A haunting melody strummed from her lips. He recognized it immediately. “Possession” by Sarah McLachlan was a sad but fitting choice, its tune reflecting the tragedies in Liv’s life. He shivered against the sweet breeze of her vocals, holding her tight as she expressed herself the one way she knew how.

She sang about trapped memories and solitude, but when the lyrics shifted to aching bodies, her huge brown eyes moistened, welling in the corners, staring up at him, piercing. Her conscience emerged through the words, her voice cracking, yearning. He realized she wasn’t rejecting him. She was beseeching him. Asking him to love her.

He sat back on his heels, curled her legs around him, and beheld the beauty of his world. Uncertainty misted her eyes. He drank in her fading hymns, her feminine allure. The parted seam of her mouth, gentle swells of breasts, flat expanse of belly, vulnerable spread of thighs. Her fearless heart.

His chest swelled, overcome and pounding frantically, as her love gathered before his eyes, twining her fingers around his, rolling tears down her cheeks, whispering a word he’d ached to hear in her angelic voice. “Josh.”

She stole his breath. He bent forward and collected a tear on his fingertip. His pulse beat in his throat as he lowered his finger and traced the slit between her legs with the teardrop, sliding deeper and deeper with each pass. His lungs panted. His finger breached her opening, and warm, slick flesh sucked him in.

Just thinking about putting his penis there sent a shock wave to his groin. He sank to the knuckle, her channel flexing and gripping. A moan tumbled out with his exhale, and he fell forward, catching his weight with his free arm beside her, laughing at himself, overwhelmed with desire.

He pressed in and out, and added a second finger. Her eyelids dipped to half-mast. Her lips freed a smile, her body glowing with life. He cherished every breathy gasp, marveled at how wet she was, and couldn’t let go. He wanted in, and given how violently his muscles shook, it would happen quickly and with a great amount of energy.

The naked light bared her arousal in all its curves and glistening flesh. His hand braced his larger frame over hers, his other exploring her sex with fumbling urgency. “Wish I had ten hands. I want to touch you everywhere while I’m doing this.”

“Just keep doing exactly what you’re doing.” She reached down, found the button on his jeans, released it, and lowered the zipper. “You’ll have me coming in no time.”

Oh, those words stroked him, made him harder. He concentrated on the depth of his touch, the velvet heat of her folds drenching his palm, and the sound of her exhales. When she pulled him from his pants and glided a fist up and down his length, he quickened the thrust of his fingers, wheezed on his laboring breaths, and felt his release barreling down.

He bucked out of her grip, pulling his fingers from her, squeezing the base of his erection and halting the orgasm. “I…uh…” A ragged laugh shook from him. “Wow. I’d like to get at least one thrust in before I embarrass myself.”

Stretching her arms above her head, legs spread in offering, she grinned. “I’ll keep my hands here.” She sucked on her bottom lip, her gaze sobering. “I’m all yours, Josh.”

Ahhh, his name on her lips. The arousal straining her face and the sultry caress of her voice accelerated the gallop of his heart and the throb between his legs. He lowered his face to her mound, slid his hands under her butt, and kissed a path down the line of her sex.

The sweet scent of her moisture infused his inhales. His mouth watered as he spread his lips over her, licking, sucking, imbibing the salty, sugary essence of her. He kissed her like he would her mouth. Deep, hungry pulls with his lips, burying his face, his tongue circling and lapping. The more he explored, the hotter her flesh grew, her entrance swelling, widening, wanting. He was doing that, tweaking her body, giving her pleasure.

Her legs flexed around his shoulders, her inner muscles pulsing against his tongue. Fingernails scraped the wall above her head. “Ohhh, fuck, fuck. Don’t stop.”

No way. He ground his hips against the mattress, working his jeans off with one hand, kicking them away. His heart raced toward implosion, his hard-on so hot and painful, he was consumed with the primal need to fill her, to make her his. He curled his fingers around her thighs, spreading her further, deepening his kiss.

Her curvaceous backside went tight in his hands and loosened with her full body sigh. “Ah, ahhh, I’m coming. Oh fuck, Josh, I’m coming.”

He devoured her through the twitches and pulses, the muscles inside of her beating against his tongue. Soon, she melted into the mattress, her breaths falling like lingering tears. She gazed down the length of her torso, eyes heavy-lidded and clinging to his.

One more tongue-delving kiss, and he crawled up her body, taking his time, dragging his mouth over her quivering belly, capturing every bead of sweat, following the dips of her ribs. He got sidetracked when he reached her nipples, flicking and biting until she pulled his hair and covered his mouth with swollen lips.

She drew in his tongue, humming, hands sweeping down his back. Her fingers burrowed into his butt crack and pressed against his rectum. Fire sparked in her eyes. “Take me.”

He shivered, his voice strangled. “Yes, ma’am.” He rolled his hips forward, cock in hand, and lined it up to her opening. They’d tied her tubes, but… “Condom?”

A smile shook the corner of her mouth. “Van doesn’t sleep around and has blood tests to prove it. I trust him on that.” Her eyes asked, Do you trust me?

He nodded, his heart hammered. This was it. He found her eyes, smoothed the hair from her face. She touched his lips then his chest, over his heart.

He thrust, a hard breathless slide, and they bled into one. Hot and wet. Soft and tight. Freedom. It was everything he’d wanted and nothing he’d expected. Her body stretched around him, gripping him, spinning stars through his brain. Buried to the root, he inhaled her breaths, sweating profusely, afraid to move.

She stared up at him with a yearning look, her dark eyes framed by wet lashes, the corner of her mouth shaking.

Connected inside her in a way he could’ve never imagined, he tasted her lips, a caress of soft, swollen bliss. “You okay?”

Her fingers speared his hair from his temples to his nape. “I never thought…” She drew in a deep breath, tightening her hold on the back of his head. “This tenderness…you and me…” She blinked rapidly, her inhale hitching. “This is an intimacy I never thought I’d experience.”

A deep level of satisfaction washed over him. He was able to give her something she’d never received from another man. Hope fluttered in his stomach. Maybe his love for her was big enough to heal her emotionally.

Her warm sex clenched, spurring him into motion. He withdrew, dragging his length along her walls, igniting a million sensations, and slammed back in. His hands scrambled for purchase on the mattress. Oh, God. His vision blacked, and his release tore from deep inside him, pummeling through his cock, shredding his throat. “Ah, ahhh, ughhh.” He shouted incoherent sounds over and over, his muscles jerking in spasmodic bliss, his heart tripping in his chest.

His head hit the pillow, the remnants of his climax thrumming through him, tingling his skin. When he regained his voice, he shifted his weight to his arms, bracketed her face, and searched her eyes. “I intended to last longer than two thrusts.” A smile pulled at his lips, and he let it loose with a laughing sigh. He circled his hips, still seated deep inside her, with no plans to pull out. Ever.

She shook her head, biting down on her own smile. “Just like a teenage boy.” She kissed him, gliding her tongue and heating his mouth. Then she pushed her hands through his hair and leaned back. “But you fuck with your heart.”