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For one terrible second, he didn’t kiss me back.

I felt his body tense, felt the moment where he was going to pull away and walk out of this room and probably out of my life, and something in my chest prepared for the impact the way you braced for a hit you saw coming.

Then his hands were in my hair, and he was kissing me back like he’d been waiting fifteen years for this too, like every moment of distance had been a lie we’d both agreed to tell.

Suddenly the bed behind us didn’t matter, the complications didn’t matter, and the fact that this was going to change everything didn’t matter because this was the only thing that had ever mattered.

I tasted the salt of something—sweat, maybe, or tears. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. His mouth was soft and hard and perfect, and when he bit my lower lip, I felt it everywhere, in my chest and my gut and the particular ache that had been living behind my ribs for years.

Then he staggered back and punched me.

My dragon reacted by catching his fist before it could connect. In that second, I saw guilt, but there was as much want in those deep eyes as there had to be in mine.

Ash struggled against my grip, but not hard, not really, and I could feel the exact moment his resistance crumbled because I was living it too. His fist unclenched in my palm, and instead of fighting me, he pulled me back down, his mouth finding mine again with a desperation that mirrored my own.

“Don’t,” he said against my lips, but it wasn’t a refusal anymore. It was a plea, a prayer, a last-ditch effort to convince himself that he should want me to stop.

I didn’t stop.

I guided him backward toward the bed, my hands steady on his shoulders, and when the backs of his knees hit the mattress, he sat without breaking the kiss. I followed him down, settling between his thighs, and I could feel the hard length of him pressed against my hip, could feel his hands shaking as they gripped my shoulders.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” I said against his neck, giving him one last chance to walk away, to choose the safety of distance over the terrifying vulnerability of this.

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he pulled my shirt off over my head and dragged his mouth across my chest, and I realized I was going to die if I didn’t have him. I’d been dying slowly for fifteen years and hadn’t even known it until now.

I kissed him like I was trying to apologize for every other kiss on every other person I’d put between us, for every manufactured distance, for every lie I’d told myself about not wanting this.

His mouth was soft and demanding, and when he pulled back to breathe, I could see the want in his eyes, dark and deep and aimed entirely at me.

“I’ve wanted you,” I told him, my voice rough. “Every second. Every single second.”

He made a sound that might have been a sob, might have been a laugh, and then he was pulling me back down, his hands urgent on my back, on my hips, pulling me closer like he couldn’t stand even an inch of space between us.

I wanted to go slow. I wanted to make this gentle, wanted to show him with my body what I couldn’t say with words.

But Ash was all urgency and need, and when he reached down to push my sweats off my hips, I let him, let him take control of this the way he needed to.

His hand wrapped around me, and the touch was so good, so right, that I had to bury my face in his neck to keep from coming right now.

I was trying to go slow, trying to make this last, but Ash pulled back just enough to grab his wallet from the nightstand. His hands shook as he tore open a condom, and the simple fact of it—that he’d been prepared, that he wanted this enough to have been carrying the hope of it—undid something in me that I’d kept locked down for a very long time.

“Yeah?” I asked, needing to hear it, needing to know this was what he wanted.

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice was steady now, sure in a way it hadn’t been since his father showed up in that tunnel. “I want you. Inside me. I want—” He swallowed hard. “I want all of it.”

I helped him roll the condom on, my hands gentle even though everything in me was screaming to move faster, to take, to claim. He settled back against the pillows and spread his legs wider, and I could see the trust in that gesture, the absolute vulnerability of it.

I made myself pause.

“I’m going to take care of you,” I said, and I meant it like a vow. “I promise.”

He nodded, his hazel eyes locked on mine, and I reached for the small packet of lube he’d brought with the condom. Something warm spread through my chest at the thought of him hoping for this.

I worked him open slowly, carefully, watching his face for any sign of discomfort, and when he was ready, he pulled me forward by the neck, kissing me deep and slow as I lifted his ass and slid inside him.

The feeling was indescribable.

He was tight and hot and perfect, and I had to stop moving completely for a moment just to breathe through it, just to keep from losing control. Ash made a small sound against my mouth, something between a gasp and a moan, and rocked his hips slightly, encouraging me to move.