“I don’t want slow.”
His eyes darkened. “I’m trying to be noble.”
“You’re dripping on my floor and kissing me like you’re about to commit a felony. Nobility left twenty minutes ago.”
His laugh was rough against my mouth. “You’re going to kill me.”
“You started it.”
“I showed up to talk.”
“You showed up soaked in a Fury hoodie looking like a tragic hockey romance cover. That was not neutral behavior.”
His mouth found my jaw, then the sensitive skin beneath it, and my head fell back before I could pretend I had dignity left. “I walked here in the rain to tell you about acceptance.”
“You walked here in the rain to make me insane.”
“Multitasking matters.”
I laughed, but it broke into a gasp when his hand slid to my thigh and lifted, fitting my leg around his hip. His palm moved with purpose, firm under my knee, then higher along the outside of my thigh, over the soft fabric of my leggings, stopping before it became too much too fast.
His forehead dropped to mine.
“Is this okay?”
The question tore something open in me.
Not because I doubted him—he asked when he already knew I wanted him, because he wouldn’t take even a yes for granted tonight.
I nodded, my breath shaking. “Yes.”
His hand flexed. “Words, sweetheart.”
I shivered at the name, then laughed softly. “You lasted thirty seconds.”
“I’m workshopping.”
“Yes,” I said, cupping his jaw. “It’s okay.”
He kissed me again, deeper now, his tongue sliding against mine while he lifted me against him. My legs wrapped around his waist like my body had been waiting days, months, maybe a year to get back to the place where he knew how to hold me. He turned from the counter, one arm locked beneath me,the other spread wide over my back, and carried me down the hall like I weighed nothing.
My door was half-open.
He nudged it wider with his shoulder and stepped into my room.
The lamp near my bed was on, soft gold spilling over the rumpled comforter and the stack of books on my nightstand. There were clothes on the chair, lip gloss tubes scattered near the mirror, a hoodie tossed across the foot of the bed, all the little pieces of my life he hadn’t been allowed to touch before.
He stopped just inside the room and looked around.
I felt him take it in.
Not sexually. Not like a man cataloging where he could put me.
Like a man finally standing in a place I lived.
My throat tightened. “What?”
His arms tightened around me. “I’ve never been in here.”
