under his skin. When he kissed me with a ferocity that was dizzying, touched me with desperation, gave me two orgasms on my kitchen table.

Having all that and knowing I couldn’t keep it, I had to end this.

Now.

And I did that by asking softly, my voice just as afraid as I felt, my words dripping with fear and sadness.

“Now have we changed?”

A low sound tore from his throat as he shoved his face deeper into my neck and his hands pushed under me, his arms locking around me.

“Deacon?” I whispered.

“Fuck, you’re killing me,” he murmured into my skin.

That wasn’t the response I wanted to hear.

But it was the one I knew I’d get.

I swallowed.

Deacon pulled his face out of my neck, one arm from around me, and he placed his big hand along the side of my head as he positioned a breath away.

“We’ve changed,” he said gently.

I closed my eyes and turned my head away.

Deacon pulled out and I moved to roll to my side and get off that table and to my clothes as quickly as I could.

I got the roll to my side in before I let out a quiet cry because I was up in his arms and he was moving out of the kitchen.

“Wh-what are you doing?” I asked, lifting my head to stare at his shadowed profile.

He said nothing but came into color as he walked through the lit foyer to the stairs.

I said nothing either as he moved us up the stairs.

We entered my room and he took me right to the bed. I was jostled as he held me and threw the covers back. Then I was in bed and the covers were over me but he was leaned into me, a fist in the bed at either side, his face super-close.

“Gonna shut down the house. Be back.”

He was going to shut down the house.

And then be back.

He was going to shut down the house and be back.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want hope to bud, bloom then die an early death, turning to ash.

I didn’t want him to change his mind.

So I said, “Okay.”

I felt his finger whisper along my collarbone before he pushed from the bed.

So he could touch gently.

I was beside myself with glee that I had that knowledge.

Beside myself with glee.

Which meant for the first time since John Priest/Deacon Whoever showed up at my door, I was truly happy.

I knew that was wrong.

But I lay there waiting for him to come back, and try as I might, I couldn’t stop it from feeling right.

Chapter Five

Down to My Bones

Pounding sounded on the door downstairs and I jerked awake, groggily feeling a hard body under me on which I was partially draped, partially falling down its side.

I lifted my cheek from warm skin and twisted my neck, my sleepy eyes finding Priest…no, Deacon’s dark, tousled head resting on my pillows, his slumberous, tawny eyes aimed down to me.

At the sight of him, I forgot everything except all that involved him. What happened the night before (or early that morning). What happened when he came back to my room, took off his clothes, got in bed, gathered me in his arms, and didn’t make love to me again but fell asleep like he’d held me close every night of his life for a decade. And when he fell asleep, he did it deep, like he slept the sleep of a man content he had everything he needed.

Since he did that, and likely crashing after all the drama, not to mention two orgasms, I did it too.

The angry pounding that didn’t quit punctured my thoughts and I blinked.

I focused on Deacon and whispered, “That kid’s parents.”

At my words, instantly he wrapped both arms around me, rolled me to my back, let me go, and rolled the other way, out of bed.