Chapter Ninety-Six

Safiya

A warm caress slowly rubbed up my thigh.

" Hayatim ." Deep and rough, his voice feathered across my heart and blanketed my soul. "Good morning." His minty breath cascaded over my shoulder a mere second before his lips touched just below my ear. "How did you sleep?"

Naked, wrapped in his arms, and more secure than I had ever felt, I blinked my eyes open to darkness. "The shutters are still closed?" I stretched one leg, and all at once, his releases seeped out, and I realized he was no longer inside me.

"They're open, but it's before sunrise."

An aching emptiness throbbed between my legs. "You have gotten up already." And I did not feel him leave.

He rolled me onto my back and pushed my thighs wide. "Is that an accusation or a complaint?" Without preamble or warning, he thrust inside me hard and fast, sinking all the way to the root.

My shocked cry was swallowed by the darkness as my back arched and my knees came up.

His mouth slammed over mine, and he sank his tongue deep.

Then my husband, my ghost, my thief, he was driving into me with thunderous flesh-slapping animalistic need.

Impossibly thick and hard and long, he split my body apart, but he rubbed against my soul.

He was galvanic need.

I was sybaritic want.

He fucked me into the bed.

He drove into my heart.

He growled from his throat.

I swallowed it, and he ripped his mouth away from mine.

" Come ," he demanded.

Grabbing my throat, thrusting his hips, slamming hard into my core, the first forceful pulse of his release hit deep inside me.

It was all the trigger I needed.

My orgasm exploded.

Rupturing through every fractured nerve, detonating every molecule of air, throwing me into an unchartered scattering of pounding, avaricious need, I came and I seized and I tunneled—into soundless, sightless darkness.

My hair was gripped, my body was yanked, and my back came off the bed.

An American SEAL barked out a command. " Breathe , Safiya. brEATHE."

I sucked in a breath, a cascade of aftershocks rippled through my pulsing core, and a ghost pulled me back from the darkness.

Upright on his lap, impaled by his hard length, I smiled. "Grayson."

"Husband," he corrected.

" Husband ," I whispered.

His lips landed on mine, and sweet but firm, he kissed me.

Before I could wrap my arms around his neck and melt into his touch, he was pulling back. Carefully lifting one of my legs over him, he turned me around while staying buried deep inside me.

Once my back was to his chest, he laid us down, slid his arm under my head, and tilted my face toward the glass sliders. "Watch."

I looked out at the dark ocean.

As if he had commanded it, the first of the sun's rays broke free of the horizon line and pierced the sky.

A moment later, bright oranges and yellows and coral pinks were painting the new day in the same shades of the dresses he had gifted me.

My husband gave me a vow. "No more darkness."

Tears welled.

Reaching over me, he picked up his cell from the nightstand, then he swiped across it and leaned the phone against the base of the lamp.

On the screen was a new picture.

My husband. With his arm protectively around me, his hand cupping my breast, he stared directly into the camera as he held me while I peacefully slept.

Tears fell, and I looked up at him.

"No more fear."

Grayson Ryker Gautier kissed me.