“Love,” he whispers huskily, pulling back. He licks up the curve of my ass, my body exploding with a shower of sparks. “I don’t think I can ever stop tasting you.”

My mouth opens to say something but he dives, no, submerges his face back into me and I let out a low, guttural noise, like it’s being torn from my throat. I push my hips back into his mouth, a wild, uncontrollable need burning through me.

“Deeper,” I plead, so desperate for my release, my cheek pressing into the bars.

His tongue snakes inside me, then a finger, then two, and I’m thrusting back into him like a fucking animal. I know I must look like one of those wild, drug-high girls you see at a fuck-fueled sex orgy, but I don’t care.

I’m so close to coming.

I’m at the tip, looking over the edge, ready for the freefall.

Then he pulls back and I actually whimper in disappointment.

“You want more?” he asks gruffly, holding onto my ass. “Tell me what you want. To come on my tongue? Or to come on my cock? Both?”

“God, don’t make this complicated,” I whine, breathless and insatiable.

“All of the above, then.” He spreads my legs wider, my sandals scraping along the stone floor, and pushes his face back in, his tongue, fingers, and mouth absolutely everywhere.

I come instantly, my body a hair trigger. I’m a writhing, moaning, bucking mess of scattered nerves, my limbs dissolving like sugar. I’m barely conscious and I don’t know how I’m still upright. I feel him get up from behind me and hear the crinkle of a condom foil.

He grips my hips as he positions himself, and with one long, slow push he eases inside me. I’m so wet and ready that he glides right in. But oh, when he pulls back out, that slow drag hitting just the right spot, somehow I’m groaning for him all over again.

“Don’t stop,” I hiss as he plunges back inside, deeper this time, coaxing another unrestrained noise out of my throat. “Don’t you ever stop fucking me.”

“Jesus,” he swears, gravelly and low. “I’ll bury myself in you, if you let me.” Then he moves faster, small stabs of his hips pushing deeper and deeper while his skin slaps my skin louder and louder. The smell of sex, sweat, and musk fills the room.

I’m completely overwhelmed. It’s too perfect. It’s everything, everything. I close my eyes and imagine what we look like to someone else, the ropey muscles of his arms as he digs his fingers into my hips, the raw, uninhibited fucking in this cold, dim and empty place, the sight of his thick cock sliding into me from behind, his heavy balls swinging against my inner thighs.

He leans forward, his fingers sliding down and finding the smooth, swollen face of my clit. He always wants me to come with him, so I know he’s about to unload at any moment. But for some reason, I hold back, as hard as I can, wanting to pay attention to the way he so beautifully lets go without losing myself at the same time.

Drops of his sweat fall on my back. He continues pounding me, his hips changing the angle until it makes me gasp for air, my back arching. His breathing is shaky and his muscles are trembling from the strain, but he keeps going and going, whimpering now, clawing me in desperation.

There’s a moment, a pause, a sharp intake of air, then the room fills with the sounds of his harsh, sharp grunts, the sound of him coming, a sound I love so much that it pushes me over the edge. It’s the signal of his undoing, and his fingers press so hard into my skin that I’m afraid I might break in two. I am breaking in two. I am stretched thin, a plate of fragile glass, and I am breaking and breaking and breaking as he pounds me from behind.

I can barely hang onto the bars. I can barely hang onto myself. Wave after wave of emotion slams through me, filling the blank spaces, the cracks, the parts of me that have shattered off into space. I can barely breathe, and the ache, the fucking ache, is no longer between my legs but throughout my entire body.

“Kayla,” Lachlan whispers hoarsely, leaning forward against my sweaty back. “Oh, love.” He rests his cheek on my shoulder blades and his ragged breaths rise and fall against me.

I close my eyes and will myself not to cry. It’s silly. Stupid. It’s just sex. It’s just fucking sex. But the emotion doesn’t go away. It sits on my heart, and I can’t tell what it wants from me. Are these happy tears? Sad tears? Why do I have to feel anything at all but release?

My fingers on the bars are beginning to slip, so I readjust my grip, and somehow that breaks the spell. Lachlan lifts himself off of me, and with a hand on my hip, pulls himself out. I take a moment to run my fingers under my eyes before turning around to face him.

He stands there, pants at his ankles, shirt bunched up, showing off his ink and glorious six-pack. He’s pulling off the condom and tying it at the end but I’m barely paying attention. It’s the look in his eyes that gets me, steals my breath. They don’t have the peace, the softness that he usually gets after sex. He looks haunted instead, like I’m a ghost before him.

I swallow, my mouth parched, and try to think of something to say, but words escape me. I stare at him and he stares at me, electricity built of unsaid words and unknown feelings thrumming between us. There’s nothing awkward or uncomfortable about it. It’s just us, doing what we do, trying to glean something from each other that we don’t know ourselves, forever locked in each other’s eyes.

Finally he pulls up his pants, comes over to me, and pulls me into a wet, passionate kiss, his lips pressing hard against mine, his tongue tasting like me, like salt, like sweat.

He holds my face with one hand, running his thumb over my lips, gazing at me deeply. “I’m sorry if that was a bit savage.”

I smirk. “The more savage the better.” And it’s true, because anything that could border on the sweet and sensitive, the emotionally-laden sex that is so often called “making love,” well, I don’t think I could maneuver that very well. After all, as savage as that fuck was, it still unleashed a torrent of emotions that I’m not equipped to handle. I’ve had a black heart my whole life, and it doesn’t know what to do with anything that could turn it whole and pink.

Noises come suddenly from behind the room’s locked door, and we quickly exchange a sheepish glance before we hightail it down the corridor, Lachlan flicking the condom in the trash can as we leave.

Once in the foyer, we pause, spotting the group still in the wine bar, laughing about something.

I look up at Lachlan. “We don’t have to join them.”

“Aye,” he says with a nod. “But we should. Come on.”

“Do I look like I just got thoroughly fucked?” I whisper to him.

He glances down at me and there’s a flash of a wicked smile. “Oh yes.”

“There you guys are,” Steph says as we approach the table, and it’s too late to even smooth down my hair. I know that my face and chest must be flushed. “I’d ask where you’ve been, but I don’t want to know.”

I give her a haughty smile and take my seat like a prim and proper lady. “Just getting some fresh air.”

Nicola snorts from beside me. “I think I might need to know where you’re getting your air.”

“Sweetheart, your air is just fine,” Bram says to her from across the table.

With the wine tasting over now, everyone is just splitting a couple of bottles. I hesitate to have a glass, already feeling quite woozy from earlier, but Lachlan surprisingly has one so I join him.

Eventually our stomachs start grumbling and we all head to dinner in one of the restaurants. Lachlan quickly stops by the room to get Emily since we learned you can have pets out on the patio, and we spend a few hours drinking more wine and eating as the sun goes down in the distance, casting a glow over the vineyards.

I breathe in deeply, enjoying the heat of the night air and the crickets that fill the silence. Bram and Nicola excuse themselves, Nicola saying she needs to call her mother and speak to Ava before it gets too late. Then eventually Steph and Linden leave too, hanging onto each other like two drunken fools.