His weight bears down on top of me as he kisses a tantalizing trail to my neck. He tastes my skin, moving down to suck my breast, where he flicks his tongue over my nipple. Charged waves crash over me. My hands are on him and then the rock, searching for something solid to grip as the sensations tear through me like an electric current.

And with that thought comes a flash of the last session. Strapped to the gurney. Paddles clamped to my temples. Severe pain stabs at my head, blinding white light webs across my eyelids. Panic is a lead weight in my chest, fear that it will concave under the pressure.

“I can’t breathe,” I say around a gasp, but my body claims differently, my lungs struggling to drag in each inhalation. The higher I climb, the heavier the weight pushes down, and I cling to Alex, unable to stop the onslaught. “Oh god, more. I need you deep inside me, Alex.”

He answers my demand with a powerful thrust as he buries himself inside me, shattering the fragile and tenuous insulation that’s been holding me together.

I break.

We’re flesh and bone. A conflict of soft and callous. Every tender surface of our bodies grates against rigid rock, shredding us bare layer by layer. The sharp edge of stone slices into my hand. I smear my palm along his bicep, across his chest, fascinated by the dark trail of blood staining his skin.

It’s intoxicating, and I’m intoxicated with his scent and his arousing sounds. His groan rumbles against my ear as he grows harder inside me, and I arch my back, needing him to touch every inch of my skin.

I bite down on his shoulder. The pain urges him on, the way the burn of the rock against my flesh steers me closer to that maddening edge.

He cups the back of my head, holding me tight to him. “I never want to stop.” His words race with his erratic movements. Every pulsing, painful lunge deeper teeters us both closer to the precipice.

“Don’t ever stop,” I hear myself say.

“Ah…fuck. I want all of you.”

The confession digs beneath my Teflon layer—all the pain and bliss and elation sets something fierce and uncontrollable free.

Alex hooks an arm beneath my knee, spreading my thighs wide so he can get even closer. He fucks me hard. He fucks me with wild, insatiable abandon that destroys the last of my sanity and control.

And when I feel the building pressure, I push back against him to alleviate the achy need tearing through me.

“Fuck, Blakely… I love you.”