He cupped her jaw, his thumb stroking it as well as her throat. Tipping up her chin, he pressed his lips to hers, taking it deeper, deep as her soul itself. Her body melted into his, leaning into it in a way she’d never remembered herself doing. It was a surrender of sorts, no physical or mental part of her held apart, just a capitulation to that kiss, to the potential of what was between them. As the kiss deepened, she put her hands under his T-shirt, and he jumped like she’d hit him with a Taser.

“Christ, woman, did you stick your fingers in ice?” He laughed against her mouth and everything became better, such that she chuckled as well. He hadn’t tried to remove her touch, merely reacted to it, and now she spread her fingers out wide, absorbing his warmth through her palms and digits.

“Poor baby SEAL,” she teased. “Doesn’t like the cold.”

“Trust me. The one thing SEALs avoid is the cold, because of all the times we can’t.”

“So if I decide to move to Alaska, this relationship is over?”

“So over. Of course, I’ve endured a lot of crappy weather to serve my country, and you’re at least as important as that.”

His fingertips slid into her hair, caressing the sensitive back of her neck. The sensation spread over her throat, her jaw, sending pleasurable signals to everything below those points. She slid her cold hands from the small of his back into his sweats, tunneling under his boxers to enjoy his muscular ass, which flexed beneath her grip.

Banding his arm around her waist, he hiked her up his body, still keeping up with that kiss, teasing her lips with his tongue, a nip from his teeth. She curved her legs around his waist and hips and found herself solidly seated on a growing erection. She gripped his broad shoulders.

“Yeah,” he muttered against her mouth. “That’s all for you, baby. Now. I need you now.”

In answer, she took the kiss to a more violent level, biting his lip. His mouth opened to her so she could delve deep, taste him. He tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her back just enough to survey their surroundings. Going off trail, he hiked swiftly up an incline. When he went over the rise, they were standing on a slope leading into deeper forest, the ground covered with leaves and moss. They were hidden from the main trail. When he laid her down on that natural bed, she was sure it would leave mud stains on her exercise clothes, but she didn’t care.

He laid himself down on her and took up where they left off on that kiss. From her way of thinking, he could have stripped off her leggings right then, pushed down his sweats and plunged, since her pussy was already wet, but he gave her this. Jorge had wanted to be on top most of the time, reinforcing his power, so it wasn’t a position that captured her fantasies. Until Max. Rather than feeling suffocated, this felt as natural as the earth beneath her. The earth was penetrated by a tree’s roots, yet the earth was also the thing that kept the tree strong.

He moved to her throat, then down, unzipping her jacket and cupping her breasts under the stretch yoga top. It had a built-in bra, no padding, so he was able to nuzzle her, let her feel the moist heat of his mouth as he suckled her through the fabric. She moved restlessly against him, wrapping her legs high on his hips again. When she rubbed her needy core against him, he responded by pressing his hardness against it.

“Too many clothes,” she whispered in his ear. “I want you inside me, Max.”

He worked his way down her body, impressing her with the way he caught her waistband in his teeth, ran his tongue beneath it, stimulating her further before he pulled the leggings down to her ankles. He left them there, her shoes holding them on as he shifted his body inside that closed triangle, his calves beneath the stretch of her leggings holding her ankles together. He guided her thighs back up around his hips again, so now her shoes, leggings and the limbs they contained rested against the backs of his knees. It was as if her legs were bound, but with him inside that space, she had him captured as well.

She was impressed by his cleverness, but they were both in too urgent a state to waste it on words. Putting her hands on his ass again, she pushed the sweats down, thumbs under the boxers, and he helped, getting the cloth past his turgid cock. At the first touch of the heated steel organ against her, she reached between them to close her hands on it.

“On your knees above me, Max. I want to see you.”

She wasn’t consciously issuing an order, the desperate desire in her voice driving her. She had to look at him. He complied, her thighs widening to give him room to stand up on his knees, his knees pressed against the inside of hers, his cock jutting up. She stroked the shaft, fingernails scraping over the testicle sac, watching all of it respond to her with a convulsive movement.

“Shirt…if you’re not too cold.”

He removed it, and her gaze coursed over the skulls-and-trident tattoo on his side, then back down that arrow of hair to the groin. His fingers whispered over her thighs, her knees, then they drew back. His hands opened and closed, as if he was warring with something. Her gaze lifted to him at the moment he decided. Lifting his hands, he laced them behind his head, burning gaze fixed on her face. He’d just given her total access to him.

She swallowed, pushing herself up on her elbows to press her mouth against his hard abdomen, his hipbone. She kept one hand wrapped around him, finger rubbing over the damp slit, grip tightening as she slid up and back down. She could smell that heady scent of semen, male arousal. When she turned her head, tasted him, sucking on just the head, working her tongue around the rim, he let out an oath. His thighs trembled, but he held fast as she moved back to his stomach, let her other hand roam over his chest, down his sides, back to his hip, knuckles brushing the delectable ass again.

“Marking your territory, Mistress?” he asked in a husky voice.

He was encouraging her possession, something she hadn’t expected from him. Looking up at him, hands behind his head like that, she knew there was only one answer to give.

“Yes.”

His eyes flamed hotter in response. She eased herself back to the ground, letting her other set of fingertips trail down his thigh. When she released his cock, she gave him back the same gift. Deliberately, she laid her hands over her head, shooting him a look of raw need and challenge wrapped together.

“Now you do the same.”

His hands dropped. One braced him on the ground at her shoulder while the other gripped the base of his cock. He guided himself into her, measured, deliberate, keeping his gaze on her face the whole time. So she knew he was seeing the pleasure that suffused her features, the way she bit her lip, how her hips lifted to his, taking him in deep. Wrapping her legs high on his hips again, she tightened them, drawing him in farther. She got lost in his gray eyes as he settled on her, elbows on either side of her head, and began to pump his hips into her. Slow, steady, a rhythm that she met with her own body. As her arousal built, the lift of her hips became more demanding. And then he really began to thrust hard.

She let out a groan at the painful pleasure of it. “Max,” she gasped. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Remarkably, she was already spasming around him. She hadn’t let herself come these four weeks they’d been apart, though in her bed at night her body had burned for him, recalling him there, in the hot tub, on her couch. She’d even fantasized about taking him on the hood of his truck in the parking deck. She’d open his jeans, straddle him as he leaned back against his windshield. His fingers would dig into her hips, eyes hidden behind the sunglasses but jaw rock-hard, reflecting his absorption in their shared lust. Randall’s eyes would have popped out of his head, she was sure.

Their gazes locked. “I missed you,” he said, the fierce truth of it in his voice.

She reached up with trembling fingers and he kissed them, bit them when she lingered there, then she curled her hand over his shoulder. The feeling was building higher, hotter. “I missed you too. I won’t do that to you again.”

“Damn right. I’ll come sleep under your window.”

The challenge sparked her own. She reared up to capture his mouth as she squeezed down on him, savoring and pleasuring them both. His arm banded around her like steel, his other arm and her stomach muscles the only thing holding them both up, the anchor point in a spinning world. The smell of damp leaves, earth and forest mingled with Max as she prepared to let herself go.

When she went over that precipice, she managed to make her own demand. “Come for me, Max.” Come for your Mistress. The one who wants to own you.

She let out a glad cry as he obeyed, every muscle of that fine body beneath her legs and hands hardening, rippling, his face going concentrated and even fiercer. He groaned out his release, hips pistoning strong enough to push her into the earth. She let her head fall back, careless of the dirt and leaves. Cognizant of who else might be in the park, though, she turned her head to his forearm, pressed her mouth against it, her screams vibrating against his flesh.

As he started to come down, his other hand slipped from her waist, cupped her jaw, strong fingers caressing it as well as her throat as she offered those cries to him. He kept going until she was all done, carrying her through every aftershock until she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt so sated. So…loved.

It was an unexpected but not unwelcome thought. As she finished, she used the pressure of her hands to bring him back down to lie upon her body fully again. He complied, though he held himself with an elbow to keep his full weight off her. They were breathing in tandem, his fingers laced with hers to her right, her other one curled over his back. “See?” he murmured into her neck. “I told you that you’d like camping.”

She bit his ear. “This isn’t camping. I interrupted your workout.”

“I’d say you enhanced it. Want to help me finish it? I usually go through the outdoor fitness stations before jogging home.”

Her heart was still thundering, her limbs loose and body languorous, so as she looked up and saw he was serious, she didn’t know if the energy and virility gave her heart an amusing feminine leap or made her hate him.