Mal did not let Inara’s hand go until climbing down the ladder to his bunk made it absolutely necessary. Once on the floor, he turned quickly to set the lock, determined not to allow any distraction to hinder him from his intended goal.

Inara was of a similar mind, hastily pushing his suspenders from his broad shoulders and unbuttoning his shirt and pants, even as he slipped her robe and gown from her shoulders. Pausing only long enough to step away from their scattered clothing, Mal pulled her to him, breathing heavily at the sheer pleasure of her body molded onto his like a second skin.

Inara looked up at him, her glistening red lips parted slightly as she tried to breathe normally. Possessing her mouth with all the pent-up passion of five long weeks, Mal tasted the honey sweetness of her lips and teeth and tongue. He fisted his hands into her hair, angling her head to give him the access he craved like water in a desert.

Inara sighed, suddenly boneless with the power of his kiss. Her knees buckling under the intensity of her own desires, she went limp, trusting his strong arms to support her. Feeling the surrender, Mal’s arms tightened around her as he carried her to his bed. Sparing no time now to look at the beauty of her laid out so open and vulnerable before him, he continued his relentless assault on her senses, licking and nipping his way to all the spots that he’d catalogued in their time together to drive her to her fall.

Inara trembled and moaned beneath him, losing all sense of anything else in the feel of the slow slide of his body against hers. Reaching between them to caress his arousal, she felt the swift jerk of his hips as he gasped against her neck. She shifted her own hips, widening the spread of her legs to accommodate his girth. Hooking an ankle around one muscular thigh, she urged him wordlessly to consummate their mutual desire.

Sliding into her welcoming heat, Mal groaned with the perfection of the fit. Controlling the impulse to reach his own climax quickly, he set a slow and steady pace, acutely attuned to the effect his thrusts had on Inara’s body. They moved thus for a long while, Inara’s fingernails digging into the smooth skin of his shoulders and back as she controlled her own rhythm, contracting around him strongly. A long, low moan escaped her lips even as she bit them to try to suppress it.

The sound alone nearly bringing him to release, Mal adjusted the angle of his thrusts, slipping one warm hand between them to find the sensitive nerve bundle at her core. Arching beneath him with a cry, Inara began to unravel in his grip, buffeted by the storm of her climax. Mal increased the pace of his thrusts, his own release thundering through his body. After moments that stretched out into a seeming eternity of ecstasy and then contracted again into a semblance of normal time, Mal lifted his weight from her, still breathing raggedly in the intensity of the moment.

Inara breathed deeply, her body thrumming still with the sense memory of Mal moving urgently inside her. Wordlessly curling her body into the curve of his, she placed small, sweet kisses across his sweaty chest. Brushing the tickle of her hair from his neck, he pulled her closer still. “I haven’t told you today how gorram much I love you, darlin’,” he said, the rumble of his voice vibrating pleasantly against her cheek.

He felt Inara’s smile against his chest. “I thought you just did,” she whispered, closing her eyes in sheer contentment and going to sleep.

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