Prologue: The Return
The suitcase hit the floor with a dull thud that seemed too loud in the quiet house. Jenna stood just inside the doorway, the strap of her bag still looped over one shoulder, her skin carrying the faint salt of the Gulf and the dry chill of recycled plane air. Across the kitchen, Mark turned from the sink. For a moment neither moved. The air between them thickened, heavy with everything they had not said on the phone and everything they had done with their hands and voices in the dark.
She let the bag slide from her shoulder. It landed beside the suitcase. He took one step toward her and she met him halfway, crossing the tile in three strides. His hands found her waist at the same instant her palms pressed flat against his chest. The first kiss was not gentle. It was weeks of denied need poured into the press of mouths, the slide of tongues, the small broken sound she made when he angled her head and took more. She tasted like the lemon water she drank on the plane and something warmer underneath, something that belonged only to the two of them.
He walked her backward until her hips met the edge of the counter. His fingers pushed the thin straps of her sundress off her shoulders; the fabric caught at her elbows before he tugged it lower. Her breasts came free, nipples already tight. He bent and closed his mouth over one, sucking slow and deep, the flat of his tongue dragging across the sensitive peak until her back arched and her fingers threaded into his hair. The sound she made vibrated through his chest. He moved to the other breast, teeth grazing just enough to make her hips shift forward against him.
Her dress bunched at her waist. He slid one hand between her thighs and found the thin cotton of her panties already damp. The heat there was immediate, unmistakable. He pressed the heel of his palm against her and felt the way her cunt pulsed in answer. She pushed into his hand with a quiet, desperate noise. He hooked his fingers into the waistband and dragged the panties down her legs; she stepped out of them without breaking the kiss. When his hand returned, she was slick and open, the soft folds parting easily under his fingers. He stroked her slowly, gathering the wetness, spreading it upward until his thumb circled her clit in the same rhythm his tongue used on her mouth.
Jenna’s hands went to his belt. She worked it open with shaking fingers, then the button and zipper of his jeans. When she reached inside and closed her hand around his cock, he groaned against her lips. He was already hard, the head slick with precome that smeared across her palm as she stroked him once, twice, learning the weight and heat of him all over again. He broke the kiss only long enough to shove his jeans and boxers down his thighs. Then he lifted her onto the counter in one motion, her bare ass settling against the cool granite, legs spreading around his hips.
He looked at her then—really looked. Her mouth was swollen, her eyes dark, the Florida sun still living in the faint gold across her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. The sight of her open and waiting for him after every late-night call, every photo that had burned behind his eyes, made something low and possessive tighten in his chest. He wrapped one hand around the base of his cock and dragged the head through her folds, coating himself in her arousal. The slick sound was obscene in the quiet kitchen. She watched him do it, lips parted, breathing shallow.
When he pushed inside her, it was slow. The thick head pressed, stretched, then sank deeper as her body yielded around him. The wet heat of her cunt gripped him tightly, the weeks of denial making every inch feel like the first time. She exhaled a long, shaking breath as he filled her, her inner walls fluttering around the intrusion. He paused when he was buried to the hilt, forehead resting against hers, both of them trembling with the effort of staying still. Her thighs quivered against his sides. A thin trickle of her slick escaped around his cock and slid down toward the counter.
He began to move. Long, deliberate strokes at first, pulling almost all the way out before sinking back in, letting her feel every ridge and vein, letting himself feel the way she clenched and released around him. The wet sound of each thrust grew louder as her body opened further, coating him, making the slide easier and filthier. Her hands clutched at his shoulders, nails biting through his shirt. He reached between them and circled her clit with his thumb in time with his thrusts, feeling the way her cunt tightened in response.
“Mark—” Her voice broke on his name.
He answered by driving deeper, the head of his cock nudging the spot inside her that made her whole body jerk. Sweat gathered at the small of his back and along his hairline. Her skin was warm and slightly sticky from travel; he tasted salt when he dragged his mouth along her throat. The counter creaked faintly beneath them. One of her sandals had fallen off; it lay on the tile beside his discarded jeans.
He fucked her harder, the rhythm shifting from measured to urgent. Each thrust pushed a soft, wet sound from her. Her breasts moved with the force of it. He watched the place where they were joined, watched his cock disappear into the flushed, glistening heat of her again and again. Her arousal coated him thickly now, strings of it stretching and breaking when he withdrew. The smell of sex rose between them, sharp and heady, mixing with the faint citrus of her perfume and the clean detergent scent of the house.
She came with a choked cry, her cunt clamping down in rhythmic pulses that milked his cock. Fresh wetness flooded around him, hot and slick, running down over his balls and onto the counter. Her thighs shook violently against his hips. He kept moving through it, drawing it out, watching her face as pleasure overtook her—eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, a thin sheen of sweat on her upper lip.
Only when her tremors began to ease did he let himself go. He gripped her hips hard enough to leave faint marks and drove into her with short, powerful thrusts, chasing his own release. The tension that had lived in him since the night she left coiled tighter and tighter until it snapped. He buried himself deep and came with a low, guttural sound, pulsing thickly inside her. Each spurt of come mixed with the mess already between them, the overflow leaking out around his cock and dripping onto the granite in slow, viscous trails.
He stayed inside her afterward, breathing hard against her neck, one hand still braced on the counter, the other wrapped around her waist as if she might disappear again. Her legs remained locked around him. The kitchen was quiet except for the slowing rhythm of their breathing and the faint, wet sound of their bodies still joined. A single drop of sweat fell from his temple onto her collarbone and slid downward between her breasts.
She turned her face and pressed her mouth to the side of his neck, not quite a kiss, just the press of lips and the warm exhale of her breath. Neither of them moved to separate. The afternoon light caught the sheen across her skin and the darker flush where his hands had held her.
