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"Alex?"

I pulled away.

"Can I sleep in your room tonight?"

Everything I'd been holding back came down all at once. I lifted her off the ground. Her legs wrapped around my waist and her arms locked around my neck. I carried her down the hallway without breaking the kiss and pushed my bedroom door shut behind us.

I set her down on the bed and settled over her. Her hair fanned across the pillow and she looked up at me, breathing hard.

"I haven't done this in a long time," she said.

"Neither have I." I brushed the hair from her face. "We don't have to rush. I'll be gentle."

She held my gaze. "I don't want you to be gentle. I want you."

She pulled me down and kissed me. Her hands found my belt while her mouth was on mine, fumbling with the buckle until I reached down and helped her pull it free. Her fingers moved to my shirt buttons, working them open one at a time without breaking the kiss. I kicked my jeans off the edge of the bed. She pushed the shirt off my shoulders and I shrugged it the rest of the way. Her fingers traced up the back of my neck, across my shoulders, down the muscles of my back and along my arms.

"Alex."

My hand had slid under her shirt while she was touching me, up the warm skin of her stomach, under her bra. Every night since I'd walked into that bathroom, I'd been trying not to picture this. Her skin under my fingers. The way she fit against my palm. I'd lost that fight every single night, and the reality was worse because now I knew what she felt like and I was never going to stop thinking about it.

"Do you know how long I've wanted this?" I said it against her throat. "Since that bathroom. Since before that. Since you handed me a spoon in your kitchen and told me to taste."

She laughed, low and breathless. "You hid it well."

"I didn't hide it at all. You just weren't looking."

"I was looking." She pulled my face up to hers. "I was always looking."

I kissed her hard. Then I hooked my fingers into the waist of her jeans and pulled them down. She lifted her hips to help me, and I dragged them off her legs and dropped them on the floor.

She lay on the bed in nothing but her underwear and her bra, one cup still pushed up from where my hand had been. Her dark hair was spread across the pillow. Her chest was rising and falling. Her legs were long and bare and slightly parted, and the curve of her hips, the dip of her waist, the flush running down her neck and across her chest—I was never going to forget how she looked in that moment. Every part of me wanted to take her apart slowly, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but her voice saying my name.

I touched her jaw and kissed her while my other hand traced a line down her neck, across her collarbone, over her breasts, down the flat of her stomach.

My fingers slid beneath the edge of her underwear.

She gasped against my ear, and the sound made me hard enough to ache.

"Yes. Right there."

I found what she liked and stayed with it. Her breathing got louder, each exhale turning into something she couldn't keep quiet. I could feel myself tightening with every sound she made.

She arched into me, her fingers gripping my arm, holding on like if she let go, I might stop.

I wasn't going to stop.

I wanted to learn every inch of her. What sound she'd make when I touched the inside of her thigh. What her breath did when my fingers moved slower. What her face looked like when I found the spot that made her forget where she was.

I felt her tighten around my fingers. Then I pulled my hand away.

She whimpered. The sound almost broke me.

"Alex. Please." Her voice was raw. "Now. I want you now."

I slid her underwear down her legs, my hands following the line of her skin from her hips to her calves. I reached for the side table drawer and she watched me put the condom on without looking away. She opened for me and I settled between her thighs. I kissed her as I pressed inside her. Her breathing came loud against my mouth with every inch. When I was fully inside her, her face crumpled and she gripped my shoulders and held on.

"God, Alex."