“Yes,” I say.
He lifts one brow.
I slide my hands down to his belt. “Or you could stay right here and stop pretending you’re more disciplined than you are.”
That gets him.
He laughs once, low and rough, and then the laughter is gone because I’ve opened his trousers and wrapped my hand around him and he’s suddenly breathing much harder than he was a second ago.
“That’s not fair either,” he says.
“I learned from you.”
He kisses me again, harder now, and walks me backward until the edge of the kitchen table presses against my thighs. I sit without either of us really deciding that’s what’s happening, and his hands are everywhere at once after that, pushing my dress up, thumbs grazing the inside of my knees, parting me before he’s even fully looking.
He breaks the kiss and glances down.
“No panties?”
I touch his face, smiling despite the heat climbing through me. “You sound shocked.”
“I’m delighted. That’s different.”
“Mm. Love has made you sentimental.”
“Don’t insult me.”
He drops to his knees between mine before I can answer, and whatever else I meant to say leaves me the second his mouth touches me.
The confession sits between us still, alive and glowing, but now it has become part of this too. Part of the way he holds my thighs open like something precious. Part of the slow, devastating way he licks into me until I’m gripping the edge of the table and saying his name like I can’t help it. Part of the look in his eyes when he glances up and sees exactly how undone I already am.
“Roman,” I whisper.
He hums against me.
The vibration nearly finishes me on the spot.
I come with one hand in his hair and the other over my mouth, laughing helplessly through the last of it because there is something almost unbearable about being loved by him and desired by him at the same time, as if one has sharpened the other instead of easing it.
When he rises, I pull him into a kiss before he can say anything smug, because I know him too well and I do not have the strength tonight.
“I love you,” I say against his mouth this time.
He stills.
Then he kisses me harder and slides one hand behind my neck, the other gripping my hip as if the words have gone straight into him and settled somewhere vital.
“Say it again.”
I smile against his lips. “Demanding.”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
His forehead drops to mine for one brief second, and in that second I feel more from him than I could survive if I looked at it directly.
Then he says, voice rough, “Good.”
