Free Only for Us by Cristin Harber

myself, using my knees to push up, my forearms glued to his shoulder for balance. He curses under his breath, and I open my eyes to see his squeezed shut.
    It’s addictive, and I need more. With a ragged, needy gasp, I repeat the motions. Faster, stronger, surer, I ride him as he asked me to. It’s heaven, and the more control I have, the more confident I am. It’s like breathing fire into my senses.
    Grayson flexes around me. His fingers bite into my skin. This is harder and hotter than I thought possible—more than I imagined my body could take and his could give.
    I kiss his mouth, bite his lip, and embrace the cataclysmic slide as my climax builds. He smells like soap and tastes sweet. I bury every moan and gasp in a kiss until I can’t breathe. My muscles clench, my body rocks. Fireworks sizzle behind my closed eyelids as I come for him, as he pumps and groans just as hard into the kiss.
    He flips us over. My back hits the bed, and he pumps into me as he comes. His climax is guttural and delicious. It reignites mine, and in a fury of passion, we’re clinging together with our clothes half on, gasping into each other’s mouths and riding the wave of insane pleasure.
    “I love you.” My chest heaves, and I scrape my teeth against his bottom lip.
    “Emma.” He returns the bite then kisses me just as hard. “Yours forever.”
    I nod against his neck. “Quickies are nice.”
    “Quickies are just a promise of what will come,” he rasps as we untangle ourselves.
    I look around for anything that might help clean up, but this room isn’t lived in. There are no real-life creature comforts. “I need to run to the bathroom—” His grin is wicked, and it makes me hot all over again. “What?”
    “That was pretty much high school fantasy numero uno .”
    I blush, absolutely sure that my face is several shades past scarlet. “Same.”
    He laughs and kisses my neck until I’m giggling and shooing him away. For a split second, all of this feels too good to be true. We quickly dress, and he takes my hand and pulls me out of my room. Playfully, Gray swats my butt as I duck into the hall bathroom.
    “See you in a minute.” I close the door, leaning against it, hugging myself, with an ear-to-ear smile in place. But as soon as the post-orgasm brain fog begins to fade, I realize I sent him to fend for himself amongst the Kingsley pack of wolves—even though most are behaving—and he went without complaint. After what just happened and the conversation with Ryan, I think Grayson’s still a true believer that no one can bring us down. All I want to shout is “Hell yeah, amen.”
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Grayson
     
    Night has fallen, bringing with it serenity. Emma’s house makes me calm, and after a day with her family—with everyone justifiably looking for a reason to throw their jabs—I need this quiet. She put Cally to bed, and I’ve continued unpacking boxes, sorting through her things, which look so very Emma. The decorations are often handmade and a little funky. They’re reminders of the artsy girl I grew up with. So much is personalized, and her house looks the way I would have pictured it. I work my jaw back and forth, thinking that it also looks as if it could work for us .
    Cally seems to be taking me in stride, too. We have a connection that makes me believe I’ll be a million times the dad Pops was to me. As each hour ticked by today, the kid grew more comfortable hanging on me, which made me fall that much more in love with her.
    And her mama. Emma flat-out kills at this mom thing. She really does an amazing job—wiping Cally’s face, wiping her tears, laughing at a joke that no one else seems to understand, and communicating fluently in two-year-old speak. She rolls on the ground with Cally and lets her ride her like a horse. The entire time, Emma smiles, as though she hasn’t been struggling to make Cally’s life perfect while giving up her own.
    “Hey, you.” Emma pads in wearing a loose