"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi." His voice broke on the word. He closed his eyes. His nose brushed mine. We stayed like that, breathing each other in, foreheads together, and I felt the tremor run through him again — the one that started in his ribs and didn't stop.
Then his mouth found mine, and it wasn't desperate anymore. It was slow. Thorough. The kind of kiss that saysI have timeandI'm not going anywhereandI want to feel everysingle second of this.His hands moved under my shirt, warm against my skin, and my stomach clenched at the contact. His palms slid up my ribs, thumbs tracing the curve beneath my breasts, and my whole body flushed hot.
He peeled my shirt off slowly. Then stopped. His eyes moved down my body and his jaw went tight. His chest rose and fell faster. His hands curled at his sides like he was stopping himself from grabbing me.
"Fuck," he breathed. Not performative. Not smooth. Just a man looking at a woman he hadn't touched in seven days and losing his composure. "Callie."
"Show me," I said. "Show me what this week did to you."
His mouth dropped to my collarbone. Open, hot, his tongue tracing the ridge of bone. He unclasped my bra and pulled it off, and his hands covered my breasts, and the groan that came out of him vibrated against my sternum. His thumb circled my nipple and it hardened under his touch and when his mouth replaced his hand — hot, wet, his tongue flicking slow and deliberate — my hips came off the bed and my hand fisted in his hair and I pulled hard enough that he hissed against my skin.
He didn't stop. His mouth moved to the other side, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, and the ache between my legs was building into something I couldn't ignore. I could feel myself getting wet, could feel the heat spreading through my core, and when I pressed my thighs together for relief, he pushed them apart with his knee and settled his hips between them and the pressure of him — hard, straining against his jeans — made me moan.
"God, I missed this." His mouth was on my ribs now, moving down, his tongue tracing the dip of my waist. His hands gripped my hips and his thumbs pressed into the hollows beside my hip bones. He kissed the soft skin below my navel. My stomach muscles clenched and my breath came out in a shudder. Helooked up at me from there, his mouth against my belly, his eyes dark and half-lidded, and the sight of Clay Blackwood between my thighs looking at me like that made my whole body throb.
I pulled at his belt. My hands were shaking. He helped me — buckle, zipper, both of us clumsy with urgency — and when I pushed his jeans down and wrapped my hand around him, he was hard and hot and pulsing against my palm. His forehead dropped to my stomach, and he groaned — deep, gutted, his hips pushing into my hand.
"Fuck, Callie." My name through clenched teeth. His whole body rigid, trembling, fighting for control.
I stroked him harder, and his breath stuttered. His fist closed in the sheets, and I felt powerful in a way that had nothing to do with courtrooms or law degrees. This man. Shaking apart under my hand. Because of me.
He pulled my hand away. Pinned my wrist to the mattress and kissed me hard. His other hand slid between my thighs and found me wet and swollen and ready and the sound he made against my mouth — low, raw, almost pained — sent a jolt straight through my core.
His fingers moved, and my back arched off the bed. He knew exactly where. He knew exactly how. Slow circles that made my toes curl, and my thighs clamp around his hand. He watched my face while he touched me, and his eyes were black, focused, completely undone by what he was doing to me.
"Please," I gasped. My hips were rocking against his hand, and I couldn't stop them. "Clay, please."
“Please, what?" Low. Rough. His thumb pressed harder.
"I need you inside me. Now. Please,now."
He didn't make me ask again. He settled between my thighs and I felt him there, the tip of him pressing against me, and when he pushed inside I cried out, and my nails dug into hisshoulders and he swore against my neck — a raw, gutturalfuckthat I felt in my chest.
We both went still. His forehead against mine. His eyes open and so were mine. Full. Connected. The stretch and the heat and the overwhelmingrightnessof his body inside mine after seven days without him. My walls clenched around him and his jaw locked.
"I love you," he said into the space between our mouths. Barely a whisper. Like he was telling a secret he'd been keeping for seven days.
"I love you." My voice cracked, and I didn't care. "I love you and I'm sorry and I'm not going anywhere."
He brushed the hair from my face with fingers that were shaking. Then he moved, and I stopped thinking.
Slow at first. Long, deep strokes that made me feel every inch of him. My body opened around him, and the friction was exquisite, and I heard myself making sounds I didn't recognize — broken, breathless, desperate. He watched my face with every thrust, reading me, adjusting, learning what made my breath catch and what made my eyes roll back and doing it again and again until I was writhing under him.
"Right there," I breathed, and he stayed right there, and his pace changed — still deep but harder now, more urgent, his hips snapping against mine. The bed frame creaked. His hand slid under the small of my back and lifted me into him and the angle shifted. I cried out and my legs locked tighter around his waist to pull him deeper.
"Fuck, you feel —" He couldn't finish. His jaw clenched. His rhythm stuttered. I could feel him thickening inside me, could feel the tension coiling through his body, and I raked my nails down his back and he hissed and drove harder and the headboard hit the wall.
"Don't stop." I was begging, and I didn't care. My skin was slick against his, and the muscles in my stomach were tightening, building, every nerve ending lit and screaming. His mouth found my neck and his teeth grazed my skin. His hand gripped my thigh and hitched it higher, and I shattered.
It ripped through me. Waves of it, clenching, pulsing, Clay's name torn from my throat. My body arched into his, and I gripped him so hard I'd leave bruises, and I felt myself tighten around him in waves and watched his face — jaw locked, eyes squeezed shut, every muscle in his neck corded — as he tried to hold on.
"Let go," I whispered against his mouth.
He buried his face in my neck and drove deep one last time and came with a groan that shook his whole body. I felt him pulse inside me, felt the heat of it, felt the tremors racking through him as he emptied himself, and I held him through it, my arms around his back, my legs around his waist, my lips against his temple.
Silence. Both of us breathing hard. Sweat cooling between us. His weight on me. My arms around him. His heart slamming against mine.
