Elena lost count somewhere after the seventh.

She only realized it when Marcus asked her, voice rough against the back of her neck, how many loads she was carrying, and the number would not come. The morning had blurred into afternoon, afternoon into the dim gold of early evening with the curtains still drawn. Time had stopped meaning anything except the intervals between one thick pulse of him inside her and the next.

She was on her back again, thighs trembling, the sheets beneath her a wreck of dried and fresh evidence. Marcus was between her legs, moving with the same steady, relentless rhythm he had kept for hours—deep strokes...