First Surrender

He stood. He was so much taller than her, so much larger, and standing this close she had to tilt her head back to see his face, and the size of him, the solidity of him, made her pulse quicken. His hands were still on her hips and now they pulled her against him and she felt the hard plane of his chest against her breasts and the evidence of his arousal against her lower belly, and she made a sound, small and involuntary, that made his grip tighten.

"Is this what you wanted?" he said. His voice had dropped. Not just in volume but in register, a lower frequency, something she felt in her bones.

"Yes."

"Say it again."

"This is what I wanted."

He slid one hand up her back, into her hair, and gathered it in his fist, not pulling, not yet, just holding. He tilted her head back and looked at her face, studied it, the way he studied everything, thoroughly, like a man who needed to be certain.

"If I start this," he said, "I won't pretend. I won't be something I'm not. And I won't let you pretend either."

"I'm not pretending."

"Then show me."

He released her hair and stepped back, just half a step, and she understood what he was asking. She reached up and pulled one strap of the dress off her shoulder. Then the other. The cotton clung for a moment, held by the shape of her body and the sea breeze, and then it fell, gathering at her feet, and she stood bare before him in the last light of the sun.

Her body was beautiful and she knew it, not with vanity but with the simple knowledge of someone who had been told and who felt it in the way eyes followed her. Her breasts were full, heavy enough to sway slightly as she moved, dark nipples stiffened by the breeze and by something else. Her waist dipped in, her hips curved out, and between her legs, a triangle of dark hair, neat but not bare, because she had not done that for him, she had done nothing for him except want him, and that was the thing that would undo him.

He looked at her. His chest rose and fell. His hands hung at his sides and she could see the tension in them, the effort it took not to reach for her.

"You're beautiful," he said, and it came out rough, almost angry, because the beauty of her felt like an assault on the walls he had spent years building.

She stepped out of the dress and moved toward him. She reached for the hem of his shirt and he let her pull it over his head. His body was not beautiful in the way hers was. He was thick and scarred, his chest covered in a mat of dark hair going gray, his stomach not flat but solid, his arms heavy with muscle that had been built through work. There were marks on him, old ones, a knife scar across his ribs, a burn on his shoulder, and she touched each one with her fingertips like she was reading a language she wanted to learn.

She kissed the scar on his ribs. He flinched.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be kind to the damage."

"I'll be whatever I want to be." She looked up at him. "And I want to be kind to all of it. Every mark. Every bruise. Everything that happened before me."

Something broke in his face. Not visibly, not the way things break in movies, but she saw it, a fissure in the stone, a crack where light got in.

He pulled her against him and kissed her.

His mouth was hungry and she opened to it immediately, her hands gripping the backs of his arms, her body pressing into the rough hair of his chest. His tongue found hers and she tasted him, salt and coffee and the faint bitterness of a man who had not let himself want anything in a long time. His hands moved down her back, over the curve of her ass, and he lifted her, one arm under her thighs, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and felt the hardness of him, still trapped in his jeans, pressing against her heat.

She was already wet. She had been wet since the moment he had looked at her and not looked away. Now she could feel herself against the rough denim, slick, and she ground against him without thinking, chasing the friction, and he groaned into her mouth, a sound that traveled through her body and settled between her legs.

He carried her to where a blanket was spread on the sand, near the tree line where the beach gave way to palms. He lowered her onto it and she lay back, looking up at him, her dark hair spread around her head, her body golden in the dying light.

He knelt between her legs and his hands ran up her thighs, parting them, and he looked at her, at the glistening pink between her legs, and his jaw clenched. His brown hair fell forward, shadowing his eyes, making him look like something feral and ancient kneeling before an offering.

"I want to taste you," he said. "I've wanted to taste you for months."

"Then do it." Her voice was breathless. "Please."

The word please, the way she said it, soft and wanting, undid something in him. He lowered himself and his mouth found her.

She had been touched before, kissed before, but not like this. Not with this kind of attention. He was slow, deliberate, his tongue parting her folds with a patience that felt like torture. He found her clit and circled it, not touching it directly, building, teasing, and she writhed under him, her hips lifting, her hands gripping the blanket.

"Marcus," she breathed.

He responded by flattening his tongue against her clit and pressing, and her back arched off the blanket. He slid one finger inside her, then two, and she was so wet that they slid in easily, and he curled them upward, finding the spot inside her that made her cry out.

"Oh God, don't stop, don't stop."

He didn't stop. He worked her with his mouth and his hand, and she could feel it building, a pressure unlike anything she had known, a tightening that started in her core and radiated outward, and when it hit, it hit like a wave. She came with a sound that was half sob, her thighs clamping around his head, her body shaking, and she felt herself release, a rush of wetness against his chin, against his hand, and he groaned against her, drinking her in, not pulling away, not stopping, and the orgasm kept going, rolling through her in pulses.

She pushed at his head, oversensitive, but he held her hips down and kept his mouth on her, lighter now, softer, drawing out the last tremors until she was trembling and whimpering and her eyes were wet.

He lifted his face. His jaw was wet with her. He looked at her like she was something he had been starving for.

"Again," he said.

"I can't."

"You can." He slid his fingers back inside her, and she was so swollen now that the pressure made her gasp. "Give me another one."

He worked her again, slower this time, but not less thoroughly, and she felt it building again, impossible, too much, too good, and she came again, and this time she gushed harder, soaking his hand, soaking the blanket beneath her, and she covered her face with her arm because the pleasure was so intense it felt like being taken apart.

"Look at me," he said.

She lowered her arm. Her eyes were blurred. "I can't take any more."

"You will." He moved up her body, kissing her stomach, her ribs, the underside of each breast. He took one nipple in his mouth and sucked, and she felt it like a current running from her breast to her core, and she was still throbbing, still contracting around nothing, and she needed him inside her with a desperation that bordered on panic.