"Except when you're marrying strangers in video game chapels."
"That was an outlier."
"An outlier that resulted in commemorative Xbox controllers."
"Are we really talking about this right now?"
"You started it by asking about protection."
"Fair point." He leans down, his mouth finding mine again. "Can we stop talking now?"
"God, yes."
And we do. We stop talking and start communicating in a language that's all hands and mouths and the kind of honest intimacy I haven't felt since?—
Actually, I've never felt this.
Not with Thomas. Not with anyone.
Because when Victor finally slides inside me—slow and careful and watching my face the entire time—it feels like finding the comfort of a home. Only it’s one that my body and mind have never known.
In Victor Kade, I’ve found a space so safe, so sacred that a shrine should be built in its honor.
And when he fills me completely, the stretch is just on the edge of too much in the best possible way.
"Okay?" he asks, his voice strained.
“There aren’t words for how ‘okay’ I am.”
"Good. Because I'm—" He groans as I shift my hips experimentally. "Christ, Harper."
"Too much?"
"Not enough. Never enough."
He starts to move, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in, and I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.
"Fuck," he breathes. "You feel?—"
"What?"
"Perfect. You feel perfect."
He sets a rhythm that's slow and deep and steady, his body attuned to every sigh, every sound, every way my body responds to his.
When I arch my back, seeking more friction, he shifts the angle slightly, and suddenly he's hitting places inside me I’d forgotten existed.
"There," I gasp. "Right there."
"Here?"
"Yes—oh God, yes?—"
He maintains that angle, that rhythm, and I can feel the tension building again, coiling, wrapping, spindling tighter and tighter in my core.
"Touch yourself," he says.
"What?"
