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And I have to look away, because nobody has ever looked at me like that, and I don’t know what to do with my face. So I reach for his jeans instead.

The button gives me no trouble. The zipper is another story. Not for me. For him.

“Careful,” he says, with feeling.

“I know how a zipper works, Gabriel.”

“I am well aware. I am merely recalling my own first encounter with one.”

I bite my lip so I don’t laugh. I fail. He kisses the laugh right off my mouth and steps out of the jeans, and soon there’s nothing between us at all.

He lays me back on the bed like I’m made of something precious. And then he takes me apart. One kiss at a time.

He kisses every inch of me. My throat. The slope of my shoulder. The curve of my breast, where he lingers until I’m arching off the mattress and gripping the sheets. He learned my body on a hallway floor nine days ago. Tonight he seems determined to memorize it.

When his mouth moves lower, I thread my fingers through his soft hair.

The rain starts somewhere in the middle of it. A soft patter against the windows. I barely notice. I’m too busy saying his name like a prayer.

His tongue works me up, then he pulls back right before I peak. Two fingers slide inside of me and he watches as he fucks me with them.

“You are the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmurs. Then he lowers his mouth back to where I need him. He sucks and it doesn’t take long for the climax to crash over me.

He rises over me, braced on his forearms, and the look on his face nearly undoes me all over again.

I wrap my hand around him and guide him to me.

“April,” he breathes.

“I know. Me too.”

He sinks into me slowly, inch by inch, and we both stop breathing. God. The fit of him. As if he was carved just for me.

I hook my legs around his hips and pull him deeper, and he groans into my neck, a raw, wrecked sound that I want to bottle and keep forever.

Then he moves.

Slow, at first. Long, deep strokes that I feel all the way to my toes. His fingers lace through mine on the pillow. His forehead rests against mine. We don’t look away from each other. Not once.

I keep waiting for it. Some small part of me is always waiting. A chill under my palms. A stiffness in his shoulders. A flash of gray.

It doesn’t come.

All I feel is heat. His skin. His heartbeat thundering against my breasts.

I roll us, because I can, and he lets me, because he’s Gabriel and he’s never once tried to stop me from doing exactly what I want. I sit up astride him and take him all the way inside me, and the sound he makes when I start to move is worth every shitty thing any other man has ever done to me.

His hands grip my hips. Slide up my sides. Cup my breasts. He watches me like I’m a sunrise he never expected to see again.

“April.” His voice is hoarse. “April, I—” He stops.

I don’t know what he was going to say. I don’t ask. I’m not sure I’m brave enough for the answer. Not yet.

So I lean down and kiss him instead. He wraps his arms around me and rolls us back over and drives into me harder, faster, until the old bed is creaking in protest. Rain pounds the windows, and the whole world narrows to the place where we’re joined.

I shatter first. He follows a heartbeat later, my name torn from his throat, his body shuddering against mine.

For a long time afterward, neither of us moves.