Something gave. The restraint he'd been wearing like a second skin since the day we met — the patience, the carefully controlled Clay who always let me lead — it slipped. His hands tightened. His mouth moved to my jaw, my throat, the spot behind my ear that he'd discovered the other night and apparently catalogued for future devastation.
I gasped. He smiled against my skin — I felt it, the curve of his lips, and it was wicked and knowing, and it undid me.
"There," I managed.
"I know." Low. Rough. Entirely too confident. "I remember."
"That's — very presumptuous."
"That's observant. There's a difference." His teeth grazed my earlobe, and my knees buckled. His arm caught me — one arm, around my waist, like I weighed nothing — and he hauled me against him. "I pay attention to you, Callie. I pay attention to everything."
"I've noticed."
"Good." He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark, his breathing ragged, and the naked want on his face — unhidden, unperformed — sent heat cascading through me. "Now. Your room, or right here?"
"My room. Maisie's door is —"
"I know where Maisie's door is."
He kissed me again. Deeper. His hands slid under my shirt, and the feeling of his palms on my bare skin lit up nerve endings I'd forgotten I had. I arched into him. He made a sound in his throat — guttural, involuntary — and then his hands were under my thighs and I was off the ground and my legs were around his waist and he was carrying me down the hallway.
Past Maisie's door. Past the bathroom. Into my room, where the lamp was still on, and the bed was unmade, and there was nothing staged or perfect about it, and that was exactly right. This wasn't choreography. This was two people who were done waiting.
He set me down on the edge of the bed. Stood over me. His shirt was untucked where I'd pulled at it, and he looked at me with an expression that held so much intensity it should have scared me.
It didn't scare me. For the first time in as long as I could remember, nothing about a man standing over me in a bedroom scared me.
"Last chance," he said. "Tell me to stop, and I stop. No questions."
I reached up and undid the top button of his shirt. Then the second. My hands weren't shaking, and that felt like its own kind of revolution.
"Clay."
"Yeah?"
"Stop talking."
His grin broke across his face — the real one, the one I'd fallen for — and then he was on me. Over me. His mouth found mine and his hands found the hem of my shirt and he pulled it over my head and the air hit my skin and his eyes dropped and his breathing changed.
"Jesus, Callie."
"Is that a compliment or a prayer?"
"Both." He traced a line from my sternum to my navel with one finger, slow enough to make me writhe. "Definitely both."
I pulled at his shirt. He shrugged it off, and I ran my hands over the scars I'd traced in the dark the other night — the raised line along his ribs, the starburst on his shoulder. This time I could see them in the lamplight, silver-pink against tanned skin.I pulled him down and kissed the starburst. Felt his breath stutter.
"I want you," I said against his shoulder. Not a whisper. Not tentative. "I want all of it. Everything you held back the other night — I want that too."
He pulled back enough to look at me. His eyes were almost black. "You're sure."
"I have never been more sure of anything in my life. Now get down here."
He laughed — rough, breathless — and then his mouth was on my neck and his hands were unhooking my bra and his fingers were doing something that made my spine arch off the mattress and the laugh died in my throat and became something else entirely.
He kissed his way down. Collarbone. The space between my breasts. The soft skin below my ribs where his stubble scraped and I hissed and grabbed his hair and he looked up at me from under his lashes with an expression that was pure, concentrated intent.
"I've been thinking about this," he said against my stomach. His fingers hooked into my waistband. "About taking my time with you." He pulled my leggings down. Slow. His mouth followed — hip bone, the inside of my thigh, and I was shaking before he even got where he was going. "About making you forget your own name."
