He meant to take her arms to bring them around his neck, but they were already sliding up his chest and into his hair. Her breasts were already pressed to his skin. She’d always seemed to know what he wanted, although at this moment he had conjured up no fantasies. No expectations. He just wanted her, in any way, shape, or form.

Keko held tightly to his neck and pulled herself up, wrapping her legs around his waist. She was so strong as she held him, as though he’d been the one trying to run away. All that skin, tying him up in a beautiful Chimeran ribbon.

His legs gave out, not from weight, but from the sheer force of desire that barreled into him. He sank into the water, taking her with him, shattering the magical stillness of the pool. Releasing his control over his element, little waves slapped over their bodies. There was a sharp dig in his scalp, her fingers grinding as she pulled his mouth to hers.

The word for what happened next wasn’t kiss. No. A kiss was way too delicate, way too passionless.

Three years of frustration were built into this. Three years of missed chances and disconnected promise. Three years of continual longing, building and building despite the mind’s orders to let it go.

She was trembling in his arms, and that might have been the most startling and most fantastic discovery of all: to know for sure that he affected her as much as she affected him.

He’d missed the sweet smoke on her tongue. He’d missed the pressure of her lips and the way she opened so wide for him. He’d missed the power of her body and how she barely knew her own strength when it came to him, because that meant he’d made her lose control.

He wanted her experiences to mirror his, for her to know exactly what she did to him in the way he fed his reactions back to her.

He had to be inside her. Now. No finesse, no preamble. They needed to take the edge off right now before it sawed them both in half. Later, he would show her with his hands and mouth and cock that when he thought of her, Makaha and the Senatus and a close call war didn’t exist. When he touched her, and claimed her mouth and body at this very moment, he wasn’t thinking of that exchange of information they were both dreading and wanting.

It was only about her. Only about them.

“Keko.”

He thought the name was only in his mind, but then it tumbled out with pure desperation and hard-driving need onto his tongue. He pressed the beautiful word back into her open mouth.

The water vibrated around them, their little liquid world gone to shaking. Desire rattled itself free from the cage in which he’d tossed it these long, long years, and his body joined hers in its trembling.

Keko’s body rolled, her spine rippling beneath his hands as she rubbed herself against him. Even in the water he could feel how wet she’d gotten for him.

Releasing his mouth, she pressed damp lips to his ear and whispered, “Get inside me.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Holding her tightly, he pushed to his feet, the water making them buoyant at first, then giving them up to the air with massive resistance. He completely forgot he was supposed to be physically wiped out and mentally fatigued from lack of sleep. At that moment he was as strong as a tsunami. Keko was still wrapped around him, her tongue licking up his neck, making him see his beloved stars when she got to the shell of his ear. Legs pushing hard through the water, he veered them toward the rock ledge and sat her perfect ass on the wet stone.

Slowly she peeled away from him, her hands loosening from around his neck, the separation of their chests giving him a lovely display of water trickling over her skin. He watched the trails of his element as they made curved lines across her flesh. Watched how his blatant, hungry stare made her breath quicken and her back arch.

Leaning back on her hands, she made for a brilliant image. A light tease of flame crossed her lust-blackened eyes. Slightly dangerous, completely sexy. He touched her face just below her left eye, drawn by the flame. She pressed into his touch.

Unlocking her ankles from around his back, she slowly spread her legs, the muscles in her abdomen flexing magnificently. Everything about her movements was as graceful as a dancer. Her heels came to rest on the lip of the rock.

She looked up at him, his hand still pressed to her cheek. “Please.”

That was all she said. It was all she had to.

The hand on her cheek now curled around her head, past her ear, to clutch at the back of her skull. Pure possession. He came forward so the tops of his thighs grazed rock and the tip of his hard-on finally touched the hot, lovely place she was giving him.

Keeping a grip on the back of her neck—keeping her eyes on his—he used his other hand to draw a finger up the seam of her body, between her legs. Watched her shudder while trying to hold still, to be strong and resistant. She was beyond swollen, more slick than he ever thought possible.

He started to slowly push inside. Every centimeter made her eyelids flicker. Every centimeter coated him with surmounting pleasure. Then, as he finally drove all the way in, her eyelids fluttered closed and her inner muscles clenched him in the fist of heaven.

He gave her neck a soft squeeze and swirled a finger under her hair. “Open your eyes,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

When she did, warrior ferocity had replaced the feminine surrender. No fire magic dancing across her irises this time. Just Keko, connecting with him.

He withdrew a little, the grip and slide of her body making it exquisite, making it deliciously painful. But drawing back was the best, in his mind, because it just meant he got to go back in. That’s what he loved most. Entering her. Claiming her. Watching her control be dismantled piece by piece. It was the most freeing sensation when the world disappeared and all he knew was her.

As he drove back inside, they made twin gasps. When she arched back, pushing herself onto him, he’d been a fool to think that she’d ever been at his mercy, to think that she would willingly give up any measure of control. Because with just that little movement she’d turned the tables and made him hers.

Had it really been so long since they’d done this? Been together like this? How come he remembered everything so clearly and still felt like she was brand new?

Digging his fingers into the base of her neck, using her as leverage, he took her in the hard way he knew she liked. The way he’d been dying to . . . this time.

Because even as he was driving hard into the most stunning, most desirable, most frightening woman he’d ever met, his thoughts of her were soft. Next time—next time, he vowed—he would touch her and have her in a way that echoed how he’d never stopped feeling this whole time apart.

She was growing warmer, the Chimeran blood reacting to the animalistic, human part of her that responded to sex. Which meant she was getting closer to the wonderful place they both wanted her to be.

Keko dug her heels into the stone and lifted her ass. With only her feet and hands for balance, her body took on an incredible roll and swing as he thrust into it, a free, breathtaking thing that alternately swallowed him and rocked him away. The heat in her was building to a point he’d been craving for years—a point that had scared the shit out of him the very first time, but which had quickly transformed into a dangerous kind of high.

A blast of heat emanated out from her core—a sharp shard of pain that licked along him, then instantly shifted to a rippling, searing form of pleasure the likes of which he would never be able to describe in either English or Ofarian. His water people from the stars didn’t have words to adequately relate how it felt to be inside a Chimeran woman when she came.

He remembered not to stop as her fire and her orgasm crested, her body trembling madly. Her pleasure lasted for a long time, and he wanted to drain out every drop, to know fully what he’d given her. To watch her.