He looked down into her eyes, losing himself in their crystalline blue. It was like gazing into tropical waters, deceptively deep in their stunning clarity. She gazed back up at him, uncharacteristically serious.

Maybe she felt it, too. The past several days, frantically worrying that he’d lost her for good, had changed something deep inside him. He’d always known she was precious and special. But now he also knew she held his heart in her hands—and that he would never get it back.

Funny, but he was okay with that.

He murmured, “I already knew I was a goner for you, probably even before we left Camp Jarvis. But I didn’t want to distract you from your training. And I wasn’t ready to admit that I’d fallen for you. Hard.”

She arched up against him, meeting his thrust with one of her own, seating him so deep inside her, he thought he’d touched eternity. He paused there, memorizing the sensation, staring down at the perfection of her in awe.

Then she moved impatiently beneath him, and he grinned, obliging her by setting up a steady, slow rhythm that she matched, thrust for slow, deep thrust.

“When you were missing,” he continued, shivering a little as her internal muscles gripped him strongly, demanding more from him, “a piece of me was missing, too.” He withdrew partway, and her calves tightened around his glutes, unwilling to let him go. Smiling a little, he gave her what she wanted and drove home.

He confessed, “When I thought I might never see you again, my world…ended.”

“Mine, too,” she whispered.

Their bodies moved as one in an urgent ride toward oblivion. Her arms were strong around his neck, her legs stronger around his hips. She held him like she never wanted to let him go, and he loved her back like he never wanted her to even think about letting go.

He showed her with his body that she was his whole world and prayed she felt the same. He held nothing back. He put it all on the line. His heart, his soul, his love. If she would have him, he was entirely hers.

Again and again he stroked into her, deeper and deeper until she was stretched as tight as a bow beneath him, waiting for the final arrow of release to fire.

All at once, his entire being exploded into orgasm, ripping him apart as he arched into her one last time, shouting hoarsely. Sherri met him halfway, crying out as she shuddered violently beneath him and around him.

He actually blacked out a little, so powerful were their mutual orgasms.