If you like music while you read, try "May I" by Trading Yesterday. It's Gar and Rika's song, and what I was listening to while writing these chapters!

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RIKA

Something within her trembled with a confusing mix of excitement and fear.

She still had her eyes open and she watched Gar kiss her, but she couldn't resist it. Every brush, every touch.. it was as if the fire he'd lit under her skin months earlier had sunk to glowing embers—intense heat and light, but little flames—and he was blowing on them.

When he traced her mouth with his, teased at her with his tongue, she couldn't help but respond—following him when he eased back. But he'd never let her take it deep and fast.

She arched when he let his fingers trail slowly down her back and sucked in a breath when he gripped her thighs. The flames wanted to roar, but instead of pulling her against him, Gar pressed one hand back up her spine to slide his fingers into her hair and grip the back of her head.

The kiss deepened. But each time she tried to make it faster or more frantic, he slowed further, forcing her to focus on the featherlight slide of his lips, on the tingling trails he left on her arms with gentle fingers, on the quiet sighs of her name that kept rumbling from his chest.

She couldn't escape the growing warmth in her belly that responded to the achingly slow way he rocked against her, still fully clothed. But instead of turning it into a thrilling, desperate pawing at clothing and screaming release, Gar slowed and stroked and sighed.. drawing out the contact until her very skin seemed to vibrate.

The familiar fear that chittered in her head began to raise its voice—yet right alongside it, she saw his face, the worried way he'd sat up and grabbed for her when he thought she might leave.

historical

She knew the feeling he described, lived in that place more often than she'd like to admit. She'd recognized the glazed look in his eyes, the shuddering need to feel separate from the feelings. But for her, that had always meant she needed physical space. Distance from people and their noise.

Until him.

Lately, she'd found herself falling into him, not away from him, when things got difficult. And that moment when she'd found him—understood what he felt and been so willing to give him the space he needed as he'd done so often for her—only to find him pleading with her to stay.

It was as if he'd suddenly stepped over her walls and come to live inside them, with her. It left her shaking and breathless and terrified and..

Oh dear lord. She felt her whole existence soften.

As Gar drew his hands up her sides and whispered her beauty, her hips began to roll in slow circles.

As he kissed her, open-mouthed, the flat of his tongue finding hers, she felt her joints loosen.

And when his fingers fisted in her hair and he shivered, raising his hips to grind slowly against her, her head tipped back of its own accord.

Gar's hands shook, but his fingers found her buttons and slowly popped them one by one until he slid his palms to her ribs and helped her shrug it off, sucking in a breath at the sight of her and rolling against her so their chests brushed and her skin pebbled with goosebumps, her nipples rising to hard peaks.

But still, he moved so slowly.

Even when he finally reached for her leathers, he didn't hurry, dropping his lips to her shoulder and mouthing her skin as he worked at her buttons, then sitting back, swinging her up and off his lap and standing.

Rika was almost used to these moves now—his immense strength and confidence, the way he could just take her if he wanted to.

And he wanted to. But he so rarely did—always mindful of her fear.

But this time it didn't feel like a threat. It felt like a thrill, her stomach dipping in that shuddering, nervous way when something good was happening, as he carried her through the room, up the stairs to the bedroom and then laid her on the bed like she was precious cargo.

"Gar—"

He took her mouth to shush her, teasing with his tongue, his lips full and loose on hers. Then he reached down and, kissing his way down her neck, her chest, her stomach, slowly drew her leathers off and tossed them to the side.

When he straightened, his eyes were bright and hot. But there was nothing predatory in his gaze.

Instead of glowing with his lion, they glowed with his love.

Rika sucked in a breath as he shucked off his own leathers, then climbed up onto the bed with her, crawled over her, but didn't lower himself to cover her.

They sat there for a moment, Gar on all fours, his hands braced to her sides, his knees between hers, and they stared at each other.

He reached with one hand flat to her chest and stroked down, between her breasts, to her stomach, then her thigh, then cupped the back of her knee and pulled it up against him.

The move lit a fire in her belly—not just the heated desire he always inspired in her. But something more. Something that curled and coiled and tightened, wrapping around her heart and thrumming, pulsing with a bright, warm light.

"Gar?" she whispered.

He still hadn't lowered himself onto her, but his touch was so gentle and so.. necessary.

"God, I love you, Rika," he croaked, his eyes slightly wide and suddenly pleading—as if he feared she might reject him.

Gasping, Rika pushed up to sit, taking his face in her hands and searching his eyes. "I love you, Gar. I've never loved anyone the way I love you. Please.. it's true—"

She'd barely got the words out when he took her mouth with a groan, his hand at the back of her neck again, cradling her, his arm laying down her spine, pulling her closer.

They kissed, long and deep, curled together that way and she sucked in against the questions that wanted to rise, against the desperate eagerness that she'd always fallen back into.

Something within her trembled as if she stood on a precipice. She opened her eyes for a moment to find Gar sighing her name, his handsome face twisted with desire and pleading.

Pleading.

He feared she'd say no.

She never wanted him to think she ever wanted to say no.

With a tiny cry, Rika clung to his shoulders, but let her head fall back, and for the first time in her life, she let herself go—finally. She put herself completely in his hands and surrendered to whatever he might bring. Because she loved him, and he loved her, and she'd never felt safer with anyone.

She couldn't fight it anymore.

"I love you, Gar," she whispered, tears of joy pricking under her lashes.

And as he groaned the mating call and dropped his chin to taste her throat, something inside her bloomed to life.