"Alex!" she cried, almost screaming it as she came.
"I love you," he said, the words tearing from his throat. It was what he wanted her to say, but it was coming from his own mouth. "I love you. I love you."
He lost it completely with his next heartbeat. One second he was sobbing for breath and straining for the edge, and the next he was rocketing through the gates of bliss. The orgasm squeezed from him in jets of fire, over and over, like his whole body was trying to empty out. He held tight inside her, as far as he could reach, gasping at each spasm until he just plain couldn't come anymore.
He was dripping sweat, and her hands were stroking his hair, her lips pressed tenderly to his cheek. She kissed him like she loved him, but he knew better. Zoe Clare was the original open heart. If she'd felt what he did, she would have said it back.
"Hey," he said, striving to make light of his embarrassment. "I think we scared your cat. He crawled back into your purse."
Zoe didn't look away from him to check.
"Alex," she murmured, her lips reaching for his mouth.
He couldn't stop himself from kissing her. He should have been pulling out, getting a little distance, but he couldn't stop. Her hands were so sweet, so kind, her incredible legs coming back around his waist so that he started to swell again.
It was high school all over. He'd never get enough of her.
Shit, he thought. I am so f**king screwed.
They used all Alex's condoms in quick succession, barely pausing long enough for him to roll them off and on. The intensity with which he took her was undiminished, though he didn't say he loved her after that first time. Instead, he humped her with a fervor that was breathtaking. Admittedly, Zoe liked aggressive lovers, but nothing he did seemed truly rough to her. Yes, he enjoyed positions where he had control, but he didn't neglect her pleasure. In fact, he seemed to love pushing it higher. That said, he always reached a point in the final shafting part of the act where she knew it was all only about him. He went hard and fast then, completely focused on his drive for release.
He seemed to need each orgasm equally.
Zoe didn't think finally having her as his partner was the only reason. This felt like a puzzle piece she hadn't known to look for when she was fifteen. This was telling her that Alex really, really liked a lot of sex.
He let her roll him beneath her for the final bout, riding him so forcefully any other man would have protested. Alex simply gripped her h*ps and pulled her down harder.
Even when she was on top, he stayed in charge.
"Is this okay with you?" he panted. "Is this good?"
She was too busy coming to reassure him, her blood roaring in her ears, her body taking what it wanted with an abandon she didn't think she'd ever experienced.
He grunted, feeling her contractions, his face going grim and tight like it had every time right before he cl**axed except the first. Then his face had been open. Then it had been both tender and furious.
What lay behind the change came to her clear as crystal. He was sorry he'd said he loved her. He regretted it because she hadn't said it back. She hadn't known what to make of his confession, thinking it was the heat of the moment talking. Now, though, seeing that her silence had caused him pain, her conscience jabbed at her to tell him she loved him, too.
No, she refused, swallowing the words. She wasn't going to do this, not with him and not with Magnus. She'd opened herself to Magnus last night only to have him reject her—the man she'd thought was different from Alex, the man she'd thought, at the least, could be trusted if he ever fell in love with her.
But neither man could be trusted. They were more alike than different, unable to give their hearts to any one person.
She cried out as Alex did something wicked with his fingers on her swollen, cream-drenched clit. He'd found the little spot on the side that made her crazy, the one he'd discovered all those years ago in the back of his mother's car, the one so sensitive that rubbing it too early almost felt like pain. But it wasn't too early now. No, it was screamingly perfect.
"That's a… girl," he gasped, his fingers stiff with the closeness of his own cl**ax. "One more time… with me."
His head jerked back on the rumpled blanket, his lips pulled snarling from his teeth. His h*ps snapped up and locked inside her as his c**k grew thicker and began to pulse. Zoe's sex contracted around him at the same instant, as if their separate pleasures were being detonated by a single switch. It wasn't just energy that exploded inside her, but emotion, the same irrational burst of—well, love was a pale word for the adoration that swept through her—that she'd felt for Magnus the night before. In that moment when her orgasm blinded her earthly eyes, she knew that Alex was perfect just as he was. That she only had to love him, just as he was, and everything would turn out all right.
She was crying silently when she came out of it, two long, hot trickles running from the corners of her eyes. She swiped them away before Alex could see, easing her weight down carefully on his hips. He was still inside her, still hard, though not as hard as before.
He looked serious when he opened his Caribbean eyes—serious and wary.
Her heart gave a little spasm for the wariness, which she tried her best to ignore. She couldn't love him again, she couldn't, but she feared it would be easy. The slightest wavering of her guard, and she would be lost.
I a.m a stupid, stupid woman, she thought.
"You okay?" His palms slid carefully up her arms.
She nodded as steadily as she could. "Tired," she said. "That was quite a hurricane."
A hurricane was nothing to the storm that ripped through Magnus. His fists were trembling, the scrying ball fallen from his hold.
The fairy bastard had taken her—not once but four hard times—until she'd wept with pleasure at her last cl**ax.
Alex had been shoved deep into her pu**y, shoved by the strength of Zoe's own h*ps and thighs, shoved in that tight velvet sheath of flesh she'd been keeping—perhaps unknown to herself—untouched for Magnus for the last two years.
Magnus's prick should have been where Alex's was. Magnus was the one Zoe had a crush on, and Magnus loved her more than life itself. He would have been true to her had his fortunes allowed, would have made love to her and no one else. She had no idea how hard it was for one of his kind to have sex only once a month, but—to spare her feelings—he'd done it without complaint.
And now some other fairy knew how she felt inside. Alex had felt her sex clutch and cream around him. Alex had spilled his energy into her core. Barely two days after blowing back into her life, he'd done what Magnus would never, ever be able to.