Still, he continued until she was weak with ecstasy. She started to move to touch him, but he stopped her. “I need you inside me, baby. Please.”

Darling savored the sound of those words on her lips. No one had ever made him feel the way she did.

Like he mattered. Like she missed him whenever he wasn’t around. It was stupid, he knew. But so few people had ever loved him at all.

The fact that she’d wrapped herself up in his shirt and bed…

He wanted to give her everything. To make her so happy that she never regretted being his. For the whole of his life, he’d been resented and begrudged by those around him. No matter what he’d done or sacrificed for others, it’d never been enough to make his family happy. Most of the time, they’d used his actions as a reason to hate or curse him.

But not Zarya.

She saw not only the real him, but what he wasn’t, and she loved him for it. It made no sense whatsoever. She baffled him at every turn. Sometimes she even infuriated him. And right now, he wanted to wrap himself up in her arms and never leave them.

He nipped her buttocks before he laid himself over her and entered her from behind. She cried out as he went deep inside her warmth.

Darling sucked his breath in sharply at how good she felt under him. He didn’t know what it was about her, but she made him feel so possessive and protective. She was his and he never wanted to share even a nanosecond of her with anyone else. He buried his face against her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of her skin and hair.

She ground herself against his groin, meeting him stroke for stroke with a heated demand that matched his own. And that, too, made him smile.

“I love you, Darling,” she breathed.

Those words ripped him apart. They gave him a strength he’d never known before. Most of all, they weakened him. She owned him, body and soul.

For her, he would kill.

For her, alone, he would die.

And when he came a second later, he cried out from the sheer force of it and the intense emotions she made him feel against his will.

Damn her for it!

Zarya smiled at the fierce sound of his release as he shuddered against her. He’d never done that before. Never. Not once in the entire history of their relationship.

And now she knew exactly why he’d never made a sound before.

Nylan, and others, had humiliated him over it. Made him beg to be touched when all he wanted to do was run away.

Could it possibly be that she’d helped him heal that part of his past?

I hope so. She would give anything if she could erase those horrible memories…

His breathing ragged, he collapsed against her, pinning her to the bed. He let out a contented sigh, then went completely limp against her.