“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I tell her.
She laughs and pulls me down to her mouth, and when I start to move again, she stops laughing.
The third time is slower to build, deeper, more. I feel it gathering in the base of my spine long before I let myself go with it, holding off, keeping the rhythm, staying focused on Millie. Her breathing is climbing again, hands moving up my back with more urgency, hips rising to meet every movement with an intention that makes it fucking difficult to think clearly. She’scompletely present, feeling every second of it, nothing held back, and that’s what undoes me more than anything else.
“Will.” My name, fractured and desperate. “I’m—”
“I know,” I tell her. “Come for me.”
Her breath breaks apart entirely. She turns her face into my throat, and the sound she makes against my skin is the best sound I have ever heard in my life, her body clenching around mine, her nails pressing half-moons into my back, her whole frame shaking with it.
My balls pull tight, my body flaming in heat as sweat tops my brow. I clench my eyes tight as tingles shoot up my spine. The explosion rocks through me when I follow her over, my face buried in her hair, my hand gripping the headboard, everything in me going very still for one suspended, perfect second, and then breaking open completely. A rough sound leaves my throat that I don’t fully manage to contain, and her arms come around me and hold on. I press my lips hard against her temple and breathe through it, through all of it, until the world settles back into place around us.
We stay tangled together, neither of us moving, both of us breathing hard. Her hand is tracing slow lines up and down my back. My face is in her hair.
Eventually, her voice breaks the silence. “Hi,” she says again, smaller this time, into my shoulder.
I let out a low chuckle, lifting my head enough to look at her. She’s flushed, her hair is a complete disaster, and she is genuinely the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I press my lips to her forehead. “Hey.”
She tips her head back from my chest and stares up at the ceiling for a moment, and I watch the smile move across her face in slow motion, like it started somewhere deep and worked its way out.
“So,” she says.
“So,” I agree.
“That happened.”
“It did.”
She turns her head and looks up at me, and there is something in her expression that is equal parts wonder and mischief. “I have a question.”
“Okay.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
I exhale a short laugh through my nose, pulling out of her and rolling onto my back. “You want to havethat conversationright now?”
“I really do,” she says, entirely unapologetically.
I look over at her, this woman who has been patient with me for so long and apparently intends to stop being patient the moment she’s gotten what she wanted. “Club rules. Your father. The business relationship. The patch.” I pause. “Pick one.”
She considers this with exaggerated seriousness, her finger tapping her chin. “Those all sound like excuses.”
“They were reasons at the time.”
“And now?”
“Now they sound like excuses,” I admit.
She makes a small, triumphant sound and settles her cheek against my chest, and I feel her smile even though I can’t see it. I run my hand slowly up her spine and back down, and she makes a contented sound that hums through my ribcage.
The quiet settles back over us, comfortable and warm. I stare at the ceiling and let my heartbeat slow the rest of the way down, let the room come back into focus properly.
Two days.
Twodays until I’m a full brother. One more day of carrying that prospect patch on my back. And then whatever comes after—the Alliance, Jonas, all the weight of things that haven’tresolved yet—we face that as something more than two people dancing around each other.
